Common Mistakes When Ordering Document Translation That Cost You Time and Money

The costliest decisions in a translation project are usually taken before any translator opens the file. A vague order produces rework, missed deadlines and terminology that differs from one document to the next, and the hours your own team spends correcting it never appear on the invoice.

A good order starts with a brief. In Speequal’s document translation workflow, the brief states the target language and country, the purpose, the deadline, the output format and whether certification is needed, and every later stage is measured against it. The five ordering decisions below are where that brief most often goes missing, followed by a checklist you can reuse.

Mistake 1: Ordering the Wrong Type of Translation or Certified Document Translation Requirements

What Your Receiving Institution Actually Accepts

A certified translation includes a statement that the translated document is complete and accurate, plus the translator’s name, signature, and date, and depending on the country it may also be verified by a notary. Indonesia adds a further category. Ministry of Law Regulation No. 4/2025 governs the appointment, reporting, termination, extension and supervision of sworn translators, who are individuals appointed and sworn under that regulation. Whether the receiving institution wants a standard, certified or sworn translation is its decision, so name the type in the order. Our comparison of regular and legal translation covers how legal translation differs from everyday translation.

Confirm the Receiving Institution’s Requirement First

Authentication adds steps of its own. The Hague Apostille Convention came into force for Indonesia on 4 June 2022, and applications run through the Ministry of Law’s AHU Online service. An apostille attaches to the public document itself, so ask the authority in which order translation, notarisation and apostille should happen, and whether the translation must come from the original or from a legalised copy. Each step has its own lead time.

Mistake 2: Sending the Wrong Version of the Right File

Editable Files for Document Translation

If the final version exists only as a PDF or scan, say so at briefing. Clients are advised to send clean, editable files and mark the content that should not be translated, because scanned text must be extracted first, which slows every later stage. Layout is a stage of its own: a translated contract can return with shifted tables and page numbers that no longer match the contents page, a case covered in SpeeQual’s guide to preserving layout and formatting in Word, PDF and PowerPoint files.

Wrong or Multiple Versions of the Same Document

Send the approved final version, with tracked changes resolved and comments removed. In Phrase TMS, the default analysis is run on source segments before translation, and the quote follows that analysis. A source changed after quoting therefore means a fresh analysis, a revised quote and, if work has started, payment for text that no longer exists. Name one person who owns the version and who alone may release a replacement.

Mistake 3: Leaving Out Scope, Language Variant, and Context

Translation Language Variant and Script

“Chinese” is not a complete instruction. W3C’s guidance on language tags explains that people long had to bend zh-CN to mean Simplified Chinese, even in Singapore, and zh-TW or zh-HK for Traditional, until script subtags such as zh-Hans and zh-Hant made the distinction explicit. Apply the same discipline to every order: state the language, the country of use and, where more than one script exists, the script. Script also reaches the delivered file. In one case described in SpeeQual’s localization QA guide for Southeast Asian languages, a mobile app passed every linguistic check yet displayed overlapping glyphs and misaligned diacritics on some Android devices, because the cause was Burmese script rendering rather than the translation. Indonesian for Indonesia and Malay for Malaysia are separate instructions.

Specifying Pages and Avoiding Over-Translation

Volume drives price. In Phrase TMS, analysis counts words, repetitions and translation memory matches and forms the basis for quotes. List the pages or sections in scope, and say which annexes, boilerplate or previously translated clauses can stay in the source language or be reused from an existing memory. Every page left in the file is a page that is counted.

Context and Approved Terminology

A word without context is a guess. A translator who sees a single word such as “Save” in a spreadsheet cannot tell what role it plays, as SpeeQual’s software localization checklist explains, and the same holds for a clause lifted out of a contract. Terms drift in a similar way. SpeeQual’s article on terminology consistency in technical translation gives the example of a sensor called a “crankshaft position sensor” in one model year and a “crank angle sensor” after a facelift, although the part itself has not changed. Supply the surrounding text and an approved term list with the order.

Mistake 4: Underestimating Document Translation Turnaround Time and Rush Fees

What Drives Turnaround

Speequal’s workflow has six stages: intake, analysis and quoting, translation and revision, review and proofreading, final verification and delivery, and post-project feedback, each with an output you can ask for. The standard behind these stages, ISO 17100, covers the workflow from initial client engagement through final delivery and feedback. Document length sets the pace, and so does every extra step the document needs. Certification, notarisation or an apostille through AHU Online each add a stage outside the translation team’s control.

Rush Translation Fees

Ask what a surcharge buys: linguists working in parallel, extended hours or a shortened stage. Revision is a required stage under ISO 17100: every translation must be revised by a second qualified linguist, and translation-only services cannot claim compliance; a rush quote that omits it describes a different service. SpeeQual’s article on the anatomy of the ISO 17100 workflow shows where revision sits. Ask the provider to list the stages kept at the shorter deadline, and agree the deadline against the receiving institution’s date rather than your own.

Mistake 5: Document Translation Cost Mistakes When Choosing on Price Alone

Hidden Costs of a Low Quote

A quote is comparable only when its contents are. Ask each provider for its analysis report, which shows the new words, fuzzy matches and repetitions on which the price is based, grouped into similarity bands from repetitions down to no match, and ask which stages the price includes: revision, review, formatting. Beyond word count, the price also reflects complexity, urgency, target language and whether the translator is sworn. Where machine translation post-editing is part of the quote, a per-word rate tells only part of the story, because projects differ in the level of human intervention they need. Then add the internal time your team will spend reviewing, aligning terminology and explaining context that was never in the brief. That time is real cost, and it is rarely budgeted.

Assigning Translation to Bilingual Staff

A bilingual colleague is well placed for one stage in particular: review, which ISO 17100 defines as a monolingual examination of the target text to assess whether it suits the domain, often by a subject expert such as a lawyer or engineer. Translation and revision are separate crafts with their own checks, so a professional translator and a second linguist should handle those while your colleague reviews.

Questions to Ask a Vendor

1. Who translates, who revises and who reviews?
2. What is checked at each stage: figures, terminology, tags, layout?
3. How is quality documented?
4. Is any stage machine-assisted, and who checks that output? SpeeQual explains where AI translation with human proofreading works for legal documents and where it does not.
5. Which stages remain if the deadline shortens?

Your Document Translation Order Brief: A Checklist

Complete these eight lines before requesting a quote:

1. Purpose of the document and who will read it.
2. Receiving institution and its stated requirements.
3. Type of certification: none, certified, sworn, notarised or apostilled.
4. Language, country of use and script.
5. Editable source files and the approved final version.
6. Pages or sections in scope.
7. Deadline, including lead time for any certification step.
8. Glossary, previous translations and reference material.

A complete brief reduces rework and rush surcharges alike, because every stage is then measured against the same specification. SpeeQual’s document translation services apply a Translation, Editing and Proofreading workflow to contracts, reports and regulatory files; for sector-specific requirements, see the Legal and Patent pages. Get in touch with your brief to receive a scoped quote.