Quality
Two qualified linguists on every job.
One translates. A second, qualified in the same pair, checks the whole translation against the whole source before anything leaves. The certificate is the record that it happened.
The rule
One translates. A second checks.
The reviewer is never the translator. A person cannot reliably find the sentence they did not realise they skipped.
Both linguists are qualified in the specific pair and working into the language they know best. The review is a comparison against the source, not a read-through of the target text — the difference matters, because the most serious errors in translation read perfectly well on their own.
How a reviewer gets on the list.
This is our practice, described as our practice. It is not a certification we hold and not one we hold out on a linguist’s behalf.
- Native or near-native command of the target language, in the regional variety the audience actually reads.
- Demonstrated work in public-sector, legal, or health and benefits material — the registers these documents live in. A skilled literary translator is not automatically the right reviewer for an eligibility notice.
- A sample translation and a sample review, assessed against documents of the kind we take, before any paid assignment.
- References, contacted.
- A signed confidentiality agreement covering the material, its handling, and its deletion.
- Continuing assessment. We track what each reviewer catches. A reviewer whose passes stop finding what a later pass finds stops being assigned.
If your file needs to record who worked on a document, ask. We will state the pair, the qualification basis, and each linguist’s role in writing.
The second linguist is a real cost, and it sits inside the price rather than beside it as an option. That is why we do not compete on the lowest possible per-word rate. A materially lower rate usually buys one pass instead of two, and the saving is taken out of the step that catches the omission.
For health and benefits content, §1557 of the Affordable Care Act looks to translation by a qualified human rather than to machine output on its own. We are not telling you what your program’s obligation is; that determination is yours, and we do not make it for you. It is context for why the process is built this way.
Error classes
What the second linguist looks for.
Review is a comparison against a specific list of failures. These are the ones that actually reach print.
- Omission
- A dropped sentence, a skipped bullet, a footnote left behind in a table, a second page of a scan nobody noticed. The most consequential error class and the hardest to see, because the translation reads fine and the missing part simply is not there.
- Numbers, dates, and names
- Transposed digits, a date written in an order the target locale reads differently, an amount with the wrong separator convention, a misspelled street, program, or office name. Checked field by field against the source rather than read past.
- Register drift
- A notice that has to be understood by the person who received it, rendered at the reading level of the statute it came from. Also the reverse: a formal instrument rendered casually, which reads as unofficial and gets ignored.
- False friends and near-equivalents
- Words that map cleanly in a dictionary and not in a benefits program — a term borrowed into the target language with a narrower sense, or a legal term whose closest-sounding counterpart names a different thing in the reader's own system.
- Terminology inconsistency
- The same benefit, form, office, or deadline named two ways inside one document, or named differently from the last notice the same household received.
- Encoding and diacritic loss
- Characters that survive the editor and break in the PDF, the print stream, or the CMS. Stripped or substituted accents and tone marks are not misspellings; they frequently produce a different word.
- Truncation and layout damage
- Text expansion pushing a line out of a fixed field, a table cell, a button, or a mailing window. Checked at the size the document will be printed or posted, not at the size it happens to be on screen.
- Untranslated remnants
- Source-language text left in headers, footers, image captions, alt text, form labels, and the small print at the bottom of the last page.
Terminology carries across the program.
The same benefit should not be named three ways in three notices. A resident who reads all three has no way to tell whether they are looking at one program or three, and the call comes to your office rather than ours.
So terminology is managed per client, not per job. We keep a glossary holding your approved terms, the terms inherited from translations you already published, and the ones we proposed and you accepted — with the decision recorded next to each. Every later job for that program is prepared against it, including jobs in other languages, so a change of wording in English propagates deliberately instead of accidentally.
The glossary is yours. Ask for it in a portable format at any point, including when you stop working with us. A glossary held hostage is a way of keeping a client, not a way of doing the work.
Certification
What the certificate attests to, and what it does not.
The certificate is a signed statement about one document. It is precise on purpose, because an overstated one is worth less than an accurate one to whoever files it.
- That the attached translation is a true, complete, and accurate rendering of the identified source document, to the best of the signer’s knowledge and ability.
- That a linguist qualified to translate between the two languages reviewed the translation.
- That the person signing is competent to make the attestation.
- The document, the language pair, the page count, the date, and a reference number tying it to our record of the job.
- It is not a notarization and not an apostille. If the receiving body requires either, say so at intake and we will tell you before you order whether we can meet it.
- It is not a compliance determination or a legal opinion. It says nothing about whether a document satisfies a particular ordinance, statute, or program requirement, and we do not make that determination for you.
- It is not a warranty of your source. A faithful translation of an incorrect English sentence is still a faithful translation. We flag what we spot; we do not silently rewrite your source.
- It is not a credential of the firm. It attests to one document, signed and dated.
If we get something wrong, we fix it.
Send the passage and what you think is wrong. A reviewer reads it against the source. If the translation contains an error, we correct the document, reissue the certificate with the corrected file, and there is no charge for either — regardless of how the job was priced or how long the correction takes. If we think it is a preference rather than an error we will say so plainly, and still make the change if you want it.
We apply the same review to translations you already hold, including machine output you inherited, as a service in its own right: review of existing translations.
Confidentiality
How your documents are handled.
Much of what an agency sends is pre-decisional, and some of it is not public yet. It is treated that way by default, without you having to ask for it.
- Confidential by default. Draft notices, pre-decisional material, and anything unpublished are handled as confidential whether or not an agreement says so. Everyone who touches a job, core and contracted linguists alike, is under a written confidentiality obligation.
- No public tooling. Confidential material is not pasted into public web tools or consumer services, and is not sent to any service whose terms take a licence to the content or retain it for training. Where your own workflow requires something specific, it is agreed in writing first.
- Access by job. A linguist receives the document they are assigned, for as long as the assignment runs.
- Retention with a reason and an end. We keep the source, the delivered file, and the certificate so a copy can be reissued and so an audit can be answered later. That is the reason we keep them, and there is no other one. Ask us to delete a job and we will, subject to whatever you still need us to be able to reissue.
- Not used for anything else. Your documents are not published as samples, not shown as work, and not reused on another client’s job. A glossary built for your program stays with your program.
If your department has a data-handling schedule, a records retention rule, or a security addendum we need to sign, send it with the first request to contact@civictranslation.com and we will tell you plainly whether we can meet it.
Send us something to check.
A new document to translate, or a translation you already hold and want read against its source.