Contracts and agreements
Supplier contracts, distribution and agency agreements, NDAs, terms of business and employment contracts.
Translation Services
Contracts, reports, manuals and technical files translated into 300+ languages by native speakers, checked by a second linguist, returned in your format.
Document translation is the written conversion of a document into another language, keeping the meaning, the terminology and the layout of the original intact. Prism Linguistics translates contracts, reports, manuals, technical documentation, HR and policy files, presentations, PDFs and scans in more than 300 languages, using native-speaker translators with a second linguist checking the work. Send the file and you'll have a fixed quote within one working hour during office hours.
Most of what comes through this service is commercial and non-certified: the paperwork a business needs to sign a supplier, brief a factory, publish a policy or answer a tender. It's the written half of our translation services, and it has been the steadiest part of the workload since we started trading in 2013.
Translators are matched to the subject, not just the language pair. A commercial lawyer's contract and a plant engineer's method statement fail in completely different ways, so they don't go to the same person.
Supplier contracts, distribution and agency agreements, NDAs, terms of business and employment contracts.
Board papers, annual reports, audit documents, tender responses and management reporting packs.
Staff handbooks, health and safety policies, codes of conduct, disciplinary procedures and induction material.
Specifications, datasheets, method statements, test reports, drawing callouts and product instructions.
Operating manuals, installation guides, maintenance schedules and end-user guides for machinery and consumer goods.
Sales decks, training slides, intranet notices and email templates for multilingual teams and overseas sites.
Contracts are unforgiving. A defined term has to be translated the same way in clause 2 as it is in schedule 4, an obligation has to stay an obligation rather than drifting into a recommendation, and "reasonable endeavours" has no tidy equivalent in most languages. Getting any of that wrong doesn't show up until there's a disagreement, which is exactly when it costs the most.
So contract work goes to translators with a legal background, and the reviewer reads the translation against the source clause by clause rather than skimming for typos. Where a concept has no direct equivalent, we translate it and add a short translator's note instead of inventing a term. Defined terms are locked to a glossary before anyone starts typing, which matters when a 60-page distribution agreement between a UK importer and a manufacturer in Katowice needs a Polish document translation that both legal teams will actually sign off.
If the contract is heading for a court file or a solicitor's bundle rather than a boardroom, our legal translation services page covers that side, including Legal Aid Agency rates for eligible work.
Technical documents are full of things that must not be paraphrased: torque figures, tolerances, part numbers, safety classifications, standards references. A translator who doesn't know the field will happily turn a specific term into a plausible general one, and the document quietly stops being usable by the engineer who needs it.
We match technical work to linguists who have worked in the sector, and we ask for whatever reference material you have: an existing translated manual, a parts list, a supplier glossary. Units are a common trap. If your English original mixes metric and imperial, tell us which convention the target market uses and whether you want conversions added in brackets or left alone. Same with decimal separators, which flip between a comma and a point depending on the country, and will make a spec sheet look wrong to a German or Romanian reader if nobody thinks about it. A Romanian translation of a test report is no use if the numbers read oddly to the person signing it off.
A manual has a job: someone follows it, step by step, usually while holding a tool. That makes structure as important as wording. We keep step numbering, warnings, cross-references and diagram callouts aligned with the original, so when step 7 says "fit the retaining clip (D)", the letter D still points at the right thing on the illustration.
Two practical requests before we start. Send the source file if you have it rather than only a flattened PDF, because callouts embedded in an image have to be rebuilt by hand. And tell us whether product names, model codes and trademarked terms should stay in English. Most manufacturers want them untouched, but not all, and it is much cheaper to decide that up front than to change 400 instances afterwards. For handbooks going to overseas staff we can supply an Arabic translation or any other language with the layout preserved page for page.
We handle Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, plain text, and most design and publishing formats. Editable files come back as editable files in the same format. PDFs come back as a matching PDF, or as Word if you'd rather have something you can edit.
Scans and phone photographs are fine and arrive constantly, often taken on a kitchen table with the corner of the page curling. We rebuild those documents by hand rather than running them through automatic text recognition and hoping, because the things that break recognition software are exactly the things that matter: stamps, faint carbon copies, handwritten amendments in a margin, tables with merged cells. The single limit is legibility. If a word truly cannot be read, we mark it illegible rather than guess, and we'll tell you before the job starts if a rescan would be worth the trouble.
We mirror the original: same headings, same numbering, same table structure, same clause references. It sounds like a cosmetic point until you watch someone try to match paragraph seven of a translation against paragraph seven of the source under time pressure. Text length shifts between languages, so spacing moves a little, but nothing gets renumbered. Bilingual parallel-column layouts are available too, which some clients prefer for contracts and policies. Just ask when you request the quote.
For companies that send work regularly we build a glossary of approved terms and keep a translation memory on the account. Your product names, job titles and standard clauses then come back identically every time, whether it's a policy update this month or a new datasheet next year. It also saves you money, because a revised document is charged for the text that actually changed rather than the whole file again. Businesses running this way can read more on our business translation and interpreting page.
The mix is broad, and it shapes how we work. In a normal week that includes:
Public sector clients want an audit trail and a named contact; commercial clients usually want speed and a price they can put in a budget line. We try to give both to everyone, and the same project manager stays with your job from quote to delivery so you're not re-explaining it to a queue.
No account, no minimum order. Most jobs start and finish by email.
Upload the document through the quote form or email it over. Tell us the target language, the deadline, and who will read the translation. A document for a supplier and a document for a regulator are edited differently.
We reply within one working hour during office hours with a fixed price, a word count and a delivery date. Longer files are priced per source word, and if repeated content from earlier work applies we say so in the quote.
A native-speaker translator with the right subject background does the work and a second linguist reviews it against the source. You get the file back in the same format, laid out to match the original as closely as the file allows.
Longer documents are priced per source word, which is fairer than per page because pages vary enormously, and it means you can sanity-check a quote yourself before you agree to it. Four things move the number.
Word count is the obvious one. The language pair is the next: a common European language has a deep pool of UK-based translators and prices accordingly, while a rare language with a handful of qualified linguists in the country costs more, for the plain reason that there are fewer of them. Subject matter matters too, since dense legal or clinical text takes longer per page than an induction handbook. And the deadline: genuinely urgent work carries a premium, though we'll tell you honestly when waiting one more day would save you money.
Our pricing page publishes the ranges rather than a single headline rate, because a single rate would be wrong for half the jobs we quote. For your actual document the quote is free, fixed and back with you inside a working hour during office hours.
A lot of this material is commercially sensitive before it is anything else: unsigned agreements, tender pricing, incident reports, personnel files. Every linguist works under a non-disclosure agreement, files are shared only with the people working on your job, and our handling is UK GDPR compliant. If your organisation has its own NDA, send it and we'll sign it before you upload anything.
Some documents need more than an accurate translation. If a UK body is going to accept it as evidence, it usually needs a signed statement of accuracy attached, and that's covered on our certified translation page rather than here. The most common cases have pages of their own: a birth certificate translation, an immigration document translation for a visa application, or a legal document translation bound for a tribunal. If you're unsure which category your document falls into, tell us who is receiving it and we'll say which you need.
Written documents are one thing; copy that has to sell or run in a browser is another. Print and campaign material belongs on our brochure and marketing translation page, live site content on website translation, and app or software strings on localisation.
Upload the file, tell us the languages and the deadline, and we will come back with a fixed price and a delivery date within one working hour during office hours.