Prism Language Solutions translates documents of every kind from and into more than 300 languages: business reports, technical manuals, personal letters, medical and legal records, presentations, spreadsheets. Work is priced on the source word count, fixed in a written quote before anything starts, and done by a translator who is native in the target language and knows the subject. Certification is added only when the document is going to a body that requires it; most document translation does not need it.
Last reviewed September 11, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Language Solutions
Most of the translation in the world is not certified. It is a supplier contract a purchasing manager needs to read by Thursday, a set of Japanese assembly instructions for a plant in Ohio, a letter from a grandmother in Kerala, a Brazilian audit report a New York board wants in English before a vote. Nobody will file it with a court. What matters is that it is right, reads as if written in English, and arrives when promised. If the document is going to USCIS, a court, a university or a licensing board, you want certified translation instead; if you are not sure, the next section settles it.
- Certified translations prepared to meet USCIS requirements
- Human linguists only, matched to the subject
- Fixed written quote within 60 minutes in business hours
- One office in New York, linguists in every state
When Document Translation Needs Certification
The test is who receives the document and what they will do with it. A government office, a court, an admissions office or a licensing board will usually want a signed statement that the translation is complete and accurate, because a clerk has to rely on it without being able to read the original. USCIS says so in a regulation. Universities and evaluators such as WES say so in their application instructions. Courts say so in their rules on foreign-language exhibits.Almost everyone else does not. A company translating its employee handbook, a marketing team localizing a brochure, an engineer reading a Korean test report, a family translating letters for their own records: none of them need a certificate, and adding one changes only the price. Some banks, insurers and employers do ask for certification on statements, claims and references, so when a third party will read the translation we ask who they are before we quote.
Business Document Translation
Business work is the bulk of what arrives without a certificate attached: contracts and terms of trade, supplier agreements, board papers, audit and financial reports, policies and handbooks, tenders, presentations, correspondence. The recurring problem is consistency rather than accuracy. A company ends up with its product names and job titles rendered three ways across five documents because three translators did them. We keep a glossary per client from the first job and route recurring work to the same translator wherever possible. More on that, and on volume pricing, on the business translation page.
Technical Document Translation
Manuals, safety data sheets, specifications, test protocols, patents, maintenance schedules and training material. These documents are long, repetitive, and dangerous to get wrong, and they are the ones where a translator who does not know the field is most exposed: someone who has never seen a hydraulic press will translate its manual into fluent, plausible and wrong English. We match technical work to a translator with a background in the discipline, which for a German or Japanese engineering manual usually means someone who worked in the industry before translating for it.
Repetition is priced honestly. Technical documents reuse whole paragraphs across models and revisions, and translation memory catches that. A revised manual where 70 percent of the text is unchanged from the version we translated last year is quoted on the 30 percent that is new, with the rest checked in context rather than retranslated.
Personal Document Translation
Letters, diaries, family papers, property deeds from the old country, a medical file a relative sent from abroad, emails in a dispute with a foreign landlord. Personal translation is small in volume and large in meaning to the person ordering it. Two things to know. A personal document rarely needs certification unless a court or an agency will see it; a translation of your father’s letters for the family is a standard per-word job. And handwriting takes longer, because the translator transcribes it before translating it, so we say so in the quote rather than afterwards. Old letters in Polish, Italian or Yiddish script need a particular kind of translator; ask, and we will tell you whether we have the right person.
File Formats for Document Translation
Send the file in the format you have; it comes back in the same format with the layout preserved unless you ask otherwise. The table sets out how the common ones are handled.
| Format | How it is handled | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Word, Excel, PowerPoint | Translated in place; formatting, tables and slide layouts kept | Fastest and cheapest to process; text in embedded images is quoted separately |
| PDF (text-based) | Text extracted, translated, returned as a matching PDF or Word file | Complex layouts may need desktop publishing; we say so in the quote |
| Scanned PDF, photo, fax | Transcribed first, then translated | Legibility drives the price; a straight, well-lit scan is worth sending again |
| InDesign, FrameMaker, XML, JSON, resource files | Translated in the source format so the file drops back into your workflow | Typical for manuals and software; see website localization |
| Email threads, chat exports | Translated in order with speaker and date preserved | Common in disputes; a translator’s note flags slang and abbreviations |
Right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew, and scripts that expand or shrink on the page (German runs longer than English, Chinese shorter), change the layout of anything designed for print. If the translated file has to look finished, say so and we include the layout work in the quote.
Document Translation Cost per Word
Standard document translation is priced per source word, counted before work begins, so the figure on the quote is the figure on the invoice. As a guide for the US market, general business content in a common pair such as English and Spanish or French runs about $0.10 to $0.16 per word; legal, medical, financial and technical material $0.14 to $0.20; rare languages and specialist subjects $0.18 to $0.25 and sometimes above. A second-linguist review is included. Volume discounts apply from a few thousand words and repeated text is charged once; full ranges are on the pricing page.
Turnaround follows length. A translator working carefully produces roughly 2,000 to 2,500 words a day, so a 10,000-word report is a week for one person, or two to three days across a team with a shared glossary and one reviewer. Anything faster is a rush translation and is priced as one.
How to Send a Document for Translation
Upload the file through the quote form or email it, and tell us three things: the target language and country (Portuguese for Lisbon and for São Paulo are different jobs), who will read the translation, and when you need it. A glossary, a previous translation or a style guide helps if you have one. A project manager confirms the word count and replies with a fixed price and delivery date, usually within the hour on a business day. Nothing is billed until you confirm.
Ready to start? Send the document or the booking details through the quote form, call +1 (833) 282 8883, or email info@prismlinguistics.com. You get a fixed written price within 60 minutes during business hours.