Urgent Translation:
When It Makes Sense and How It Works

Urgent requests are part of our daily work. A closing postponed at the last moment, a document held up in customs, a tender with an imminent deadline: there are situations where a translation must be ready in very little time — and there is no alternative.

But urgent translation is not always the right choice, and not all providers handle it in the same way.

When urgent translation is the right choice

Urgent handling is justified when:

• The deadline of the receiving body is fixed and cannot be extended (court hearing, bureaucratic deadline, contractual closing)
• The document arrived late from a third party (law firm, partner, supplier) and there was no margin for planning
• An unforeseen documentary need emerges at an advanced stage of a transaction

In these cases, the urgency surcharge is part of the cost of the overall transaction — not a discretionary extra.

When planning ahead is the better option

If the document is already available and the deadline is a week or more away, there is no objective reason to request an urgent translation. Planning ahead allows you to assign the document to the most appropriate translator for the specialisation required, to properly manage the dual-review process, and to control costs.

In many cases, urgent requests are the result of suboptimal document management rather than genuine necessity.

How we handle urgent assignments

For urgent assignments we activate a dedicated process: immediate selection of the available translator with the required specialisation, extended or overnight working sessions if necessary, review concurrent with translation rather than sequential, and final verification before delivery.

The dual-review process is adapted but not eliminated: even on an urgent translation, we deliver a verified document.

Our advice

If you have documents you know in advance will need to be translated, send them to us as soon as they are available. We manage assignments in parallel and are able to schedule work so as to guarantee fast turnarounds even without resorting to the urgent rate.

If the urgency is genuine, contact us now: we assess feasibility in a matter of minutes.