I am a certified translator with the UK Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) (Membership number 00024532), a Chartered Linguist with the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) (CIOL number: 72852), and a member of the American Translators Association (ATA) (Member number: 273323).
Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) is the only UK-based membership association providing a professional home for practising translators, interpreters and all those involved in supplying language services.
CIOL (Chartered Institute of Linguists) is the UK’s Royal Charter body for language professionals and linguists.
RexTrans provides chinese certified translation services on GOV.UK for British nationals in China.
The American Translators Association (ATA) is the largest professional association of translators and interpreters in the United States with nearly 8,500 members in more than 100 countries.
Handbooks reach me from two directions. A UK company has bought equipment, software or product from a Chinese supplier and needs the 用户手册 or 使用说明书 in usable English; or a Chinese group needs its 管理手册, 质量手册 or policy documents in English for a UK subsidiary, an auditor or a buyer. Either way the answer is a certified translation into English at £30 per page, counting a page as 250 words of source text, delivered as a signed PDF with a statement of accuracy. Short documents go back within 24 hours. A 200-page manual obviously does not, so anything substantial is quoted with a dated delivery schedule attached.
What actually arrives under the word handbook varies enormously:
The reasons for translating them are commercial rather than bureaucratic. Distributors and retailers want English instructions before they will take a product on. Certification bodies, auditors and enterprise buyers ask for English versions of quality and safety documentation as part of assessment or due diligence. An acquirer reviewing a Chinese target reads the management manual to understand how the business is actually run. A UK site that has just taken delivery of Chinese machinery needs the maintenance procedures in a language its engineers read. Certification of the translation earns its place when the document goes to an outside body that has asked for it; for a purely internal rollout, plenty of clients take the translation without, and I will say so rather than sell you a certificate you have no use for.
The real difficulty in a long manual is consistency, not vocabulary. Split 150 pages between three translators and the same component ends up a gripper, a clamp and a holder in three different chapters, numbered cross-references stop matching the sections they point at, and a reader following a procedure loses confidence in all of it. I read the whole document before starting, build a term list for the parts, controls, error messages and defined policy terms, then hold to it — including for the revision you send me next year, because I keep the list. Contents pages, indexes and internal references are checked against the finished English rather than translated blind. The warning hierarchy is treated as a hierarchy: 危险, 警告 and 注意 correspond to DANGER, WARNING and CAUTION as graded levels, not as three ways of saying be careful. Model numbers, part codes, units and standard references stay exactly as printed. Register shifts too — Chinese manuals lean on dense imperative strings that read as brusque and vague in English, so procedures come out as plain sequenced instructions an engineer can follow at first reading.
For a quote I need the whole document rather than a sample; page count alone tells me very little when half of it is tables and diagrams. Send the editable source file if one exists — Word, InDesign, or the original artwork for the figures — because working from a scan means rebuilding the layout, which adds cost and time. Tell me whether any of it has been translated before and send that glossary, whether the English is for a UK readership or a wider export market, and what the real deadline is, so the schedule is built round it instead of an optimistic guess; what drives turnaround is set out separately. Corrections after delivery are part of the job, not a fresh invoice.
The Seal for Your Official Document
Explore the certified translation solutions we offer across a range of industries.
Certified translations are often required for official purposes such as submissions to UK universities, courts, government agencies, and more.
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According to GOV.UK, your document must be certified by a professional or a person well-respected in your community (‘of good standing’). The person you ask should not be:
– Related to you
– Living at the same address
– In a relationship with you
In practice, UK authorities tend to recognize documents certified by authoritative translators, which can reduce the risk of rejection and save you time. You can minimize errors, omissions, or rejection by using a translator or translation company affiliated with a recognized professional body, such as the Association of Translation Companies (ATC), the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), or the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL).
No, and I would not promise it. The 24-hour standard applies to short documents: a single policy, a datasheet, a handful of pages. A full manual is quoted with a dated schedule instead, based on the real word count once tables and repeated content have been counted properly. In practice I deliver long manuals chapter by chapter so your engineers or HR team can begin reviewing while the rest is in progress, with the terminology locked in the first batch so later chapters stay consistent with it. Tell me any hard deadline at quote stage rather than afterwards.
Yes, though how depends on what you can send. If you have the editable artwork or the original layout file, callouts are replaced in place and the figure comes back looking like the original. If all that exists is a flattened PDF or a scan, the usual solution is a numbered key: each Chinese label is numbered on the figure and translated in a table beneath it, which is cheaper and clearer than rebuilding the image from scratch. I will tell you which route your files allow before you commit, since it affects both price and timescale.
The price starts from GBP30.
Our rates vary depending on the complexity and length of the document as well as the required turnaround time. We provide a free, no-obligation quote upon reviewing your document, ensuring that you know exactly what the translation will cost before proceeding.
The number of pages for certified translations is determined by the total word count of the document. A single page is considered to be 250 words or fewer, including any numerical data.
If a page exceeds 250 words, we will adjust the calculation accordingly based on the word count. At that point, you will need to request a quote from us.
Find out more about how pages are calculated.
The process begins with you sending us a scan or a clear photograph of your document. We then translate the document and provide a certification statement that attests to the accuracy of the translation and the qualifications of the translator. The certified translation is then stamped with our official seal and mailed to you.
Send it over and yes. I extract the terminology from the existing English, check it for anything plainly wrong, then follow it, flagging rather than silently changing any term I believe is a genuine error. Matching an established term list matters more than my own preferences, because your staff, your suppliers and your existing documentation already use those words. I keep the resulting glossary, so the next revision or the next manual in the same product range stays consistent without you having to ask for it.
Often not. Certification is a signed statement that the translation is complete and accurate, and it earns its keep when the document goes to an outside party who has asked for it: a certification body, an auditor, an insurer, a court, a public tender. A manual handed to your own staff or packed in the box usually just needs to be right. Certification comes as standard with what I deliver, so if you are unsure I will attach it — but I would rather tell you it is unnecessary than let you assume otherwise.
If you still have questions that are not covered here, feel free to reach out to me directly.