Validation (also termed 3rd party validation or in-country review) describes a process that ensures translations are not only linguistically suitable for the relevant target country, but are also appropriate in terms of their content and idiom.
This can also involve a review of the terminology used to check for comprehensibility and currentness.

Validation can be performed following a translation process as a supplementary service or as a stand-alone service.

The validator is a native speaker of the target language and has many years’ experience in the industry relevant to the project in question.
For the area of medicine, for example, a validation project might be assigned to a doctor, in the field of law, the task may be assigned to a lawyer.

Alternatively, validations are often conducted in one of the customer’s branch locations. We also support our customers in carrying out this kind of project. Once the members of staff in the target markets have added their comments to the documents, a linguist checks that the changes are correct and that they correspond to the source text.

Finally, the contents are approved both for the current project and for future projects. Through this approval process, companies meet their obligation to provide proof that a text has been reviewed by a second qualified person.

Where possible, the changes are entered into the customer’s translation memory so that the same adjustments do not have to be made in future projects. Once the project is complete, we return the final versions of the documents to the customer.

Are you interested in validation for your projects? Then contact us by telephone on +49 (0) 221 92 59 86 0 or email at

Standard workflow

  • The project manager receives the documents to be validated and forwards them, together with the work instructions, to the validator selected in advance.
  • The validator checks the project and adds their comments. They then send the text back to the project manager.
  • The project manager forwards the documents to a linguist who checks the comments for linguistic accuracy and then incorporates them into the document and into the translation memory.
  • When the project is complete, the project manager sends the final documents to the customer.


  • Will be the validation be conducted in one of your branch locations or by a validator commissioned by tsd?
  • Are there work instructions, terminology guidelines or style guides which the validator should use as a guide?
  • How should changes to terminology be handled?
  • How can adjustments to the target text be incorporated into the translation memory and are the changes suitable for such an update?

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