For freelance translators & agencies
Translate the next client document
Per-client glossaries that travel across projects. Per-client styleguides that hold tone. Sentence-level review for the lines that matter. Smart Proofread before delivery. DOCX in, DOCX out — without losing the formatting, the terminology, or the night to do it.
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For freelance translators and small agencies, client document translation is the bread and butter — and the place where AI tools have been most disruptive. Clients increasingly expect lower prices because "AI can translate it". The translators winning in this environment aren’t the ones who refuse AI; they’re the ones who use it to deliver more work, faster, with better consistency, while keeping the professional control that clients pay for. This workflow is the playbook: per-client glossary, per-client styleguide, sentence-level review, Smart Proofread before delivery. The 50-page job that used to be three days becomes a morning — without sacrificing the quality control that justifies your rate.
How does a freelance translator ship a deliverable?
For translators and small agencies handling recurring clients with specific terminology, style preferences, and deadline pressure. The standard recipe — refined from GTM § 9 and tuned with translators delivering on tight timelines.
Upload the client document
DOCX, PDF, or Markdown. Or paste raw text. The file parses into editable blocks; formatting is preserved end-to-end.
Apply the client’s glossary and styleguide
If you’ve worked with the client before, the glossary and styleguide are saved. Pick the right ones, toggle them on. New client? Build the glossary in a few minutes from a previous deliverable.
Translate, then review at the sentence level
Walk through the sentences where the client cares most — headings, key phrases, anything with terminology. Pick alternatives where the default doesn’t fit.
Run Smart Proofread
Catches terminology drift, missed glossary terms, register slips. Approve fixes in bulk or sentence by sentence.
Export DOCX, send to client
DOCX out, formatting intact, ready for delivery. Optionally include a bilingual side-by-side export for the client’s review file.
Why does this change the freelance math?
Glossary per client
Build it once, reuse it on every project for that client. Their preferred renderings stay consistent across deliverables and across years.
Styleguide per client
Each client has a tone. Save it. Apply it. Hand over deliverables that read like the same translator did them all.
QA before delivery
The pass you don’t always have time for. Smart Proofread catches the drift the eye misses after twenty pages.
4× cheaper model, matched
Give a model the decisions behind past translations, not just their final wording, and it stops guessing. With enough of that grounding, a model costing a quarter as much matched a premium one on our own benchmarks.
The memory bet— Don’t take our word for it —
The editor, in miniature
A working slice of the real thing — Literess, glossary, styleguide, workflows, and the translation memory are all live. Click around.
Here to help you translate
A key turned in the lock and the door swung open.
У замку повернувся ключ, і двері розчахнулися.
The knock came just before midnight.
Стукіт пролунав перед самою північчю.
FAQ
- Yes — tables stay tables, footnotes stay footnotes, headings stay headings. Test on a representative document and you’ll see.
- Yes — import it as TMX or XLIFF and it’s searchable in the Memory panel immediately, and fed to the AI as reference during translation. (You can also paste a TM in as a CSV glossary if you only want term-level pinning.)
- It overlaps with CAT tools on glossary, TM, and review. It’s lighter and AI-native; some translators replace memoQ/Trados entirely, others use Transept for first-draft + QA and a CAT for final segmentation. Either workflow works.
- Your content isn’t used for model training — not by Transept, not by the providers. Documents stay private to your account by default. See the security page for the full data story.
- It depends on your workflow. Some translators replace their CAT tool entirely for AI-friendly content. Others use Transept for the AI first-draft + QA passes and a CAT tool for final TM/segmentation. Both work; the right setup depends on which surface dominates your client mix.
- Yes — import it as TMX or XLIFF and it’s searchable immediately, fed into the AI as reference during translation just like the memory you build inside Transept. (You can still paste a TM in as a CSV glossary if you only want term-level pinning.)
- Your call. Many translators position themselves as "AI-augmented language experts" — using AI for the first draft, applying professional judgment for the review. Others prefer to frame it as a productivity tool that happens to be in their workflow. There’s no required disclosure; ethical practice typically means being honest when asked.
- Your documents stay private to your account. Not used for model training. EU-hosted by default. For specific client requirements (DPA, no-third-party processing), see the security page or talk to us.
- Not natively yet. Most translators using Transept track time externally (Toggl, Harvest, Notion). Time tracking inside the app is on the roadmap.
Keep reading around this workflow
- FeatureA glossary the AI actually follows→Character names, product terms, branded phrases, client-specific vocabulary. Build a glossary once — manually, by upload, or seeded from a…
- FeatureA styleguide that steers every regeneration→Tone, register, rules, formatting conventions. Build a styleguide manually or have Transept generate one from a sample page of finished…
- FeatureSmart Proofread before you deliver→After twenty pages, the eye stops catching things. Smart Proofread re-reads the whole translated document against your glossary, your…
- FeatureTeam review, on the sentence→Inline threads on any sentence. Real-time presence so two reviewers don’t step on each other. An activity feed of who changed what.…
- CompareTransept vs DeepL on the long documents→DeepL is the default for fast, high-quality AI translation. Transept doesn’t claim to beat DeepL on the raw translation of a single…