You have a manual. A launch date. A market list that keeps growing. Buried in those pages are warnings. Someone will act on them beside live machinery. Downgrade one signal word from Danger to Warning. You have just rewritten how they react. That is a different order of risk. It earns a different order of care.
So warnings, hazard phrases, part numbers and measured values are fixed objects. Not text anyone may improve. Regulated wording comes straight off the official list for that market. It is never reworded. Figures and units stay exactly as engineered. Only the explanation around them is really written.
Our technical document translation service opens at £0.11 per word. Files come back inside four to six working days. Rebuilt in your own layout. Callouts still match the drawing. A named expert signs the file where a conformity pack needs one. Nothing is billed until you have approved the proof.
Every paperwork job includes
Not sure which markets demand instructions in their own language? Name the product and the countries. You get an answer before any file changes hands.
Product paperwork is several document types bound into one deliverable. Each fails in its own way. A wrong figure in a spec sheet is embarrassing. A wrong figure in a torque instruction is something else. Below is what arrives here most weeks. Beside each sits the element we check on its own.
The paper an operator reaches for. Long and full of pictures. In much of Europe it cannot travel with the machine at all. Not unless it is in the language spoken where that machine runs.
Checked separately: every warning block and its signal word.
An engineer follows this on site. Usually once. Usually in a hurry. Order matters here. Do the steps out of sequence and you can energise something that should still be isolated.
Checked separately: step order and isolation instructions.
Sixteen fixed sections. They carry hazard and precautionary phrases. Each already has approved wording in every language. So these are looked up, not written. Invent a phrasing here and you have a compliance failure.
Checked separately: every coded phrase against the official list.
Dense tables of tolerances, ratings and dimensions. Buyers compare them column against column. Almost no prose here. So almost nowhere for a slip to show up. Not until someone orders the wrong variant.
Checked separately: units, tolerances and model designations.
One page. It states which rules the product meets and which standards were applied. Short and formulaic. Also the first thing an inspector asks for when a shipment is stopped at a border.
Checked separately: standard numbers and regulation references.
Balloon numbers, notes and title blocks, all inside a drawing file. The space is fixed. So wording must arrive short enough to sit in the box it was drawn for.
Checked separately: balloon numbers against the parts list.
The tightest work there is. A phrase can run a third longer than English. It still has to fit a printed area sized years ago. Redrawing that area is not cheap.
Checked separately: character counts against the print area.
Claims written to be narrow on purpose. Render them broader and you give away scope you paid to protect. Render them narrower and a rival gets room to work around you.
Checked separately: claim scope and dependency structure.
Written for the shop floor, not the customer. Often for a workforce reading a second language. Sentences stay short. One instruction per line. Exactly as authored.
Checked separately: one action per numbered step.
Paperwork gets translated because something is blocked without it. A shipment. A launch. An install. A stocking decision. Nobody orders it out of curiosity. These are the situations that push the work onto an engineering desk. Spot yours. The format, the level and the deadline all follow from it.
Many countries bar you from supplying equipment without instructions. They must be in the language of the place it is used.
The technical file behind a product marking holds instructions and a statement. An inspector has to be able to read both.
Commissioning engineers on site need the procedure in their own language. Before anything is powered up.
No serious distributor takes on the risk. Not for equipment whose manual their customers cannot follow.
A consignment moves with its safety sheet. The destination expects that sheet in its own approved wording.
Buyers score bids on paperwork quality. An English-only manual loses marks before anyone looks at the product.
Who usually raises it: Technical Authors, Product Compliance Managers, Engineering Managers, Export Coordinators, Health And Safety Officers and Product Marketing Teams. Each is tied to a shipment or a launch that has been announced.
Here the ladder is not about stamps. It is about how far the file gets rebuilt. Something read once by your own engineer needs very little. Something printed and shipped with a product needs the layout rebuilt. And proofed. A regulatory file needs both, plus a signature.
Accurate text in a plain editable file. No layout work. Built for people who need to understand a paper, not publish it.
Suits:
Starts at £0.11 per word.
The full rebuild. Layout reflowed for longer wording. Callouts re-anchored. Screenshots replaced. Then proofed page by page against the original, in print view.
Suits:
Starts at £0.14 per word.
Everything in the publication build. Plus regulated phrasing checked against the official list. Plus a dated signature from the expert who produced it.
Suits:
Starts at £0.16 per word.
Sending your product out and receiving someone else's are opposite problems. One is about meeting duties in a market you barely know. The other is about getting staff safely onto a machine. A machine that arrived with paperwork nobody can read. Find your own side.
Your equipment is going somewhere new. The paperwork must satisfy that market's rules. Not the ones you work under here.
What that usually involves:
Name every destination at the start. Eight markets together cost far less per market. Far less than one at a time over a year.
A machine has landed on your floor. Its manual is in a language nobody there reads. Until that changes the maintenance schedule is guesswork. And the warnings are decoration.
What that usually involves:
We render what the maker wrote. Is the machine safe to run as documented? That call belongs to your own engineers.
Paperwork gets examined by people you will never meet. Usually at the worst moment. A border inspection. A site audit. An insurance claim. Each opens the file with a different question. Knowing which of them matters to you shapes how the file gets built. So name that reader early.
They can pull a product off a shelf. Then demand the instructions supplied with it. Missing local-language paperwork alone can stop sales.
They review the technical file before a marking goes on. To them the instructions are evidence, not marketing.
A chemical consignment sits until its safety sheet satisfies the destination. Demurrage is charged per container, per day. The meter does not pause while you fix the sheet.
An inspector asks one thing. Can operators read the instructions for the kit they use? An honest no is a finding on the spot.
They carry the risk in their own market. Weak paperwork is the commonest reason a promising distributor goes quiet.
They read claims word by word to decide what you own. Scope lost at this stage is very hard to win back.
Five stages. Wording gets frozen at stage two, not settled as the work goes on. That order matters a lot. Once a term is locked it cannot drift. Not between chapter three and chapter nineteen. Drift like that is how most errors reach a printed manual.
Editable originals if you have them. List every country. That decides the build and the phrasing rules.
A glossary is agreed. Codes are locked. Now nobody can rephrase one while working on chapter twelve.
Someone working inside your field. A native speaker of the target language. They draft from the frozen glossary, never around it.
A second reviewer checks every signal word. Every regulated phrase. Every measurement and code. Against the source, one at a time.
Reflowed. Callouts re-anchored. Then read in print view against the original. Approval first, invoice later.
Equal page counts tell you very little. One manual is running prose; the next carries four hundred captioned figures and takes three times the effort. Treat the rates below as the lowest point each job type starts from. Everything that pushes yours higher appears at once underneath.
| What You Are Sending | What That Usually Means | Usual Delivery | Rough Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Working copy, editable file | Specification, procedure or imported manual for internal use | 2–4 working days | £0.11 / word |
| Publication build with layout | Customer manual reflowed, proofed and print-ready | 4–6 working days | £0.14 / word |
| Regulatory file, signed | Technical file content and conformity paperwork | 5–7 working days | £0.16 / word |
| Safety data sheet | Sixteen sections with coded phrases verified | 2–3 working days | £120 / sheet |
| Drawing or label set | Annotations and packaging text within fixed areas | 2–4 working days | £40 / sheet |
| Multi-market paperwork set | One manual built into five or more languages together | Set per project | £0.09 / word |
| Revision of work we hold | Updated edition priced on changed content alone | 1–3 working days | £0.08 / word |
Some of these push upward. A few pull down hard. Each is measured against the files you send, not guessed at. That is why a paperwork quote takes sixty minutes, not sixty seconds. It is also why it stays put once issued.
An InDesign package, FrameMaker book or XML file lets us work inside your own layout. A flattened export means rebuilding the whole thing first. Before a single word is drafted.
Manuals for related models share whole chapters. Where a range overlaps a lot, later models price far below the first one you send.
Each callout is a separate anchoring job. Screenshots have to be recaptured in the target interface. Four hundred figures is real work, whatever the word count says.
Handing back plain text is quick. A proofed, print-ready document takes another pass. Someone compares spreads against the original, page by page.
Medical devices, pressure equipment and aviation have a shorter list of qualified linguists. General engineering has more. Scarcity moves the rate.
Safety sheets require every hazard statement matched to an approved entry in that language. Verification is slower than writing, and it is not optional.
Rates exclude VAT. They are a starting point, not a settled charge. Publication builds already cover layout licences and print proofing. Papering a whole product range? Yearly pricing, order numbers and one monthly invoice can all be arranged.
All pairs, in whichever direction suits you. These are the markets manufacturers push paperwork into most often from here. Each comes with the practical snag that catches a team out on a first attempt. Vocabulary is not the issue in any of them. Space, script and layout are.
| Language | The obstacle that catches teams out |
|---|---|
| German | Compound nouns run very long, so headings and button labels frequently break a fixed layout |
| French | Text expands by roughly a fifth, and instructions for equipment in use are expected in French |
| Spanish | Terminology for tools and components diverges clearly between Spain and Latin America |
| Arabic | The page mirrors while diagrams and figures must not, so every spread is rebuilt on purpose |
| Chinese | Text contracts sharply, leaving white space that has to be recomposed rather than left blank |
| Italian | Machinery vocabulary is highly sector-specific, so a general linguist is the wrong choice |
| Polish | Case endings change with sentence structure, which breaks reused interface strings |
| Dutch | English terms are common in the trade, so which ones to keep must be agreed upfront |
| Portuguese | Brazilian and European conventions differ enough that the market has to be named first |
| Japanese | Vertical text and strict register conventions make layout decisions early and irreversible |
Also handled regularly: Czech, Vietnamese, Swedish, Turkish, Hungarian, Korean, Romanian, Finnish, Thai, Danish, Indonesian, Norwegian, Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Malay.
Not one of these reads like a mistake on the page. Each produces a paper that looks professional. Each survives a quick review. Then each misleads the person relying on it. All six appear in material brought to us for verification. Normally once a distributor or an inspector has raised a point.
Danger, Warning and Caution sit in a set order. That order describes how likely and how bad the harm is. Turn Danger into the local word for Caution. Now an operator treats a lethal hazard as a nuisance.
Hazard and precautionary statements already have approved wording in every language. Write a natural-sounding version instead and the sheet reads well. It also fails inspection. The text no longer matches the code.
Turn a torque figure into other units and you add rounding. An engineer will set a tool to that value. So values stay as engineered. A conversion sits beside them only when you ask.
A designation is an identifier, not a phrase. Localise it and the spare ordered against it does not exist. A service engineer finds that out in front of a stopped machine.
Wording that runs a third longer shifts the labels around an exploded diagram. Number four now points at component five. The assembly order is silently wrong for anyone following the picture.
The instructions describe a menu the reader cannot find. The image still shows English. Their software shows their own language. Every step using that screen becomes impossible.
Most suppliers treat a manual as a long document. It is not. A manual is a controlled artefact. Some parts of it are not meant to be written at all. Only reproduced, exactly as issued. Below are the habits that follow from taking that seriously. They are also why paperwork teams settle here after one project.
Hazard and precautionary statements come off the approved list for that language. Invent a fluent version instead and you have a compliance failure. However well it reads.
The gap between Danger and Caution is about severity and likelihood. Not tone. We keep that gap on purpose. Even where the target language prefers something softer.
Part codes, model numbers and standard references are locked before drafting starts. Now nobody can helpfully localise one halfway through a four hundred page book.
Measured values stay exactly as engineered. Some markets really do expect other units. A conversion then sits alongside, and the source value stays put.
A manual is checked as pages, not as a text file. Broken tables, stray captions and shifted callouts only show up once it is laid out.
Every glossary is kept against your product family. So the next model inherits settled wording. So does the next revision. Neither starts from a blank page.
Assessment bodies and notaries want a traceable person behind a signature. So should you. The experts below cover most paperwork here. Ask for any of them by name. Diary allowing, that is who gets your project.
[Qualification, e.g. MITI, Dip Trans, BEng]
[Language pair]. [Number] years on [discipline, e.g. machinery and pressure equipment]. Previously [relevant background, e.g. a maintenance engineer before moving into paperwork].
Typically handles: [document types]
[Qualification]
[Language pair]. [Number] years on [discipline]. [Relevant background].
Typically handles: [document types]
[Qualification]
[Language pair]. [Number] years on [discipline]. [Relevant background].
Typically handles: [document types]
Everyone touching your paperwork is a qualified translator. Each also knows the relevant field. Each has an NDA in place with us. Need a CV before instructing? Ask for one and it is sent.
Written and checked by [Name], [MITI, Dip Trans], Head of Technical Translation at Business Translations UK.
Last reviewed: · Next review: [Month Year]
Genuine documentation builds we delivered, each showing the product type, the languages and the days it took. Look for the one nearest your own range before you fix a launch or shipping date around it.
Each of these came out of a real conversation, usually with a drawing up on one monitor and a shipping date pinned beside it. Not one is a general enquiry about translation; each is a practical doubt attached to a certain file. Anything still nagging at you that is missing here? Message the files over on WhatsApp inside working hours.
Yes, and it is by far the cheapest way to do this. Send the packaged project with links and fonts and you get the same project back in the target language, laid out and proofed. Working from a flattened export means rebuilding the document first, which adds both cost and days.
Two routes. Is your software already localised? Then your team recaptures them and we place them. If not, images stay in the source language. A bracketed rendering of each on-screen label goes beside the instruction. Tell us which applies before we quote. The difference is large.
Not unless you instruct us to. An engineer sets a tool to a torque or pressure figure. Convert it and you add rounding to a specified value. Want a conversion shown? It appears bracketed beside the engineered value. The value itself is untouched.
Always. They are locked as protected content before drafting begins. No linguist can alter one, even by accident. Send your parts list at the start. The protection then covers the whole family, not just this one paper.
They are matched to the approved wording for that language. Not written afresh. Each coded statement has one official form per market. That is what goes in. A fluent-sounding alternative fails inspection, however accurate it looks.
That depends on the product type. And on every country you will supply. Confirm it with your compliance adviser. We can tell you what similar manufacturers usually produce. That makes a sensible starting list. But the duty rests with you.
Yes. Notes, balloon labels and title blocks come out, get rendered, and go back for placement. Or we place them, if you can supply a working file. Space inside a drawing is fixed. So wording stays short enough for the box it was drawn for.
Either, and it changes the price a lot. A working copy hands back plain text for your team to place. A publication build returns a finished, proofed file ready for print. Most manufacturers pick the second. Usually after trying to reflow German themselves.
Send us their comments. They are applied at no extra charge. That is why nothing is invoiced before approval. Their preferred terms then join your glossary for good. The next manual matches without anyone raising it again.
Yes, and please send them. Existing paperwork is mined for wording. The new edition then sits beside the old one consistently. Does past wording look wrong or unsafe? We flag it to you. We do not quietly repeat it, or quietly correct it.
What we provide is language work, not engineering. No chartered engineer sits on this team. No compliance consultant. No approved body. We hold no link with any organisation named on this page. Does a product meet a standard? Does its paperwork discharge your duties? Those calls stay with you and whoever advises you.
The language of your paperwork is what we handle. This is not a certification body, a notified body or a testing house, so you will find no compliance advice anywhere on this page. Whether goods meet a standard is settled between you and your assessor.
Upload the source files. List every market the product will sell into. Back comes the build level, the languages, a price and a finish date. Invoicing waits until the proof reaches you, until you have read it properly from cover to cover, and signed it off.