Renewables & environment

Energy & environment
translated for every reader

A wind or solar project writes for a permitting authority, for its neighbours, for its lenders and for the crews who will maintain it — often in the same week. We translate all four, in four registers, off one glossary.

  • Impact assessments and permit files
  • Grid connection and tender packs
  • Operation and maintenance manuals
  • Community and stakeholder material
  • One term list across the whole project
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Your documents

    Four readers, one set of terms

    A renewable project produces, in the same week, documents for people who have nothing in common except the project. The permitting authority reads for form: the right file, in the right language, with the annexes it expects, and it will send the whole thing back over any of the three. Landowners and neighbours read to find out what is going up beside them, and they read closely. Investors and lenders read for risk, and read fast. The maintenance crews read the manual with gloves on, at the top of a tower or inside a substation.

    Four registers, then. The leaflet that lands in a letterbox cannot be written like the technical annex, and the annex cannot be written like the leaflet. What has to be identical across all four is the terminology. If a component, a connection point or a habitat is called one thing in the application and another in the annex behind it, somebody asks which one you meant — and that question gets asked on the record, at the worst possible moment.

    So the term list is settled before the first document goes out, and everything after it draws from the same list: the application, the annexes, the tender pack, the land agreements, the leaflet, the manual that stays in the substation. It lives in a termbase and a translation memory we maintain for the project, so version three of a document costs the difference from version two, and a term agreed in year one is still the term in year six.

    Happy to be of service,

    Founder

    Documents we translate

    From a two-page grid application to a consent file with every specialist annex attached. If yours is not listed, send it anyway.

    Four steps to your translation

    1. 1

      Send us the file

      The whole consent file, a single annex, or the manual. Tell us the market it goes to and who reads it — the register follows from that.

    2. 2

      Receive your quote

      A fixed price and a delivery date, confirmed before you commit, with repetition and anything already translated for the project discounted.

    3. 3

      Approve the quote and the term list

      Say yes and we start. We send the terminology we propose; your engineers correct it once, and from then on it is fixed for every document in the project.

    4. 4

      Receive your translation

      In your source format, revised by a second translator, with figures, units, coordinates and site names checked twice.

    What holds a project file together

    • One glossary, four registers

      The application, the technical annex, the investor summary and the leaflet are written for different people and should not sound alike. The words for the things in them do not change.

    • Filed in the language it is read in

      Authorities expect filings in the language of the market. We ask what the receiving office wants, and in what form, and confirm it before you commit to anything.

    • Material a neighbour can read

      Consultation notices, leaflets and hearing material in plain language — using the same terms as the technical file, so nobody can argue the two describe different projects.

    • Terminology that stays with the project

      Your term list and past translations are kept on file, so the manual written in year six matches the permit filed in year one, and text you have paid for is not charged twice.

    Frequently asked questions

    Tap any question to see the answer!
    Can you translate a full impact assessment, annexes and all?
    Yes, and that is usually how it arrives — a main report plus a stack of specialist annexes, tables and figures. We quote the whole file at once so the terminology is settled before anyone starts, rather than annex by annex in different hands.
    Does the translation have to be certified for a permit filing?
    It depends on what the receiving authority asks for, and they do not all ask for the same thing. Some accept a professional translation of the file, some want a sworn or certified one, some want it only for particular documents. Send us the wording of their request and we will tell you which form you actually need — before you pay for more certification than the file requires.
    Can you keep the same terms across the application and the technical annexes?
    Yes, and it is the main reason to give the whole project to one supplier. We agree a term list with your engineers, keep it in a termbase, and every document after that draws from it — including the ones written a year later by someone else.
    The community material and the technical file read nothing alike. Is that a problem?
    No, that is the job. A leaflet for neighbours and an annex for a regulator are written for different readers and should not sound the same. What must not differ is what things are called.
    Do you translate operation and maintenance manuals too?
    Yes, and we would rather do them off the same term list as the consent file. A component that changes name between the permit and the manual the technicians actually use is a problem waiting for an inspection.
    Our consultants wrote the report in English but the authority reads another language. Which direction do you work in?
    Both, and often both on the same project: the file into the language of the market for the authority, summaries back into English for the lenders. Tell us the markets and we will set the direction of each document in the quote.
    How confidential is this? Some of it is not public yet.
    Sites, yields and lease terms before consent are exactly the things that should not circulate. Documents are seen only by the team working on your job, and we sign an NDA on request — yours or ours.
    What does it cost?
    It depends on volume, language pair and how much of the file we have translated for you before, because repetition is discounted rather than charged twice. Send us the documents and you will have a fixed price and a deadline to approve, with no obligation.