Getting Started
Getting Started
We can translate a variety of documents ranging from PDFs and Excel documents to JSONs and XLIFF exports from your CMS. However, if you’re unsure about what file type you need to send, please get in touch with us using our Contact Us page. We’re more than happy to help!
At Web-Translations, we work across a wide range of sectors. From education and engineering to software and eCommerce, we most likely have experience in your sector. To find out more about our experience in a particular industry, head over to the Industries section of our website.
Translation is the transfer of written text from one language into another, whereas interpreting is the transfer of spoken content. There are several other differences, so head over to our blog to learn more.
No, all quotations are FREE! Standard translation projects are simple to quote for and will often be returned within two hours. However, some quotations must be more detailed to be able to cover the full project and as such will require slightly more preparation time.
We translate into 140+ languages, so we’re sure your language pair won’t be a problem for us! Click here for a list of our most common languages.
This depends entirely on your industry, your target market and many other variable factors. The best way to find out is to contact us and discuss your requirements with one of our consultants.
Yes. As long as it is supplied in an electronic format, we can translate it. Web-Translations offers professional translation of brochures, manuals and documents for information or publication
We work exclusively with native-speaking freelance translators and proofreaders, who have postgraduate-level translation qualifications and specialise in the relevant domain. They must also have at least 3 years’ professional experience.
If you send the file over to us, we’ll be able to get a wordcount for you using our specialised software. We can then send you over a competitive quote based on this wordcount.
You can send your documents to us at sales@web-translations.co.uk. If you could also advise on the chosen languages for the translation, one of the team will get a quote over to you as soon as they can.
At Web-Translations, we believe that if you’ve decided to communicate with an international audience, you really want to do a good job of it. While Google Translate’s free service has improved over the years, its accuracy is still nothing close to what a professional and experienced translator can offer, and the results can sometimes be embarrassing to your business.
Web-Translations has all the requisite skills, experience, infrastructure and technologies at its disposal – plus of course the qualified and vetted professional translators. Localisation is not a simple process. Peace of mind and assured accuracy is guaranteed only if you choose a dedicated and experienced agency such as Web-Translations.
Proofreading is when a second professional linguist reads a text that has been translated and studies the content for grammatical errors, formatting issues or possible mistranslations.
To read more about proofreading, check out our blog post.
Whilst our translators are experienced and specialised in their field, they are also human beings and sometimes make mistakes. This is why at Web-Translations we highly recommend that your document is proofread.
As professional translators specialised in the text’s subject matter, second linguists also provide a second opinion, ensuring that the exact meaning of the source material is conveyed in your translation. Nonetheless, if your text is for internal use and a quick delivery is paramount, this step can be skipped.
To read more about proofreading, check out our blog post.
In the UK, we do not have the ‘sworn translator’ or ‘certified translator’ concept that exists in some other countries. At Web-Translations we can provide a letter on our company letterhead to confirm that a translation has been carried out by a professional linguist and checked by our team. However, it’s always worth checking that this would be sufficient for its purpose.
If you require a translation for the UK government, please go to this page to learn more: Certified and Sworn translations.
A Translation Memory is a feature of a Computer Aided Translation (CAT) tool which stores segments of a source text together with its translated equivalent in the target language. Think of it as a database of your previous translations. This allows translators to reuse previous translations, retaining consistency, reducing turnaround times, and lowering costs.
Take a look at our Translation Technology page to find out more.
This is the process of translating a text using a combination of Machine Translation and Human Post-Editing. MTPE allows for a quick turnaround time with the guarantee human accuracy.
To find out more, check out our Lifting the Lid on MTPE blog post.
Once we have prepared your original documents, they go through two stages as standard: translation followed by proofreading. As a rough guide, an individual translator can translate around 2,000 words per day, with a proofreader handling around 6,000 words a day. However, these figures will depend on the availability of the linguist and on how technical the content is.
Our standard practice is to respect our linguists’ downtime and as such we do not factor weekends and holidays into delivery estimates. If your project is of an urgent nature and work is needed to be realised over weekends or holidays, a rush charge may be required to accommodate the linguist’s out-of-office hours.
Prices
Prices
Pricing depends on several different factors.
Firstly, it depends on the language that you would like your text translated into. More obscure languages are more expensive.
Secondly, it depends on the content of the text that you would like translating. Technical or creative texts are more expensive.
Thirdly, it depends on the number of repetitions in the text – the more content that is repeated in your text, the cheaper it will be.
At Web-Translations, we include proofreading as standard. This ensures that your translation is of the highest possible quality.
You can either fill in our contact form or email us at sales@web-translations.co.uk. Simply send us the file(s) that you would like us to translate, and the languages that you would like the file translated into. From there, our dedicated project management team will be on hand to ask for any further information needed and provide you with a competitive quote.
For UK payments, we accept payment by bank transfer to our UK account. For international payments, we can accept payment via bank transfer to either our UK account, or to USD / EUR accounts that we hold with an international online bank.
The details required will be shown on your invoice, but if you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team.
Yes, we do. If the software identifies exact matches and repeated content within the text and within the translation memory, these segments will be charged at a discount rate.
Yes! With Pay-As-You-Go translation you effectively bulk-buy translation ‘credit’ to use as and when you need, without the hassle of quotations and invoices.
To read more about our PAYG packages: check out our PAYG page.
There is no minimum order. For smaller translations, we apply a charge of £60 +VAT per language to cover our production costs.
For most languages, this charge equates to approx. 325 words of translation with proofreading by a second professional native speaking linguist. If you have a rarer language, or don't require proofreading, this changes the amount of words covered by our minimum charge.
Need your translation quick? We can help!
When you let us know that your project is urgent, we'll get you a quotation and estimated turnaround time within an hour.
We tend to charge an additional 30%, depending on translator fees and increased project management time.
Yes, VAT is itemised on our quotations for clients within the UK. We do not charge VAT to clients based outside the UK.
Quality
Quality
Beyond using professional linguists who only translate into their mother tongue, at Web-Translations, we also require our linguists to be experts in their field and possess more than three years of experience. Furthermore, quality is guaranteed as we ensure all translations are proofread by a second linguist.
To see a plethora of testimonials showcasing the accuracy and reliability of our services, head over to our case study page.
At the start of the project, you will be assigned a dedicated project manager who will be available to answer any queries on your project, before, during and after translation.
At Web-Translations, we use linguists who are experts in their subject matter and thus are well-qualified to handle technical texts. Moreover, when outlining the requirements of the project with your dedicated account manager at the start of proceedings, you will be given the opportunity to provide/ discuss any specific terminology that you wish to use. From this discussion, a database of chosen terminology can be created.
Usually called termbases, these databases contain approved translations of terms along with information pertinent to the usage of the term. To read more about proofreading, check out our blog post lifting the lid on terminology databases.
There are multiple ways in which we can ensure consistency for your brand. For example, we strive to use the same linguists for each client. This ensures that the tone and style of translation remains the same from project to project. What is more, through the use of software such as Translation Memories and Termbases, our linguists are provided with a rich reference material, reminding them of all terms previously used.
Unless you have opted for a Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE) service, we do not use Machine Translation to translate your projects. In fact, at Web-Translations we pride ourselves in using the best HUMAN linguists.
- Experience: founded in 2001 and incorporated in 2003, we have 20 years of experience as a language service provider.
- Quality: our Project Managers are qualified linguists themselves, and we work exclusively with qualified native translators. Should you have any concerns regarding translation quality, we would be happy to arrange a free third-party independent review.
- Trust: we will remain in communication with you throughout your project, and we only invoice after delivery of a translation to our UK clients.
- Confidentiality: your content, its nature, and any translations will remain private. We are happy to agree to supplementary confidentiality agreements as you may require. We will also protect your personal information and not share your details with third parties or freelance linguists without your prior approval.
We completely understand that your team may want to customise translated content, as they know best what works for your company, in their country.
We're happy to involve your team members or external reviewers in the process, sending bilingual review files which can be reviewed prior to us finalising the project. By carrying out reviews in this way, we keep your Translation Memory updated with the latest versions of any text. This also ensures reviewers are happy prior to desktop publishing. No more yellow comment boxes on PDFs!
Print & Design
Print & Design
Yes. Web-Translations can localise almost any graphics file. We prefer to work with the .psd files used to create the images, so that we can simply replace the English text with its translation. If the source file is not available, we can still work with your .jpg or .gif files. We offer a range of typesetting / desktop publishing services.
We offer Desktop Publishing following the proofreading of translated content, as we know that different languages vary in length. In some cases, entire documents will need to be re-formatted due to the text being read from right to left.
To find out more about our Desktop Publishing services, please read our Desktop Publishing page.
Optical Character Recognition, also referred to as OCR, is the technology used to virtually convert any type of image containing written text into machine-readable data. The image could contain typed, handwritten, or printed text.
Yes, we will retain the page layout of the original document as much as possible, although it may differ slightly, as languages vary in length.
We can work with InDesign; our software uses the IDML file format which can be exported from InDesign. Once the IDML file has been translated, we can also check the INDD file, tweaking it to ensure the translations fit nicely. To find out more about our typesetting services, please click here.
Websites
Websites
Website localisation is the process of adapting a website for a linguistically and culturally different audience, making it appropriate to local tastes. Expressing prices in a particular currency, formatting dates and measurements, adapting links to point to pages in the same language and ensuring that the material is culturally relevant and appropriate are all examples of website localisation. Read our Website Localisation page for more information.
Yes! We started out translating flat HTML files, as that's what websites were built from back in the early 2000s. Since then, 99.9% of our clients have moved to Content Management Systems, Product Information Management solutions and other website platforms.
There are a lot of ways we can work with you; the simplest is for you to provide us with an export, which we can translate and return for you to import. We can also work in the back end if you are happy to give us access. Put us in touch with your website team and we'll find the best way to localise your site.
Definitely! Our own site is built using WordPress, as are many of our clients' sites.
We use the WPML plugin for our own site, which allows us to duplicate pages and posts, and also to translate any strings hard-coded in the theme files.
Yes, we use this plugin on our own site, and are very familiar with it. This plugin also allows clients to easily assign us translation work for the initial localisation as well as for any updates and new content down the line. Simple!
Yes, we can certainly handle this. Within SurveyGizmo, you can export fields for translation, send the file to us to translate, and then import the translations.
More info about the process is available from SurveyGizmo.
Crowdin has the option of working on translations within the platform (you can even upload existing TMs and glossaries!) which is great, however it doesn't allow us to get the best leverage from your existing content. We prefer to use the 'Offline Translation' feature and use our own translation software.
When you add Web-Translations as a Member of your project, this allows us to download xliff files and then upload them post-translation.
Software and some web interfaces have additional limitations which we take into account when localising your content. These include character length restrictions and file formats which may require customised filters for correct parsing by our software.
We like to create a pseudo translation prior to starting work on the translation to ensure all text for has been included in the export and that filters have been created correctly. This also ensures that all non-translatable content is excluded and that the software or site functions correctly.
These are interchangeable. XLF and XLIFFS are based on XML, and can be opened with applications designed to open XML files. Examples include translation software like Trados and MemoQ, as well as Notepad and Notepad++.
If you export content from your CMS or another content platform, it will most likely be in this format.
We work with designers and developers who can create a WordPress site. We provide design and development services as part of a package including full site localisation.
Audio Visual
Audio Visual
Subtitles are the captions which are displayed at the bottom of a screen that translate or transcribe the dialogue or narrative. There are many different kinds of subtitles, from those for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, and those which take a multilingual form.
To read more about subtitles, check out our Multimedia Services page.
If you’re wanting to communicate with an audience who speak a different language to the language of the audio script, interlingual subtitles are what you need. If you’d like to communicate with those who are deaf-and-hard of hearing, it is likely that you’ll require monolingual subtitles.
To find out more about the different types of subtitling, check out our subtitling page.
Yes! To find out about all things AV, check out our terminology glossary here.
We work with freelance voiceover artists from around the world. We are happy to provide samples for you to select an artist and judge the quality of the recording.
eMarketing
eMarketing
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the art of building a website and online presence that makes it easy for your potential audience to discover you through searches.
To read more about SEO, check out our SEO page.
We use a variety of techniques to optimise your website so that search engines can find and rank your content. From structural techniques, such as URL structure and language tags, to keyword research and well-localised content, we set you up to succeed!
Linking to local content from your international website is important for SEO, as is having good quality inbound links from local resources.
We can help you to create great content to share on social media and other channels, where it will generate links to your site. We can also detail local competitor backlinks, which are a great starting point, and translate communication to help you connect with those who might link to your site.
Sure, if you'd like us to use a scheduling tool we'd be happy to post for you. Bear in mind, however, that LinkedIn penalises scheduled posts.
Definitely! Give us a detailed brief and we'll get started straightaway!
About Us
About Us
As a trusted Yorkshire translation agency since 2003, we’ve translated millions of words and hundreds of websites. Positioned centrally between the web and translation industries, we’re perfectly placed to help you with your translation needs.
All of our project managers are based in the UK and hold postgraduate level qualifications in fields related to the language industry.
We’ve been around for a long time, so we know a thing or two about translation. Moreover, as tech and web experts, we are well suited to assisting your company with your SEO or design needs. Furthermore, as a small company, we genuinely care about all of our linguists and clients. We pride ourselves on offering a personal touch and providing a friendly service.
Supplier Info
Supplier Info
If you are a professional translator with at least 3 years’ experience of translating into your native tongue and hold a translation qualification in addition to a university degree, we’d love to hear from you! Simply fill in the form on our Translator Hub.
At Web-Translations, we value all of our linguists. We hold an annual Most Valuable Translator award and regularly check in with our linguists over friendly group calls.
At Web-Translations, the CAT tool we primarily use is Trados Studio.
We translate into over 140 languages - please find a list of the languages here.
If there’s a language that you can’t see on the list, please get in touch with us and we’ll be more than happy to help.
We require translation for various types from eMarketing brochures to engineering manuals. To read more about the industries that we work in and the work that we have done, check out our industries page.
Please read our payment terms within our Terms and Conditions.
There is a link to our T&Cs on our Purchase Orders. You can also find them here: Terms and Conditions.
Visit our Translator Hub for additional resources and information.