Document translation in Tournai
technical, commercial, legal
A safety data sheet from a quarry, food industry specifications, a contract signed with a client in northern France, a brochure about Notre-Dame cathedral: the file goes to the linguist who already practises the field, and a second one reads it before it reaches you.
2
Pairs of eyes on every file
2 000
Words a day per linguist
70+
Languages on the list
1 h
To learn the price and the date
What Picardy Wallonia sends us
Your file goes to someone who has already translated this kind of text. It is the only way to obtain vocabulary your readers recognise at first glance.
Quarries, lime and cement
Safety data sheets, operating procedures, declarations of performance, site instructions. Bluestone extraction and the lime and cement activity towards Antoing sell abroad and buy their machines elsewhere, so the documentation travels both ways.
Food industry and retail
Specifications, product sheets, regulatory labelling, supplier audits. A product sold in Tournai, in Lille and in Kortrijk needs three label versions, and mandatory statements are not translated by feel.
Health and life sciences
Package leaflets, protocols, consent forms, trial reports, correspondence with the authorities. Texts handled by a translator from outside the field stand out at once, and they come back.
Contracts and insurance
General terms, commercial leases, distribution agreements, articles of association, policies and loss notifications. A contract between a Tournai company and a French partner mixes two bodies of law: the vocabulary has to follow the one that applies.
Tourism and heritage
Brochures, panels, audio guides, press kits, visit scripts. Notre-Dame cathedral and the belfry both sit on the World Heritage list, and visitors arrive in Dutch, English, German and Spanish.
Architecture and research
Dissertations, project statements, papers, application files, archive inventories. The UCLouvain faculty of architecture in Tournai and the city's Merovingian collections generate scholarly texts that tolerate no guesswork.
A bilingual glossary beats a good dictionary
A manual should not give one part three different names depending on who translated which section. So we open a glossary on the first job, put it to your own technical staff, and open it again on every order that follows.
Here that glossary rarely serves only two languages. A tender built inside the Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai Eurometropolis circulates in French and in Dutch, and an English version joins in as soon as an outside partner sits down at the table. All three have to say exactly the same thing.
Your file comes back in the format it arrived in: word processor, spreadsheet, layout file, website export. Nothing to paste back together, nothing to reformat.
- Glossary opened on the first job
- Translation memory belonging to your company
- A second linguist checks before delivery
- Source format handed back untouched
What we do not negotiate
A little time spent at the start, and review comments thin out from the second job onwards.
Never into a learned language
The translator writes in the language he spoke at the age of six. A Dutch speaker from the Kortrijk area for Dutch, a French national for the French of France, a Belgian for the French of Belgium.
A reviewer who argues
The second linguist is not hunting typos, he is hunting misreadings. He reads sentence by sentence against the source and disputes the first translator's choices rather than rubber-stamping them.
Translation memory
Segments already translated and approved are kept under your company's name. On the next job they come back identical and are not charged to you a second time.
File ready to leave
We work inside your file, not in a fresh document. Styles, numbering, captions, cross-references and tables stay in place after translation.
What your file goes through with us
One contact from quote to delivery, and his name is on the quote.
- 01
Reading and counting
We open the file, count the words, spot the repetitions and identify the field. Segments already held in memory drop out of the count.
- 02
Priced quote within 1 h
Price, delivery date and the profile of the chosen linguist. If the job calls for a speciality we have to go and find, we say so before accepting it.
- 03
Translation, then challenge
The first linguist translates, the second reads against the source and questions whatever surprises him. Together they settle whatever is left open.
- 04
Delivery and comments
The file goes back in the format it arrived in, glossary attached. One round of comments is part of the price, with no added line.
Do you have specifications or a contract waiting?
Attach the file to your request. Price, delivery date and the linguist's profile come back to you within the hour.
Six guarantees on every file
A linguist from the trade
A crushing plant manual, a set of food specifications and a lease do not call for the same translator. The profile is settled before the job is accepted.
Glossary handed back
The glossary built on your files belongs to you. It is given to you and stays usable, including if you work with somebody else one day.
Repetitions deducted
A catalogue, a product range, a series of near-identical manuals: identical segments are not counted at full rate. The deduction is spelled out on the quote.
No public tool
Your files pass through no free online translator. They stay on machines and servers covered by a confidentiality undertaking.
The announced date is met
The delivery date is on the quote. If anything threatens it, you hear about it before the deadline rather than the day after.
Confidentiality in writing
The confidentiality undertaking covers the file from the moment the quote goes out, before any order at all. Patents and contracts under negotiation require exactly that.
Frequently asked questions
How is the price worked out?
On the number of words in the source document, the field and the language pair, repetitions deducted. The quote gives a firm amount: it does not move again unless you change the text after approving it. The full grid is published on the Pricing page.
Do you translate into the French of France or the French of Belgium?
Both, and the choice has to be made. A website aimed at clients in northern France, a manual sold through a French network, a contract governed by French law: neither the lexicon nor the administrative references are those of a Belgian document. Name the market and the translator is picked on that basis.
Do you also translate the pages of our website?
Yes, by export or by write access. The text goes back where it came from with the tags intact, and we translate the invisible content that carries your ranking as well: page titles, descriptions, image alternative text.
How many words a day on a large job?
A translator covers around 2 000 words per working day. Above that we split the work between several linguists sharing one glossary and a single reviewer, otherwise the style falls apart from one chapter to the next. The date is announced before we start.
Do you use a machine engine?
Never without telling you. On a very repetitive corpus an engine can serve as a first pass; the human post-editing is then named as such on the quote. For a contract, a sworn paper or a text meant for publication, we do not use one.
Get your free quote within the hour
Send us your document or your date: firm price, precise deadline, no obligation. You then decide, with everything in front of you.