Plenty of translation relationships run without a service level agreement, and run well — until one project is late at the worst possible moment. The document is cheap to produce and expensive to be without.
Component one: response times
Draw a hard line between response time and delivery time. A response time is a promise that a human has read and acknowledged your request. It is not a promise that the work is finished.
| Event | A reasonable figure | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Acknowledgement of a request | 4 working hours | State time zone and office hours |
| Quotation for a standard set | 1 working day | Define what counts as standard |
| Quotation for a large project | 2 working days | State the volume threshold |
| Response to a quality complaint | 1 working day | Response, not resolution |
| Escalation to the account owner | 1 working day | Name and contact stated |
Component two: delivery deadlines
Deadlines should be expressed as a function of volume, not a single number. A common formulation is that the deadline runs from quotation approval rather than from document receipt, because there is a scope analysis stage in between that takes time.
Include treatment of public holidays and weekends, so "three days" is not read differently by each side.
Component three: revision terms
This is the clause that generates most disputes, because "revision" covers two very different things: correcting the vendor's errors, and changing your own requirements. Separate them in writing.
Error correction
Typos, wrong figures, terminology departing from the approved glossary, missing pages. No charge, with a stated correction deadline.
Requirement change
Source revised, register changed, documents added. Billed as new work, with an obligation on the vendor to notify the estimate before proceeding.
Component four: escalation path
Name people, not job titles. "The project manager" cannot be reached at four in the afternoon when the document must ship tomorrow morning. A good agreement names two levels: the day-to-day owner and their superior, with numbers that are genuinely live.
Component five: consequences
For translation work, late-delivery penalties are often less useful than mechanisms that actually repair the situation. What works better:
- An obligation to warn of a delay risk a stated number of hours before the deadline, not after it has passed.
- Your right to move the remaining work to another supplier at the vendor's cost once a delay passes a defined threshold.
- A price reduction for late work, at a rate agreed in advance.
- A joint review after each incident, with written corrective actions.
One clause that is usually forgotten
Require the vendor to hand over all working assets — including the glossary and translation memory built during the relationship — if the contract ends. Without it, changing supplier means losing every bit of terminology consistency built up over years.
See our standard SLA