How to Report and Fix Bad Translations

To fix a bad translation, report it with specific examples rather than a general complaint, and know which of three situations you're in. A translation you commissioned, a published translation you found, or an official document rejected by an authority each has a different fix and a different set of rights, and vague feedback rarely produces a good revision in any of the three.

None of these situations are rare. A contract comes back with phrasing that doesn't sit right, a novel translation reads clunky in a way the original clearly wasn't, an app's localized menu makes no sense in your language, or a certified document gets bounced by the office you submitted it to. The fix looks different in each case, but the first move is the same: get specific before you say anything to anyone.

If you commissioned the translation

"This sounds off" is the least useful feedback a translator or agency can receive, because it gives them nothing concrete to act on. Instead, point to the actual sentence, quote it, and say what's wrong with it. "Paragraph 3 uses 'the Owner' but paragraph 1 says 'the Lessor' for the same party" is something an editor can fix in minutes flat. "It just doesn't read right" sends them hunting through the whole document guessing at what bothered you, which wastes everyone's time including yours. If you're not sure how to spot the problem in the first place, our checklist on how to tell if a translation is good quality covers the specific things worth pointing at: terminology drift, register mismatches, numbers and names that don't match the source document.

A professional agency owes you a free revision for genuine errors: mistranslations, dropped content, terminology inconsistency, factual mismatches with the source. That's not a courtesy, it's a standard part of any quality process. The kind of second-linguist review we describe in how professional translators verify accuracy exists precisely to catch what a first pass misses, and if something slipped through anyway, fixing it is on the agency, not on you.

Preference changes sit in a different category entirely. If you want a translation redone in a more formal register, or you've changed your mind about how a term should be rendered even though the original choice was accurate, that's a stylistic revision rather than an error correction, and it's reasonable for an agency to bill for it separately or discuss it upfront as added scope. Knowing which category your request falls into before you ask keeps the conversation productive instead of turning it adversarial.

If it's a published translation you found

A clunky line in a translated novel, a nonsensical string in an app's localized interface, or a mistranslated label on a product page needs a different approach, because you're not the client here. You're a reader who happened to notice something.

For books, most publishers run an errata or reader-feedback channel, sometimes tucked away on the copyright page or buried in the publisher's website contact form. A polite, specific report, something like "page 214, the phrase X doesn't match the meaning of the original, it should be closer to Y," is far more likely to get logged and actually corrected in a future printing than a general complaint about the translation's quality overall. Translators and editors do read these reports, and corrections in later editions happen more often than most readers assume.

For apps and software, use the in-app feedback mechanism or the app-store review channel, and be specific about the screen, the exact string, and what it currently says versus what it should say instead. Localization teams triage language bugs the same way engineers triage functional bugs: a report with the exact broken string attached gets fixed, while "the translation is bad" gets deprioritized because there's simply nothing concrete to act on. The pattern repeats everywhere you look: specificity is what turns a complaint into an actual fix.

If an official document was rejected

This scenario has the least wiggle room of the three. A certified or sworn translation that a court, embassy, university, or government office rejects usually needs formal re-certification, not just a quiet text edit behind the scenes. The corrected translation has to go through the same formal process as the original, with the translator's statement, seal, and signature reissued against the fixed text. If the original was handled by an agency, this correction should be free when the rejection stems from a genuine translation error (wrong formatting, a name that doesn't match the passport, content missing from the source). If the rejection happened because requirements changed, or because you actually need a different document type altogether, that's new work rather than a correction.

Before resubmitting anything, get the rejection reason in writing from the authority if you possibly can. "Incomplete," "names don't match the source ID," and "wrong certifying body" are three completely different fixes, and a translator working blind off a vague rejection notice will often guess wrong and burn another round trip. If you need help working through a rejected document, contact us with the rejection notice and the original file, and we'll tell you honestly whether it needs a quick correction or a fresh translation from scratch.

Setting realistic expectations

Not every complaint results in a free fix, and that's fair to both sides of the transaction. A genuine error is the provider's responsibility to correct, in full, at no extra charge. A preference you've changed your mind about, or a stylistic choice that was defensible even if it isn't what you'd have picked yourself, is a conversation about revision scope rather than a failure to be reported. Knowing which one you're actually dealing with, and bringing specific examples instead of a general impression, is what gets translations fixed quickly. That's true emailing an agency, writing to a publisher, or corresponding with a government office on the other end.

One more thing worth saying plainly: reporting a problem is not the same as demanding a refund, and leading with a refund demand tends to make people defensive instead of cooperative. Most agencies, publishers, and even government offices respond well to a report that reads as "here's what's wrong and here's the evidence," because it lets them verify the issue quickly and fix it without a dispute. Save the refund conversation, if you need to have one at all, for after the correction has been offered and it still isn't good enough. In our own project queue, the fastest resolutions are always the ones where the client sent a marked-up copy of the document with the specific lines flagged rather than a paragraph describing the general feeling that something was off.