Find specialized companies offering professional translation services. Our directory features expert translators in various fields, ensuring accurate and culturally appropriate translations for your documents.
Common questions about this service answered by our team.
Professional translation is the conversion of written content from one language to another by a trained human translator with subject-matter expertise, as opposed to machine translation alone. It includes thorough editing and proofreading and is used for documents, websites, marketing materials, legal filings, technical manuals, and any content where accuracy and natural fluency are non-negotiable. Translation Ratings lists 33 professional translation companies in the United States.
Professional translators handle virtually any written content: legal documents (contracts, court filings, patents), medical records and pharmaceutical content, business documents (financial reports, HR policies, investor materials), marketing and advertising copy, websites and e-commerce content, technical manuals and engineering documents, academic transcripts and diplomas, immigration documents, and literary or journalistic content.
Machine translation (such as Google Translate or DeepL) uses AI to produce fast, low-cost translations that can work for rough understanding but frequently fail on nuance, terminology, tone, and complex sentence structures. Professional translation by a human expert delivers accuracy, cultural appropriateness, and domain-specific terminology. For legal, medical, marketing, and official documents, machine translation without human review creates serious risk.
Use professional translation when: accuracy is legally or clinically important, the document will be submitted to a government agency or court, the content represents your brand publicly, the subject matter is technical or specialized, or the document requires certification. Machine translation with human post-editing (MTPE) can be a cost-effective middle ground for high-volume, lower-risk content such as internal communications or product descriptions.
A professional translator can typically translate 1,500–2,500 words per day at high quality. After translation, editing and proofreading add additional time. A 1,000-word document might be completed in 1–2 business days; a 10,000-word technical manual may take 7–10 business days. Rush services are available from many agencies at a premium. Translation Ratings shows typical turnaround times for listed companies.
At a quality-focused agency the process typically follows: (1) Project intake and file analysis, (2) Translator assignment based on language pair and subject expertise, (3) Translation of the source content, (4) Editing by a second linguist for accuracy and fluency, (5) Proofreading for formatting and consistency, (6) Quality assurance review, (7) Delivery in the requested format. This TEP (Translation, Editing, Proofreading) process is the standard for ISO 17100-certified agencies.
Professional translation companies work with a wide range of formats including Microsoft Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx), PowerPoint (.pptx), PDF, InDesign, HTML, XML, JSON, subtitle files (SRT, VTT), and more. Agencies with desktop publishing (DTP) capabilities can also handle formatted documents and reproduce the original layout in the target language. Specify your file format when requesting a quote on Translation Ratings.
Yes. Many professional translation agencies are equipped to manage large-volume projects using Translation Memory (TM) tools, terminology databases (glossaries), and multiple translator teams. TM software stores previously translated segments so they can be reused, which reduces cost and ensures consistency across large document sets. Translation Ratings identifies agencies with enterprise capacity and TM capabilities.
Professional translation is most commonly priced per source word (the word count of the original document). Rates in the US typically range from $0.10–$0.35 per word for common language pairs, and $0.20–$0.50+ for rare languages or highly specialized content. Some agencies price by page (roughly 250 words per standard page), by hour for complex projects, or by project flat fee. Translation Ratings provides verified pricing ranges for each listed company.
Key cost factors include: (1) language pair, common pairs like English-Spanish cost less than rare pairs like English-Swahili, (2) subject matter, legal and medical translation commands a premium, (3) turnaround time, rush orders cost 25–50% more, (4) file format complexity, PDFs requiring layout work cost more than plain Word documents, (5) certification requirement, and (6) total volume, larger projects often receive per-word discounts.
To ensure quality: check for ISO 17100 certification (requires a two-step TEP process), verify ATA membership, request a sample translation or references from similar projects, ask whether a second linguist edits the translation, confirm use of Translation Memory for consistency, and read reviews on Translation Ratings from clients in your industry.