Construction and Energy

The second feature of the sector is that volumes come in waves. During the tender period, thousands of pages are translated in a matter of weeks; then, for months on end, nothing is left but correspondence traffic. A supplier’s ability to absorb that swing can matter more than its average quality.

Documents across the life of a project

The level of approval required for qualification and corporate documents used in official procedures is a separate matter; we cover it in our document guide, and the certification regimes of destination countries in our country guide.

Terminology risk: the language of the site is not the language of the specification

What makes this sector distinctive is that the same concept appears in three separate registers. The specification uses the official term, the design report the engineering term, and on site the settled word the trades themselves use. If the translation collapses all three into one term, the text will not be understood on site; if it uses a different term in each, consistency within the file breaks down.

The right approach is to hold a context tag in the termbase: for each concept, which rendering is used in which type of document is settled in advance. The second area of risk is units of measurement and references to standards. The number of a standard is not translated but carried across; a tolerance value is not rounded.

The third area is the risk allocation provisions in contract texts. Any drift in the clauses on delay, force majeure, interim payment and extension of time feeds straight through to the project budget. These clauses should be treated as legal text and put through a separate check.

Confidentiality and compliance

Until the moment of opening, tender files carry commercially sensitive information: unit prices, supplier lists, the assumptions behind the programme. A leak of that information means not only commercial damage but a possible problem for the validity of the tender process itself. It is established practice for the contract with the translation supplier to carry a separate confidentiality clause covering tender information.

The second compliance heading is health and safety documentation. On multinational sites, having safety procedures available in a language the worker understands is more than a documentary requirement; it is a practical necessity. The measure in these texts is not terminological accuracy but whether the instruction is understood well enough to be followed, so short sentences and explanation supported by images are preferred.

The third heading is documents to be submitted to local authorities on projects abroad. Permit applications, environmental reports and qualification files are translated into the official language of the destination country and are usually subject to that country’s approval regime. With these documents, translation stops being a technical task and becomes an official procedure.

Site correspondence: the least visible and most relentless load

Translation budgets on projects are usually planned around the tender and contract stages, yet over the life of a project it is site correspondence that generates the most pages. Daily reports, work orders, minutes, requests for revision and notices of delay are each short, but together they add up to a large volume.

What makes this correspondence difficult to translate is that the context is not in the text. The sentence “the same problem recurred in the third block” means nothing to someone who does not know the project. This is why, on site correspondence, a team that stays with the job produces better results than individually more accomplished translators.

The second difficulty is speed. A notice of delay or a request for revision is a document capable of producing contractual consequences, and it will not wait. It is therefore established practice for project frameworks to set a separate, short delivery commitment for site correspondence.

Managing language on consortium and multi-party projects

Large infrastructure and energy projects are rarely delivered by a single company. The employer, the main contractor, the subcontractors, the supervising firm and the financing institution may all work in different languages. In a structure of that kind, the standard solution is to designate a “working language” for the project and conduct all official correspondence in it.

Even with a working language in place, though, practice on the ground is different: the worker works in their own language and the local authority writes in its own. On multi-party projects, translation is therefore set up in two layers: the official layer looks to the working language, the operational layer to the language of the site.

What binds the two layers together is a shared termbase. Naming the same structural element one way in official correspondence and another in a site instruction creates an ambiguity that can turn into a dispute at the acceptance stage.

Projects with a financing institution involved carry one further layer: the lender asks for documents at regular intervals in its own reporting language, and the translation of those documents is tied to the project’s payment schedule. A report translated late can affect cash flow directly. The reporting calendar should therefore be written into the translation plan at the start of the project.

Finally, the archive load that appears once a project ends should not be underestimated. Handover files, operating manuals and acceptance certificates are not simply delivered; they are used for as long as the plant is in service. Having them translated with consistent terminology and in a searchable form saves time directly on maintenance and modification work years later.

Ways of working

In construction and energy, neither a purely project-based model nor a pure framework is enough on its own. What works is a combination of the two: a framework agreement running for the length of the project, with a capacity commitment defined in advance for intensive stages such as the tender. That way nobody goes looking for capacity in tender week.

The second thing that matters on long projects is continuity: the same team staying with the project means the termbase stays alive and the context of site correspondence is not lost. To put an arrangement in place at project scale you can use the quote form, and you can look at the volume bands on the pricing page.

The information here is a guide; the current practice of the institution concerned is what governs. We recommend checking the latest position with the authority that will handle your matter.