Agency’s Overview

Be Translated is a service that specializes in a variety of services done in a few dozen languages, however, the main focus is on the European sector. Company presents its entirely remote basis of work as a benefit for its customers as it allows making prices lower. For determining the truth behind this statement, we ordered technical translation, which is claimed to be one of the main areas of specialization, as well as searched for reviews left by other customers.

Available Pricing

Our cooperation began with the necessity to fill in the quote form. We were surprised seeing that Be Translated is intended to work for companies while individuals will not even receive an answer for their request. While we appreciated explicit warning, such a focus makes this translation company useless for many individual customers.

The quote we received was far from cheap as we expected based on the company’s peculiarities. Rates are average for market and similar to ones charged by the best translation agencies from our list. We did not see how remote basis of work contributed to more affordable pricing.

Translation Speed

Translation was completed during longer time than we expected. Our review of Be Translated customers’ feedback revealed that this happens more often than one would want it to be. It is not clear whether not adhering to requested time frame is related to online working mode or other aspects, but turnaround time is far from perfect, even though we did not order additional proofreading service by another expert.

Observed Accuracy

With the purpose of testing translation services’ effectiveness, we ordered adaptation of technical documents using language pair from one of the Scandinavian and Eastern European languages. We were disappointed with quality of delivered product as multiple factual and stylistic mistakes were found by our fellow professional. It appears that hired translators do not have sufficient qualifications and knowledge of both target and source languages that would allow them to represent contextual peculiarities properly. Using machine translation was also quite evident even though post-editing has been completed. We expected only human expert’s work as the document we provided for translation was very complicated and required proper background and context knowledge.

Satisfaction Rate

Our review included other people’s thoughts and feedback. It was harder to gather relevant information since this agency does not cooperate with individuals, but we managed to do that. Unfortunately, majority reported mediocre translators’ work quality. Limited services also contributed to an overall low satisfaction rate since this company does not provide software localization services on the appropriate level, while this sphere is of immense importance nowadays.

Certified Services’ Use Evidence

BeTranslated review did not reveal any evidence of agency and its employees’ ISO certification. We consider it is a major drawback in quality ensuring and reputation developing. Adherence to standards as well as high benchmarks of the ISO 17100 Quality Standard should be explicitly introduced and acknowledged. These standards must be followed given that business and financial industries, which are primary agency’s focus, require precision and expertise and the agency works with companies and entrepreneurs only. It is not clear whether independent bilingual editing along with proofreading, as suggested by ISO certification, is provided as one of the work stages. 

Final Decision

We cannot recommend Be Translated service to our readers due to overpriced service that provides average or below average quality. Agency’s reluctance to work with individuals is a limitation that is not appropriate for many customers. Given low work quality and accuracy, longer delivery timeframe, ISO-certified services’ absence, as well as limited options, we would suggest refraining from using this agency, considering one of the other agencies from our list of top services instead.