About
A small studio, built for one kind of document.
Civic Translation translates the documents California public agencies are obliged to produce — notices, forms, applications, outreach materials — and returns them reviewed, certified, and on a date the agency can plan around. That is the whole of what we do.
What the firm is for
One job, on a public-sector clock.
The work arrives with a date attached, and the date is the part vendors miss.
A hearing notice has a hearing. An enrollment form has a window. A written language-access request has a response deadline that a department did not choose. The translation is rarely the hard part of that sequence; the schedule is. Standard turnaround here is 2 business days because that is the clock the work is on.
A firm that also handles patent filings, marketing transcreation, and court interpreting does none of them on that clock. Each is a different reviewer pool, a different register, and a different way of going wrong. Breadth is a promise about a catalogue. Focus is a promise about a date, and the date is the only one an agency can build a mailing around.
So the scope is narrow on purpose: government and civic documents, into the languages California agencies are actually asked for, with an independent qualified reviewer on every job and a signed certificate on every delivery.
Operating model
A small core, and reviewers retained by language pair.
Stated plainly, because it determines what we can take on, what we can hold to a date, and what a one-page job costs to run.
The core is small.
Intake, quoting, terminology, layout, QA, and delivery sit with the same small group. A job does not change hands between departments, and nobody has to re-read the thread to answer a question about your file.
Linguists are retained by pair.
Translation and independent review are done by qualified linguists retained for a specific language pair, rather than by a general bench asked to cover whatever comes in. For our core pairs, reviewers are on standby — which is what turns a standard turnaround from an estimate into a commitment.
No salaried bench to feed.
A firm carrying a large permanent staff has to keep it busy, and that is why the one-page notice gets declined or priced as though it were a chapter. We do not carry that pressure, so a single notice is a job worth taking and gets quoted like one.
Two tiers, named up front.
Pairs we staff directly are quoted and scheduled immediately. Pairs delivered through partner linguists are quoted on confirmed availability, and we say which is which before you order rather than after.
- Staffed directly
- Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese. Retained reviewers, written quotes same business day.
- Partner network
- Filipino, Russian, Korean, Arabic. Delivered through vetted partner linguists on confirmed availability.
Limits
What we will not do.
Each of these costs us work. They are also the reason the rest of this site can be read literally.
Take work we cannot review properly.
If a second qualified linguist cannot be put on the pair inside your deadline, you hear that when you ask for the quote. A date we cannot staff with review in it is a date we decline.
Publish a translation no qualified human has checked.
Independent review is a step in every job, at every turnaround tier. It is not an upgrade, not a line item you can decline to save money, and not the thing that quietly disappears the night before a delivery.
Promise a turnaround we cannot hold.
A delivery date in our quote is a date already staffed. If something moves — the source file changes mid-job, a reviewer falls out — you hear it the day it happens, not on the date you were expecting the file.
Advertise a credential we do not hold.
Registrations, certifications, and insurance appear on this site only once they are issued. The capability statement lists what is current, and nothing that is pending.
Contact
How to reach us.
Email is the fastest route. A file and a date is enough to start, and a written quote comes back same business day.
- San Francisco, CA
- Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Pacific
Purchase orders, invoices, and vendor forms go to contact@civictranslation.com. If your department needs a document sent a particular way, say so in the first message and we will work to it.
Send us a document.
Attach the file, tell us the languages and the date you need it, and you will have a written quote back same business day.