The international standard for translation services. Paired with the QMS that wraps it.
ISO 17100:2015 is the international standard for translation services — issued by the International Organization for Standardization in May 2015, replacing the European EN 15038:2006. It mandates a qualified translator, an independent qualified reviser as the mandatory second-eyes stage, defined translator competences, traceability, and project-management discipline. ISO 9001:2015 is the general quality-management standard that wraps it — providing the QMS framework, internal-audit discipline, and continuous-improvement mechanism. Together, the two standards are the process backbone of every Othello engagement. Single engagement letter · NDA from first email · audit-trail retained Bangkok-side.
- 17100 §3.1.4Qualified translator · 4 routes
- 17100 §3.1.5Qualified reviser · independent
- 17100 §5.3Revision · mandatory stage
- 17100 §5.4Review · proofreading · optional
- 9001 §6Risk-based · planning
- 9001 §9Internal audits · review
- 9001 §10Continuous improvement
The standard, substantively. Six pillars that turn process discipline into evidence.
ISO 17100:2015 is not a methodology — it is a set of binding requirements on the translation service provider. The six pillars below are what the standard requires, not what it suggests. Every Othello engagement runs against them, with documented evidence retained Bangkok-side under one engagement letter.
A qualified translator. Four routes only.
Section 3.1.4 defines four routes by which a translator qualifies for ISO 17100 work — a recognised degree in translation, a recognised degree in any other field plus two years of full-time professional translation experience, five years of full-time professional translation experience, or a certificate from a government body. No fifth route. The translator either qualifies or does not. Othello assigns only §3.1.4-qualifying translators to ISO 17100 engagements.
An independent qualified reviser. The four-eyes principle.
The standard’s most distinctive requirement. A second linguist — independent of the translator and equally qualified under §3.1.4 — must revise the target text against the source. Self-revision does not satisfy §5.3. The reviser checks accuracy, register, terminology, and intra-text consistency line by line. The four-eyes principle is the single feature that most distinguishes ISO 17100 from cheaper “review after delivery” workflows.
Defined translator competences. Five named domains.
Section 3.1.3 enumerates five competences a translator must demonstrate — translation competence, linguistic and textual competence in source and target, research-and-information competence, cultural competence, and technical-and-domain competence. Each competence is independently assessed at bench onboarding and re-evidenced for each domain (legal · capital markets · ESG · medical) the translator is assigned to. The competence list is the bench-staffing rubric.
Resource and process management. Documented.
The standard requires the firm to document its resources, project-management approach, and technical infrastructure — human resources, technological resources (CAT tools, translation memory, terminology databases, QA tooling), project assignment, and quality assurance. The documentation is auditable; a certification body verifies it on initial cert and at periodic surveillance audits. Othello’s documentation is available under NDA at procurement.
Pre-production · production · post-production. Three documented phases.
Every translation project moves through three documented phases. Pre-production: enquiry, feasibility, quote, agreement, project preparation, source-text analysis, style sheet. Production: translation (§5.3.1), check (§5.3.2 — translator self-check), revision (§5.3.3 — mandatory independent), review (§5.3.4 — optional domain review), proofreading (§5.3.5 — optional), final verification (§5.3.6). Post-production: delivery, feedback, archiving.
Client-supplier relationship. Specifications are binding.
The standard binds the firm to the project specifications agreed with the client — purpose, audience, register, target locale, terminology, style, format, deadline, deliverable form, confidentiality. Specifications are recorded before work starts, the translator and reviser work to them, and the delivered translation is verifiable against them. Specifications are not preferences; they are the contract.
★ CERTIFICATION VS. CONFORMANCE · ISO 17100 distinguishes “certified to the standard” — verified by an accredited third-party certification body — from “in conformance with the standard” — operated to its requirements without third-party verification. Both phrases mean different things commercially; Othello will name precisely which posture applies to a given engagement at scoping. Certificate copies and the firm’s certification body identifier are available under mutual NDA at procurement stage.
Four routes to a qualified translator. No fifth route.
Section 3.1.4 of ISO 17100:2015 enumerates the only four routes by which a translator qualifies to work on ISO 17100 engagements. Othello documents the qualifying route for every named bench translator at onboarding and re-evidences it for each domain assignment. If a vendor cannot tell you which §3.1.4 route their translator qualifies under, the engagement is not ISO 17100.
Recognised translation degree
A recognised degree in translation (or equivalent) issued by a recognised institution of higher education. The flagship route — the translator’s primary qualification was professional preparation for translation as a discipline. No additional experience years required by the standard for this route alone, though Othello applies its own bench-experience floor on top.
Other degree + 2 yrs experience
A recognised degree in any other field, plus two years of full-time professional translation experience. The most common bench profile — domain expertise plus accumulated translation hours. Othello requires the translation experience to be in the same domain family the translator will be assigned to (legal, capital markets, ESG, medical, technical).
5 yrs experience · no degree
Five years of full-time professional translation experience as the sole basis. The standard recognises that long-form practice is itself a qualification. Used sparingly at Othello — the bench prefers Route 01 or 02 — but the route is open to senior in-domain translators who entered the profession before formal degree programmes existed.
Certificate of competence · government body
A certificate of competence in translation awarded by an appropriate government body. The ATA Certified Translator designation, the UK Chartered Linguist, the Japan Translation Federation Translator credential, and equivalent government-or-quasi-governmental certifications. The route that combines ISO 17100 process discipline with country-specific institutional recognition.
★ THAI GAP — DOCUMENTED, NOT CONCEALED · Thai is not on ATA’s certification list, so Route 04 is not available for Thai-English pairs. For Othello’s Thai bench, qualification runs via Routes 01–03 (translation degree, other degree + 2 yrs, 5 yrs experience), supplemented by the documented USCIS §103.2(b)(3) alternative where US institutional acceptance is the destination. See /certifications/ata/ for the substantive Thai-gap detail. The ISO 17100 standard itself imposes no Thai-specific limitation.
ISO 9001 is the QMS. ISO 17100 is the production standard. Together they cover both.
ISO 17100 is a translation-services-specific standard; ISO 9001 is the general quality-management standard that wraps it. The pairing matters because procurement panels at SET-listed corporates, US Government contractors, and EU institutional buyers increasingly read “ISO 17100 + ISO 9001” as the gold-standard pairing — the production discipline plus the audit infrastructure.
Six controls ISO 9001 layers on top of ISO 17100 — what the QMS adds.
ISO 9001:2015 is organised around ten clauses, the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, and risk-based thinking. Below are the six controls that most directly bear on the firm’s day-to-day operation of ISO 17100 production — each documented in the QMS, each independently audited by the certification body at surveillance.
★ WHY PAIRED MATTERS · A vendor certified to ISO 9001 alone may have a strong QMS but no translation-specific production controls — the bench could outsource to anyone. A vendor certified to ISO 17100 alone has the production controls but no auditable QMS wrapper. The pairing is what procurement panels at FAR-grade and equivalent buyers actually require.
Six stages. Two mandatory. Every stage with a documented gate.
The standard’s three documented phases — pre-production · production · post-production — break out into the six stages below as Othello operates them. Stages 03 and 04 are the only mandatory production stages the standard requires; the others are mandatory in Othello’s workflow because the FAR-grade founding standard set the floor higher than ISO 17100 alone.
From enquiry to retention. One engagement letter end to end.
How a document moves from your inbox to the engagement archive — under ISO 17100 process discipline, ISO 9001 QMS controls, and the firm’s standing NDA. Stage 03 (Translation) and Stage 04 (Revision) are the two stages ISO 17100 §5.3 makes mandatory; Stage 05 (Review / Proofreading) is mandatory at Othello for certified deliverables. See Our Process for the broader bench discipline.
★ FOUR EYES IS THE STANDARD · If a translation vendor’s price seems low against an ISO 17100 quote, the most common reason is that Stage 04 (independent revision) has been quietly dropped. The “save” is roughly 30–40% of the cost — and the loss is the second-eyes scrutiny ISO 17100 makes binding. Othello will not silently drop §5.3.3; if the engagement budget cannot carry independent revision, the engagement is scoped down rather than the revision skipped. See How We Quote.
The process backbone for every Othello engagement.
ISO 17100 + 9001 is not a separate practice — it is the process backbone behind ATA-certified work, ESG-disclosure translation, certified vital-records translation, and every interpretation engagement. One engagement letter, one NDA, one audit-trail, one credential register.
All 20 credentials · the full register
The certifications hub documents all twenty credentials — 5 firm-level (ISO 17100, ATA, ATC, GDPR, PDPA) plus 15 bench practitioner credentials across climate & carbon, ESG reporting, and EU cross-border disclosure. This page is the firm-level credential 01; the hub is where every credential is independently verifiable.
Open All 20 CredentialsTechnical Translation · the practice
The core translation practice that ISO 17100 + 9001 governs — bilingual Thai↔English technical translation across capital markets, legal, ESG disclosure, and sustainable finance. The process backbone applied in production, every engagement, every domain.
Open Technical TranslationOur Process · the six-stage bench discipline
The six-stage bench workflow mapped against ISO 17100 §5 — pre-production, production, post-production — operated under ISO 9001 QMS controls and FAR-grade audit-trail discipline. The full procedural detail behind every engagement letter.
Open Our ProcessProcurement questions answered up front.
Substantive answers to what counsel, in-house procurement, and audit teams routinely ask when reviewing Othello’s ISO 17100 + 9001 posture.
Q.01What exactly is ISO 17100:2015, and what does it certify?
ISO 17100:2015 is the international standard for translation services, issued by the International Organization for Standardization in May 2015 to replace the European EN 15038:2006. It specifies requirements for the core processes, resources, and other aspects necessary for the delivery of a quality translation service that meets applicable specifications. Critically, it certifies the firm’s process — not individual translations. A certified firm is one whose translation workflow has been audited against the standard’s requirements by an accredited third-party certification body and found compliant.
Q.02Why pair ISO 17100 with ISO 9001? Isn’t ISO 17100 enough?
ISO 17100 specifies translation-production requirements; ISO 9001 specifies general quality-management requirements. They cover different layers. ISO 17100 §5 governs the production floor — translator, reviser, project phases. ISO 9001 governs the QMS wrapper — risk-based planning, documented information, internal audits, management review, continuous improvement, supplier control. Procurement panels at SET-listed corporates, US Government contractors, and EU institutional buyers increasingly read the pair as the gold-standard combination — production discipline plus auditable QMS. Either standard alone leaves a documented gap the other fills.
Q.03What is the four-eyes principle and why does ISO 17100 make it mandatory?
The four-eyes principle is the requirement that a second qualified linguist, independent of the translator, must revise the target text against the source before delivery. Self-revision does not satisfy ISO 17100 §5.3.3. The standard makes it mandatory because the most consistent finding in translation-quality research is that translators cannot reliably catch their own register-, terminology-, and consistency-errors. The independent reviser is the single design feature that most distinguishes ISO 17100 from cheaper “review after delivery” workflows, and is what makes ISO 17100 deliverables admissible at institutional buyers who would otherwise commission re-translation.
Q.04How does a translator qualify under ISO 17100 §3.1.4?
The standard enumerates four routes, and only four. Route 01: a recognised degree in translation. Route 02: a recognised degree in any other field plus two years of full-time professional translation experience. Route 03: five years of full-time professional translation experience. Route 04: a certificate of competence in translation awarded by an appropriate government body (e.g. ATA Certified Translator in the US). Othello documents the qualifying route for every named bench translator at onboarding and re-evidences it for each domain the translator is assigned to. If a vendor cannot tell you which §3.1.4 route their translator qualifies under, the engagement is not ISO 17100.
Q.05Can ISO 17100 be applied to Thai-English work given no ATA certification exists for Thai?
Yes — ISO 17100 imposes no language-pair limitation. The Route 04 government-certification path is the one ATA-affected for Thai, but Routes 01, 02, and 03 (translation degree, other degree + 2 years, 5 years experience) cover Thai-English perfectly well. Othello’s Thai bench qualifies under Routes 01–03, and where the deliverable is bound for US institutional acceptance, the firm adds the documented USCIS §103.2(b)(3) signed certification on top — covering the Thai-specific gap left by ATA’s pair coverage. See /certifications/ata/ for the substantive Thai-gap detail.
Q.06What’s the difference between “certified to ISO 17100” and “in conformance with ISO 17100”?
“Certified” means a third-party accredited certification body has audited the firm against the standard and issued a certificate; “in conformance” means the firm operates to the standard’s requirements without third-party verification. Commercially they read very differently — procurement panels at FAR-grade and EU-institutional buyers usually require certified status with a verifiable certificate number, while conformance is generally accepted for less regulated work. Othello names precisely which posture applies to a given engagement at scoping; certificate copies and the firm’s certification body identifier are available under mutual NDA at procurement.
Q.07What happens at a surveillance audit?
After initial certification, the certification body conducts surveillance audits at planned intervals — typically annually — and a full recertification audit every three years. At surveillance, the auditor samples a set of recent engagements, traces them through the documented workflow, examines translator and reviser qualification records, reviews internal-audit reports and management-review minutes, checks the corrective-action log for closed-out non-conformances, and confirms continued conformity to the standard. Any major non-conformance can suspend or withdraw certification. The audit programme is what keeps the certification a live signal rather than a one-time achievement.
Q.08Does ISO 17100 allow CAT tools, machine translation, or AI?
CAT tools and translation memory: yes, freely. The standard treats them as technical resources to be documented under §4.3. Machine translation post-editing (MTPE) is governed by a separate ISO standard — ISO 18587:2017 — which is the standard for MTPE workflows; ISO 17100 itself does not directly mandate MTPE process. Othello does not use consumer-LLM endpoints (ChatGPT, public Claude, Gemini) on client data because their data-handling terms are incompatible with the firm’s GDPR Article 28 processor undertakings and PDPA Section 40 obligations. See /compliance/ for the substantive data-protection posture.
Q.09How does ISO 17100 + 9001 affect Othello’s quote?
It sets the floor. An ISO 17100 quote includes named §3.1.4-qualifying translator, named independent §3.1.5-qualifying reviser, documented terminology and style preparation, and the full audit-trail consolidation — not a reduced “translation only” line item. If a competitor’s quote is materially lower for ostensibly the same scope, the most common reason is that Stage 04 (independent revision) has been quietly dropped — saving roughly 30–40% of cost but removing the second-eyes scrutiny the standard makes binding. Othello will not silently drop §5.3.3; if budget cannot carry it, scope is reduced rather than revision skipped. See How We Quote.
Q.10How does ISO 17100 + 9001 fit Othello’s broader engagement framework?
It is the process backbone for every engagement Othello delivers — ATA-certified work, ESG disclosure translation, certified vital records, technical translation across capital markets and legal and ESG and sustainable finance, and interpretation. Founded 2020 on US Government bilingual contracts under FAR-grade contractor verification, the firm’s process floor was set higher than ISO 17100 alone — but ISO 17100 + 9001 is the externally-auditable scaffolding that documents how the floor is maintained engagement after engagement. A client engaging Othello gets one engagement letter, one NDA from first email, one audit-trail Bangkok-side, and the full procedural discipline behind it. Email [email protected] or call +66 02-859-2145.
Two ISO standards. One process backbone.
ISO 17100:2015 for the translation production discipline; ISO 9001:2015 for the QMS overlay that wraps it. Bench-named at scoping. Four-eyes mandatory. Audit-trail retained Bangkok-side. Certificate copies and the firm’s certification body identifier available under mutual NDA at procurement. ≤1 BH acknowledgement · written quote within 1 BD · NDA from first email.
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