Professional translation services

Learn how to place translation orders and choose from the available providers.

Ilya Krukowski avatar
Written by Ilya Krukowski
Updated over a week ago

Translation orders enable you to hire a professional linguist, a native speaker, or a neural network to translate the chosen texts into one or more target languages.

Lokalise offers several translation providers which can help with translating your app or website into the most popular languages. Simply upload your source files to the project and use the Orders menu to get an instant quote. Pay for the words to be translated starting from $0.07/word.

Getting started

Click the Orders button to get an instant translation quote for any of your projects.

Then click New order:

Choose one of the translation providers: Lokalise, Gengo, Google, or DeepL.

Special notes

  • All payments are in US dollars.

  • If you are planning to create a very large order ($5000+) then it's really recommended to have a populated translation memory to ensure translation consistency and quality. However, translation memory is not available on Free and Start plans by default.

Lokalise translation provider

The Lokalise translation team are experts in mobile app, software, e-learning, website, multimedia and game localization. Translations in over 90 languages are available. We combine advanced technology with a network of verified in-country expert translators and localization engineers.

This is the recommended choice if you want the translators to dig deeper (e.g. download your app/visit a website, read through it etc.). Translators will also use Lokalise UI to perform the translations. They can be reached in Lokalise Project Chat (@Lokalise Translation Team). Moreover, we offer a lifetime translation guarantee (this guarantee doesn't apply for Translation only option, please see special notes below). It means that you may contact our support team any time and request corrections for poorly done work. We will investigate internally and, if any problems will be detected, our translators will perform corrections for you free of charge!

Available translation quality:

  • Translation only by a native professional linguist — the chosen keys will be translated by a professional. The result will not be reviewed by another specialist. This option does not include lifetime guarantee. As long as this is a one-step process, the final translation is suitable only for low visibility, low-importance, and internal content. If you are choosing this option, we would highly recommend to review the translations internally or order the Bilingual editing option separately.

  • Translation + Bilingual revision by a second native professional linguist — the chosen keys will be translated by a professional. The result will be reviewed by another specialist using the source language text. This is a two-step process therefore choose this option if you are looking for a final quality translation.

  • Bilingual editing — your existing translations will be reviewed and corrected using the source text. This option is available only for content that has had no source or target changes since the initial translation (please see special notes below for more info).

  • Monolingual proofreading — your existing translations will be reviewed by our linguists but without using the source text. In other words, only the target language will be reviewed.

Special notes and limitations

  • We do not support monolingual proofreading and bilingual editing of Machine translations (MT) and AI-Generated translations, such orders will be cancelled. Reviewing and editing machine translations and AI is considered as a post-editing service and currently, we do not offer it via the Orders menu.

  • We do not support transrecreation services.

  • Translation only by a native professional linguist option does not include lifetime guarantee. The final translation is suitable for low visibility, low-importance, and internal content.

  • Bilingual editing is the additional quality assurance for the translation when localizing or translating content. Bilingual editing can be ordered when the translation was initially performed by a human and no changes were made afterwards neither to the source, nor the target content (or these changes were very minor). Whenever there has been a change to the initial translation (source and/or target content), you must create a full translation order.
    For example, suppose you have human-made translations. Then the source text has been changed and you would like to revise target translations due to source changes. In this case you'll have to place a translation order, not a bilingual editing order.

  • The minimum order price is $10, so the amount of words is not considered in this case. It applies to each language separately in a translation order. Order completion ETA is stated in business days.

  • The Lokalise Translation Team as well as translator/editor will be added directly to your team as shown in the screenshot below. However, these new users will not occupy your team seats: in other words, they will not count towards seat limits.

  • We will cancel any orders related to:

    • Gambling

    • Adult content

    • E-cigarettes and tobacco

    • Dating (specifically, dating apps)


Gengo translation provider

At Gengo, the mission is to provide language services to everyone and connect a global community. The network is made up of over 18,000 translators who are tested and qualified to meet stringent project standards. Translators are based around the world and in every timezone, which enables us to support over 35 languages and work towards the Gengo mission.

This is an affordable provider suitable for generic translations without domain-specific terminology and/or creative style. Gengo also allows you to upload custom text documents in Word, PDF, and other formats. Note, however, that for Gengo a strict 120-hour "reject or approve" period applies. It means that after the order is delivered, all corrections have to be requested within 120 hours.

Please note that Gengo translators work outside of Lokalise. It means that they don't have access to translation memory, glossary, project chat etc. In fact, Gengo translators can see only the following information:

  • Project briefing

  • Translation key description

  • Link to a screenshot (if there is a screenshot attached to the key)

Therefore, please try to provide as many relevant details in your briefing as possible. 

Available translation quality:

  • Native speaker — translation will be done by a native speaker. Native speakers are not considered as professionals, however they still have passed a translator's certification. The final translation is suitable only for low visibility, low-importance, and internal content. If you are choosing this option, we would highly recommend reviewing the translations internally.

  • Professional translator — translation will be done by a professional who might not be a native speaker.

Available voice tones:

  • Formal — the tone is thorough and direct, yet respectful. It uses full words, rather than contractions, and emphasizes facts and grammatical correctness.

  • Business — it has the elements of formal style writing but with a more relaxed tone. Loosened up language without making it sound sloppy.

  • Informal — the tone is conversational and expressive, similar to how you’d speak to a friend. It uses contractions, colloquial phrases, and more emotion.

  • Friendly — this tone is non-threatening and elicits trust. This tone can also have a mix of formal or informal tones, depending on what the topic. Generally, it’s lighthearted and kind. Exclamation points can convey warmth and enthusiasm.

Special notes and limitations

  • Translation by a native speaker only might be very poor and is suitable only for low-importance and internal content.

  • For Gengo a strict 120-hour "reject or approve" period applies. It means that after the order is delivered, all corrections have to be requested within 120 hours.

  • Gengo translators work outside of the Lokalise app and do not have access to translation memory, glossary, chat, and other tools.

  • We add each key as a separate job related to the same order. Gengo linguists see them as separate strings. Moreover, they do not see all jobs in one page in the right sequence.

  • We do not support transrecreation and file recreation services. If your order contains a text or a PDF file to translate, the output might look different and certain elements might not 100% match the ones in the original document.

Note for PDF users

  • Gengo translators will try their best to retain the original formatting of your file, in terms of design and layout. However, this may not be possible in all cases and files may come completely unformatted too. In other words, we do not offer file recreation service.

  • The resulting file may come in DOCX, PPTX, DOC, and other formats, as the Gengo translator sees fit.

  • Please refer to Gengo documentation for more details.

Note for users ordering translations for "Ad hoc documents" project type

If you are creating a new order for the Ad hoc documents type and choose Gengo as your provider, please be aware that Lokalise does not send all translation keys as a single file. Rather we pass all segments (paragraphs) to Gengo separately which means that even if individual keys may look acceptable, the resulting file might have serious issues. Moreover, if your order is large, some segments might be translated by different people who won't have access to the whole document.

Google translation provider

Google Translate with neural machine translation support (NMT). NMT is not available for all language pairs yet. The price is $0.001 per word.

Available translation quality:

  • Machine translation — this is the only option for neural network translation.

Special notes and limitations

  • Google MT cannot translate keys that are longer than 5000 characters. Therefore, if your order contains such keys, you'll see a warning message, and these keys will be excluded from the order. To translate longer strings, please use another provider.

  • If your source text contains placeholders, tags, or many plurals, please be aware that neural network might break these elements or even translate them. For example, Google MT might add extra spaces, remove markup elements, and so on. Therefore, if your source text contains many such elements we highly recommend choosing human-powered translation providers (or proofread the final version of the text internally).

  • The word count for Google MT also includes any placeholders in your texts. This is becase MT must process everything including non-translatable fragments.

  • Google provider does not have a minimum order value.

DeepL translation provider

DeepL Pro neural machine translation. The price is $0.001 per word.

Available translation quality:

  • Machine translation — this is the only option for neural network translation.

Special notes and limitations

  • If your source text contains placeholders, tags, or many plurals, please be aware that neural network might break these elements or even translate them. For example, DeepL might add extra spaces, remove markup elements, and so on. Therefore, if your source text contains many such elements we highly recommend choosing human-powered translation providers (or proofread the final version of the text internally).

  • The word count for DeepL MT also includes any placeholders in your texts. This is becase MT must process everything including non-translatable fragments.

  • DeepL provider does not have a minimum order value.

Customizing your order

Project

You can choose a project for translation from the drop-down menu. Gengo also enables you to upload PDF (.pdf), Excel (.xls, .xlsx), Open Office (.odt), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), plain text (.txt), Word (.doc, .docx), and Rich Text Format (.rtf) documents.

Source language

Choose the source language.

Target languages

Add target languages (those which the project has to be translated to). Hit Add all languages to add all the existing languages of the project. You may also add a new language by clicking on the language field. 

Include in order

Choose what has to be included in the order from the drop-down menu. The filtering options are Untranslated strings, Hidden from contributors, Only reviewed strings or Unverified strings.

Filter by tags

Only the keys with the specified tags will be included in the order.

Order summary

The order summary shows you how many keys and words the order contains, the price per word in each language and the total price along with the estimated delivery time.

Mid-size project translations are usually delivered within 24 hours. Once the translation is done, you will receive a notification email. If a translator has a question or a comment, you will also receive an email.

Checkout, invoices, receipts

After you have finished adjusting the order and pressed Go to checkout, you'll see the following dialog box:

Here you'll be able to enter your billing information and choose a card to pay. Once you are ready, click Pay — your order will be created.

Please note that we send invoices and receipts only to the billing email set in the checkout dialog box, and it might be different from the one set in your team settings. Therefore please make sure you've entered a correct email before clicking Pay.

We also send invoices only to the:

  1. Billing email set in the team settings

  2. Team owner's email

  3. Team biller's email

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