hiring
How to brief a translator so the first draft lands
A good brief removes most revision rounds: audience, purpose, terminology, tone and format. Here is the one-page brief that professional translators actually use.
Most translation revisions come from missing context, not missing skill. A translator who knows who will read the text and what it is for makes different, better choices.
The five parts of a useful brief
1. Audience
Who reads this? A regulator, a customer, a surgeon, a teenager? Register and terminology follow from the audience, and so does how much can be localized.
2. Purpose
What must the translated text achieve? Inform, sell, comply, instruct, convince? A product label and a product pitch can share the same source and should not share the same translation.
3. Terminology
List product names, legal entities, internal jargon and any terms that must not be translated. If you have an approved glossary or a previous translation of the same product, attach it — consistency across documents matters more than elegance within one.
4. Tone
Formal or conversational? Neutral or persuasive? Include one paragraph you consider the right style if you can, in the target language if possible.
5. Format
Deliverable expectations matter: do you need the layout rebuilt, a bilingual table, subtitles with timecodes, or a clean text file? Say so before work starts, not after.
Also include
- Word count or file, with all pages.
- Deadline and whether partial delivery helps.
- Countries or regions the text will be used in, since regional variants differ.
- Anything that must stay in the source language, such as legal names or certification marks.
- Who answers questions if terminology is ambiguous, and how fast.
Write the brief in one page
A brief that is longer than the document does not get read. One page, bullet points, attached glossary. If you do not know an answer, say "no preference" so the translator makes a documented choice rather than guessing what you wanted.
What happens after delivery
Read the whole text once for meaning, then list changes in one batch with the reason ("the product is called X, not Y"). Batched, reasoned feedback costs one revision round; streamed, unexplained edits cost three.
On LingVata, revisions are logged against the project with the reason and the professional's response, so the history stays with the job rather than in scattered emails.
Need this done for you?
Post your project and compare quotations from verified translators, or browse interpreters by language pair and rate.