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Translated review

STRONG FIT for Localization & Transcreation

Shortlist-ready for Localization & Transcreation, with the caveats below.

A 25-year-old language service company that publishes real per-word prices, banded turnaround times and seventeen named connectors, with a genuine multi-year Google Ads and Facebook campaign localization practice - but no viewable campaign work, no defined transcreation discipline, and no published policy on who owns the translation memory.

No published price we can link to. We do not estimate one — ask on the call, and see the pricing-transparency line in the scores below.

Score 4.1/5Confidence: mediumLast evaluated 2026-08-26Website

How it scored

Every dimension is scored against this discipline’s published rubric. Open one to see the claim it was scored on, what the rubric measures there and how much it weighs, and where the evidence came from.

Transcreation and marketing practice evidenceStrong

Marketing and advertising localization is a real, long-running line, not a services-page claim. /references and /marketing-translation-services carry named individuals at named companies describing campaign work: Alberto Mauri at GroupM ('Translated has been localising Google Ads and Facebook marketing campaigns for us for several years'), Laura Corallo at Eataly, Fabio Vanek at Italiaonline, plus Docebo, TravelCar and Enel Green Power. /adwords-localization describes an actual method rather than a menu item: keyword checking against local search demand via Google Keyword Planner, rewriting ad text and calls-to-action for persuasiveness in the target language, working to AdWords quality guidelines, and an expert-mode intake of .aea exports from AdWords Editor. /nordvpn-case-study describes marketing localization across 24 locales. Held off Excellent for two reasons: no campaign work product is viewable anywhere on the site (no before/after copy, no localized creative), and the marketing service page never defines transcreation as a distinct discipline with its own brief, copywriter or cultural-review step - the language throughout is translation and localization of marketing content. The Airbnb case study does mention copywriters embedded to hold tone of voice, which is the closest thing on the site to a transcreation workflow, but it is described for a platform-content expansion, not a campaign.

What this dimension measures: Is marketing work a real, named practice with attributable campaign or content work — or a service-page claim on a general translation business? Named marketing clients with described campaign work across stated language pairs scores 4-5. A marketing services page with no attributable work scores 2-3. Distinguish transcreation (copy reworked for the market, briefed like creative) from translation with a marketing label; vendors that explain the difference in their own materials tend to actually do it. Counts for 25% of the weighted score.

Evidence: partly checkable — corroborated in part against the sources below; the remainder rests on the agency’s own account.

Linguist model and quality processStrong

The model is disclosed in tiers with the review layer named for each, read first-hand on /translation-rates: Premium is a native professional translator plus full 100% review by a second native professional translator; Professional is a native translator plus a qualitative assessment by a second native translator plus project-manager quality control; Economy is explicitly 'light edit of a machine generated translation by a native-speaking professional translator', stated as intended for comprehension and not publication. That is disclosed MT-plus-post-editing with a stated boundary, which the rubric treats as honest rather than as a red flag - Translated names where the machine is and what its output is not fit for. Translator selection runs through a T-Rank matching system. ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 17100:2015 are claimed on /frequently-asked-questions, and trust.translated.com is a real trust center listing GDPR, ISO 9001:2015, ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and :2022, PCI DSS and SOC 2 Type 1, with ISO 17100:2015 available as a downloadable document. Capped below Excellent under the corroboration rule: no certificate number, issuing body or validity date is published, so the certification claim is documented but not independently verified from what is publicly readable. The pool figure is also inconsistent across their own pages (see red flags), and 813,046 registered freelancers is a registration count, not a vetted bench.

What this dimension measures: Who does the work and who checks it: in-country professional linguists versus anonymous pools, named review layers, and certifications that can be verified (ISO 17100, ISO 9001 — check the certificate claim, not the badge). A described model with named QA steps and verifiable certification scores 4-5. 'Native speakers' with no process detail scores 2-3. How the vendor positions machine translation matters: disclosed MT-plus-post-editing with stated boundaries is honest and scores on its own terms; undisclosed MT sold as human work is a red flag scored 1-2 where evidenced. Counts for 20% of the weighted score.

Evidence: partly checkable — corroborated in part against the sources below; the remainder rests on the agency’s own account.

Scope and pricing transparencyExcellent

Unusually open for this category, and observed directly on-site. /frequently-asked-questions publishes an average of around USD 0.11 per source word (around USD 25 per standard page) and a 100-word minimum on small orders, and states VAT handling. /translation-rates goes further and publishes worked examples with real figures by tier: a 3,000-word website at EUR 335 Premium, EUR 240 Professional, EUR 120 Economy; a 5,000-word user manual at EUR 578, EUR 415 and EUR 200. It also explains the billing mechanics the buyer would otherwise not see - the per-word basis, the 100-word floor that covers production cost, and that language-pair rarity and terminology move the price. Pay-after-delivery within five days is stated, and an instant online quote is available without contact with sales. The one real gap is that no rate is published for the marketing and ad-campaign line specifically: /adwords-localization quotes no numbers and no hourly creative rate exists anywhere, so a buyer can price a document but not a campaign.

What this dimension measures: Published per-word rates, hourly transcreation rates, or stated pricing models by service tier score 4-5. A stated model without numbers scores 2-3. Bespoke-only quoting scores 1-2. This category bills by mechanisms buyers rarely see up front (per-word, per-hour, minimums per language); a vendor that explains its own billing mechanics scores toward the top of whatever band its disclosure earns. Counts for 15% of the weighted score.

Evidence: verified — checked against a named source you can open; the links under Sources below are where to check it yourself.

Technology and workflow integrationExcellent

The connector list is published as product documentation and was read first-hand at os.help.translated.com/connectors - seventeen named integrations into TranslationOS: Contentful, Contentstack, Sanity Studio, WPML for WordPress, a Figma plugin, GitHub, Crowdin Enterprise, Lokalise, Phrase TMS, XTM, Salesforce Knowledge, Zendesk, Zendesk IM, Marketo Engage, Iterable, SendGrid and Typeform. Four of those (Phrase TMS, XTM, Lokalise, Crowdin) are competing translation management systems, which means Translated will sit behind a stack the client already owns rather than forcing its own - the opposite of proprietary lock-in, and worth noting in a category where lock-in is the norm. Marketo, Iterable and SendGrid connectors are the marketing-stack-relevant ones. A public API is exposed at api.translated.com/v2. /frequently-asked-questions states coverage of Office, desktop publishing, web, software application, database formats and XLIFF. Held back only slightly: the documentation lists the connectors but does not spell out per-connector triggering, so whether each one fires automatically on publish - true continuous localization - versus being a manual send is not documented publicly.

What this dimension measures: How work actually flows: TMS use, connectors into the client's CMS or design stack, stated file-format coverage, and whether continuous localization is supported for content that ships weekly. Named integrations and a described workflow score 4-5. Email-the-files-back workflow scores 2-3 — workable for a campaign, a ceiling for a content operation. Proprietary-platform lock-in with no export path should be named in the verdict. Counts for 15% of the weighted score.

Evidence: verified — checked against a named source you can open; the links under Sources below are where to check it yourself.

Asset ownership and translation memoryWeak

No client-facing statement of translation memory ownership was located anywhere on the site, and this was looked for across the rates page, the technology page, the agency page and the terms. What exists instead is weaker in two specific ways. First, /translation-rates says translation memory and glossary are 'included upon request' on the Premium and Professional tiers - that is access granted on asking, not ownership, and it is not offered at all on Economy. Second, the terms at /top/terms-and-conditions are the translator-side contract, and Article 16.1 assigns the intellectual property in a translation 'definitively and perpetually to TRANSLATED and the Client', usable 'for any purpose whatsoever and without any limitation, including commercial exploitation'. So the client does get rights in the delivered copy, but Translated takes a perpetual unlimited grant in the same work alongside them. Nothing published says the memory built on the client's spend is the client's asset, and nothing published commits to a TMX export at exit. For a buyer accumulating a multi-language memory over years, that is the switching question and it is unanswered.

What this dimension measures: The translation memory and glossaries built on the client's money are the client's accumulated asset, and whether they leave with the client at exit is the switching question of this category. Explicit client ownership of TM, glossaries and deliverables scores 4-5. Silence scores 2. A stated policy that the vendor retains the TM scores 1-2 — that is the client's spend converted into the vendor's moat, and it should be named plainly. Counts for 10% of the weighted score.

Evidence: partly checkable — corroborated in part against the sources below; the remainder rests on the agency’s own account.

Stronger here: Argos Multilingual scores Strong on the same dimension.

Turnaround and capacityStrong

Turnaround is published in bands rather than gestured at, on /frequently-asked-questions: up to 500 words in 6 hours, 1,000 to 2,000 words in 36 hours, and over 2,000 words at 1,500 words per day. Those daily throughput numbers are realistic, which is the point - a shop quoting 1,500 to 2,500 words a day is describing how human translation actually moves, not selling speed. It is backed by a stated remedy: a missed deadline refunds the translation up to its full cost, and the translator contract carries a matching late-delivery penalty of up to 100% of compensation, so the commitment runs in both directions. Kept off Excellent by three things. The daily figure conflicts with their own /translation-rates page, which says roughly 2,500 words per day from day two. The rush claim of up to 500,000 words daily on request, and the /urgent-translations line about 'large volumes within hours', are precisely the claims the rubric says to be sceptical of rather than reward. And the 'over 95% of deliveries on time' figure is vendor-stated with no measurement method published.

What this dimension measures: Stated turnaround by volume and language pair, rush terms, and stated capacity across time zones. Published, realistic turnaround commitments score 4-5. Undisclosed scheduling scores 2. Score honesty over speed: same-day everything at marketing quality across forty languages is a claim to be sceptical of, not to reward. Counts for 10% of the weighted score.

Evidence: vendor stated — the agency’s own claim, recorded as theirs rather than ours.

References and review baseStrong

Trustpilot was read first-hand: TrustScore 4.7 out of 5 across 1,947 reviews, 88% five-star and 6% one-star, with Translated having replied to 100% of negative reviews. Trustpilot itself flags on the page that the company has not invited customers recently, so the sample may not be representative. That is a substantial base by the standards of this category. Two caveats keep it at Strong rather than Excellent: the Trustpilot population for a translation shop skews heavily toward individual and small one-off document buyers, which is not the enterprise marketing-localization buyer this rubric is written for, and the G2 listing could not be read first-hand (the page returned 403), so no G2 rating or count is cited here. The named client references on /references - GroupM, Eataly, Italiaonline, Docebo, TravelCar, Enel Green Power, each with a named individual - are checkable in principle and are the more relevant evidence for a marketing buyer.

What this dimension measures: Independent, verified reviews or named checkable references. A substantial verified base scores 4-5; a handful scores 2-3; none scores 2. Low weight deliberately — enterprise localization runs on procurement references rather than public reviews, so absence is weak evidence, and the practice evidence above matters more. Counts for 5% of the weighted score.

Evidence: verified — checked against a named source you can open; the links under Sources below are where to check it yourself.

Verdict

Translated is a language service company rather than a creative shop, and it behaves like one in the ways that matter to a buyer. On price it is more open than almost anything else in this category: the site publishes an average of around USD 0.11 per source word, a 100-word minimum, and worked examples with actual figures by service tier - a 3,000-word website at EUR 335 Premium, EUR 240 Professional or EUR 120 Economy - and it explains why a rarer language pair costs more. Turnaround is published in bands (500 words in 6 hours, 1,000 to 2,000 in 36 hours, 1,500 words per day beyond that) and carries a stated remedy: a missed deadline refunds the translation up to its full cost.

The service tiers name their own review layers, and the cheapest tier is described plainly as a light human edit of machine output that is for comprehension and not for publication. That last disclosure is the single most creditable thing on the site - it tells a buyer exactly where the machine is and what its output is not fit for, which is not the industry habit.

The marketing practice is real and not a services-page ornament. Named individuals at GroupM, Eataly and Italiaonline describe multi-year Google Ads and Facebook campaign localization, and the dedicated ad-localization page describes an actual method: keyword checking against local search demand, rewriting ad text and calls-to-action for persuasiveness in the target language, working to Google's ad quality guidelines, and taking campaign intake as .aea exports from AdWords Editor.

The NordVPN case study covers marketing localization across 24 locales. The technology side is the strongest surface on the site: seventeen named connectors are documented publicly, including into four competing translation management systems (Phrase, XTM, Lokalise, Crowdin) plus Marketo, Iterable, SendGrid, Figma, GitHub and the main headless CMSs - meaning Translated will sit behind a stack the client already owns instead of forcing its own platform, which is the opposite of the lock-in this category usually produces.

What is missing is specific and matters. There is no viewable campaign work anywhere - no before-and-after copy, no localized creative, nothing a buyer can look at and judge.

The marketing pages never define transcreation as a distinct discipline with its own brief, copywriter and cultural review; the vocabulary throughout is translation and localization of marketing content, and a buyer who needs a headline rebuilt for another market rather than rendered into it cannot tell from the site which of those they would get, or which service tier a campaign runs on by default. No transcreation rate is published either - the pricing transparency that covers documents so well stops at the campaign line, where no number appears at all.

The ownership question is the weakest point and should be settled in writing before signing. Nothing published says the translation memory and glossaries built on the client's spend belong to the client, and nothing commits to a TMX export at exit; the rates page only offers memory and glossary 'upon request' on the two upper tiers. Meanwhile the translator contract on their own site assigns the intellectual property in each translation perpetually and without limitation to Translated as well as to the client.

The client is covered on the delivered copy, but the accumulated language asset - the thing that makes leaving expensive after three years - is unaddressed. Separately, several published figures do not agree with each other across their own pages: the translator network is 813,046 on some pages and 500,000+ on others, language coverage appears as 194, 200+ and 250, and daily throughput is 1,500 words on one page and 2,500 on another. None of these is fatal, but they are the marks of marketing copy maintained loosely rather than numbers anyone is accountable for, and a buyer should treat the headline counts as approximate.

The ISO 17100 and 9001 claims are supported by a real trust center with downloadable documents, but no certificate number, issuing body or validity date is publicly visible, so the certification is documented rather than independently confirmed here.

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What we verified

Each claim below was checked against a named source, last on 2026-08-26. Follow any of them and check for yourself — that is the point of publishing them.

What other platforms say

Trustpilot {'score': 4.7, 'count': 1947}

Trustpilot was read first-hand: 4.7 out of 5 across 1,947 reviews, 88% five-star and 6% one-star. Reviewers consistently praise fast turnaround (several noting next-day or faster than promised delivery), accuracy, and transparent and reasonable pricing. The recurring complaints are slow or patchy support responses, a website and pricing structure some found confusing, and isolated reports of unexpected costs. Trustpilot flags on the page that the company has not invited customers recently, so the sample may not be representative; the company has replied to 100% of negative reviews. This base skews strongly toward individual and small-business document buyers rather than the enterprise marketing-localization buyer. The G2 listing exists but returned HTTP 403 and could not be read first-hand, so no G2 rating or review count is cited here. No Clutch profile was located. On-site named references with named individuals (GroupM, Eataly, Italiaonline, Docebo, TravelCar, Enel Green Power) are vendor-published but checkable in principle.

These are other platforms' numbers, not ours. We report them because they are part of the picture, and we do not average them into our score — our score comes from the published rubric above.

Red flags

What we could not verify

Sources

Others we evaluated in Localization & Transcreation

Same rubric, same evaluator, same date range — so these are directly comparable to the verdict above.

See all 17 Localization & Transcreation agencies we evaluated →

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