How to Brief a Localization Vendor: A Project Template

Two companies send the same manual to the same localization vendor. One gets an accurate quote in a day and a smooth project. The other gets a vague estimate, three rounds of questions, a mid-project price revision, and a delivery that misses the launch date. The difference is almost never the vendor. It is the brief.

Localization vendors price and plan based on uncertainty. A vague brief forces them to either pad the quote or gamble — and when the gamble fails, the cost lands back on you as delays and rework. A good brief removes uncertainty, and you get the savings.

What a localization brief must contain

A complete brief fits on one or two pages and answers eight questions:

1. What is the content? Document type (manual, brochure, website, video, course), subject matter, and approximate volume — word count for text, minutes for video, pages for DTP.
2. What files do you have? This is the question vendors ask first and clients answer worst. “We have a PDF” is not an answer — is it an editable PDF or a scan? Do you have the source files (InDesign, Word, FrameMaker, PPT)? Source files routinely cut DTP costs by a third.
3. Which languages? Be specific about variants: Brazilian Portuguese or European? Latin American Spanish or Castilian? Simplified or Traditional Chinese?
4. What is it for? A regulatory submission, a sales brochure, and internal training have different quality bars and different workflows. Purpose determines process.
5. Who is the audience? Engineers, procurement managers, end consumers, regulators — tone and terminology choices follow the reader.
6. What reference materials exist? Previous translations, glossaries, style guides, brand terminology, competitor materials you like. Every reference asset reduces both cost and risk.
7. What is the real deadline? Not the aspirational one. If the trade show is fixed but the brochure could ship a week earlier in digital form, say so — sequencing options appear.
8. Who approves? Name the person who answers terminology questions and signs off on final files, and their availability. Projects stall on silent approvers more than on translation itself.

The brief template

Copy this structure into your next request for quote:

Briefing mistakes that cost you money

• Quoting from a PDF alone. If you send a flattened PDF for a document that will go to DTP, the vendor quotes extraction and reconstruction. Mention source files even if you cannot share them yet — the price difference is material.
• Hiding the deadline. Some buyers keep the real deadline secret, fearing rush pricing. The result is worse: the vendor plans capacity blind, and your “surprise” urgency becomes everyone’s emergency. Vendors charge less for planned fast work than for unplanned panic work.
• No glossary, but strong opinions. If you will reject translations over terminology, provide the terminology up front. “We’ll know it when we see it” is the most expensive sentence in localization.
• Briefing five vendors identically, then comparing only price. Briefs enable comparison — but compare scope: does the quote include DTP, linguistic QA, one revision round, terminology management? The cheapest line item often excludes the stages that determine whether the output is usable.

Why vendors should help you brief

A mature localization partner does not wait for a perfect brief — they ask the questions that build one. If a vendor quotes your project with zero questions about files, purpose, or audience, that is not efficiency. That is a vendor planning to figure it out mid-project, on your budget.

If you have a document, video, or course to localize and want a second pair of eyes on the brief before you send it out — or you want us to build it with you — talk to our team. We respond within one business day.