Questions you might have

Credence Translations comes from the team behind Spiritual Translations, and was founded by Gabriel Rymberg. He worked as a professional translator for fifteen years and ran Q-Lingua, an ISO 17100-certified translation company (ISO 17100 is the international standard for translation services). He has also been a programmer for forty years and works as an AI engineer. Our process puts what he knows about writing and revising good translations into an AI translation system. For each book, a professional linguist who knows the subject and both languages writes a detailed brief, and the AI translates according to that brief. The AI then revises its own work, and the linguist corrects it where needed. (For the steps, see “Is it AI?” below.)

Most AI translation services now say a person edits the result. Few say who that person is, what they did, or how much of the book they saw. With us, a professional linguist who knows the subject writes the brief before the AI translates, revises the passages the AI marks as uncertain and a random selection of the rest, and signs an Assurance Report that says what was revised and what was changed. When a translation is questioned, the report is the answer.

It's a completely different thing. Ask a general AI tool to translate the same page three times and you'll get three different translations. It has no brief, no fixed terminology, no revision of its own work against the original, and no professional linguist. Our process has all four, and every book comes with a signed Assurance Report. You can't do this at home: it takes the brief, a system built to follow it and revise itself, and a linguist who knows the subject.

We expect the opposite. When a valuable service becomes much cheaper, people use much more of it; economists call this the Jevons paradox. Today most books are never translated, because translation costs more than the book is expected to earn. When the cost falls to a fraction, many more books can be translated, and each one needs a professional linguist who knows its subject. Our expectation is that linguists with subject expertise will have more work, not less.

No. Where your translators know the subject and both languages, they can be the linguists who revise our translations.

When anyone can produce a plausible translation in an afternoon, the plausible translation is worth very little. What becomes valuable is being able to show that this one is faithful: who revised it, against what brief, and what they changed. In the past year, AI-assisted translations in Europe have been pulled from sale or disputed, not because the AI was used, but because nobody could say who had done what to the text. A signed record answers that question before anyone asks it.

Partly. A book is translated in five steps:

1. Before translation begins, a professional linguist who knows the book's subject and both languages writes a detailed brief. The brief sets out the book's specific terminology, its names, the phrases that must stay as they are, the author's voice and tone, and the traps between the two languages.
2. AI translates the book according to the brief.
3. AI then revises the whole translation against the original and the brief, and marks every passage it can't confirm is right.
4. The linguist revises the marked passages against the original, together with a random selection of the rest, and corrects what needs correcting.
5. You receive the translated book with an Assurance Report, signed by the linguist, that shows what was revised and what was changed.

No. The linguist revises the passages that the AI marks as uncertain, and a random selection of the rest. The Assurance Report states how many passages the linguist revised and how many were changed. Revising only where it's needed is what lowers the cost and the time. If you want a linguist to revise the whole book as well, we can add that.

Far less time than a translation usually takes. What would take a translator months takes us weeks, and what would take weeks takes days. The one step that sets the pace is finding the right linguist for the book. Once they're in place, the first chapters come back within days and the whole book within weeks, depending on its length. We agree the date with you before we start.

Most of the cost of a translation is a person's time. In our process, AI translates the book and makes a first revision of all of it. The linguist's time goes where a person's judgement is needed: writing the brief before translation, and revising the passages the AI marks as uncertain.

The Assurance Report is signed by the linguist. It sets out the brief the linguist wrote before translation, how many passages the AI marked as uncertain, how many the linguist revised, including the random selection, and how many were changed. It also states that the linguist didn't revise every word. A publisher can share it with readers, rights buyers and online stores, some of which now ask for a statement on how AI was used.

We correct it and say so. Every delivery has a record. If an error is found after delivery, we correct the files, note the correction on the record, and tell the client.

Three, and they differ in how much of the book a linguist revises, which is most of the cost. AI-checked: the AI translates to the brief and revises its own work in several independent passes; no linguist revises the text, and the report says so. It's for samples, reading copies and deciding which books to translate. Assured, our standard: the linguist revises every passage the AI marks as uncertain, and a random selection of the rest, and signs the Assurance Report. Fully revised: the linguist also revises the whole book against the original. At every level, a professional linguist who knows the subject writes the brief before translation, and the report says exactly what was done. The price rises with the linguist's share.

We look for professional linguists qualified to translate the whole book on their own, the traditional way, who know its subject and both languages. Before working with us, each one sits a blind sample: a passage of a real book, revised under the conditions of the work. We score it against the original, read their reasons, and rank the candidates. The linguist placed on a book is paid by the hour, on a timer that becomes part of the record.

Non-fiction: history, biography, philosophy, psychology, business, academic and professional books, and the religious and spiritual books where we began. And other texts where a reader relies on the words: articles, commentaries, course material, websites and subtitles. Tell us what you have and in what format, and we'll say how we'd do it. We don't translate fiction or poetry.

Any pair of languages you need. For each book we place a professional linguist who knows the subject and both languages, and we don't start the translation, or commit to a date, until that linguist is in place. If AI doesn't yet translate well between two languages, we say so in our first conversation.

You send the book in Word or PDF. We deliver the translation in Word, with its headings, styles and footnotes, and, if you want it, as an EPUB 3 that passes EPUBCheck, the industry's validator, together with the translator's notes and the signed Assurance Report.

Yes: the title, subtitle, description and keywords, under the same brief, so the store listing says what the book says.

No. We translate non-fiction: history, biography, philosophy, psychology, business, academic and professional books, and religious and spiritual books. We don't translate fiction or poetry.

The rights holder, as today. The publisher commissions the translation of a book whose translation rights it holds, and owns the translation. We take no rights in the book or in the translation, and nothing is published without the rights holder's agreement.

You commission it as the rights holder, and nothing goes ahead without your author's agreement. If your contracts limit AI or foreign editions, we look at them with you first. Some books won't be possible, and we'll say so.

No. Your text is used only to translate your book and to produce its Assurance Report. It's never shared, and it never trains any AI model, ours or anyone else's.

Your text is used only to translate your book and to produce its Assurance Report. It's never shared, and it never trains any AI model, ours or anyone else's. It's processed by our AI providers under settings that exclude training, and stored with providers that hold it under their business terms. A data processing agreement is available on request.

No. We don't ask any partner to work only with us, and we work with other publishers and partners too. If you want an edition or a market to be yours alone for a time, we can agree that book by book.

It depends on the book and on what you need. We price by the book, by its length, not by the word, and a translation costs far less than the usual price. Partners who offer our translations to their own clients have their own rate. We quote per book.

No. Many partners already have a provider. We can sit beside it, for the books where a mistake costs most, or provide a signed Assurance Report on translations made elsewhere. You choose which books come to us.

Yes. You send us the book in Word or PDF, and the translation comes back in Word, and as an EPUB 3 if you want it, with its headings, styles and footnotes, and with its Assurance Report. Your clients can deal with you, not with us, if you prefer.

If you have the volume, we can build the method into your own process: your linguists or ours, working to our briefs and our review, with our report on every book; your files moving between your system and ours without email. We design it with you once there are enough books to justify it.

Yes, in two ways. As standard, a professional linguist who knows the subject revises the passages our AI marks as uncertain and a random selection of the rest against the original, and signs an Assurance Report on what they found. It tells you whether the translation can be trusted, and where it can't. If you want the whole translation revised against the original, the linguist does that too, and the price reflects it.

One email per book, or a list. We quote the price from the book's length and the level you choose. The date comes once the right linguist is in place: finding and testing them can take time, and we don't commit to a date before then. We start when you say go. One invoice per book, in euros or dollars, when the book is delivered. If an error is found after delivery, we correct it and note the correction on the record.

The pace is set by linguists, not by the AI. We place each linguist by the same blind sample. We'd rather tell you a true date than promise a volume: send us the list, and we'll say what we can take on, and when.

Yes, with your permission. If you have books that were already translated by people, we can create a model specialized in translating your material, trained on those translations and used only for your books. It translates in the voice and terminology your readers know. Often the translators who did that work become the linguists who revise the new translations.