What ISO 17100 actually covers

ISO 17100 is a translation-services standard. It specifies requirements for the core processes, the resources and the qualifications behind a translation service: translator competence, reviser competence, the revision step itself, and the handling of project specifications.

The part buyers most often miss is the revision requirement. Under ISO 17100 a second qualified person revises the translation, and that reviser is not the translator. For most procurement purposes that single requirement is the substance of the standard. It is the difference between one person's output and a two-person process.

It covers translation services. It says nothing about interpreting, nothing about subtitling workflows, and nothing about AI training-data annotation. A vendor citing it beside those services is not lying, but the standard does not reach them.

What ISO 9001 covers, which is a different thing entirely

ISO 9001 is a quality management system standard. It is sector-neutral: a bakery, a bearings manufacturer and a translation company can all hold it. It addresses whether the organisation runs a documented, audited management system with defined processes, corrective action and continual improvement.

It does not address whether translations are good. It addresses whether the company has a system for managing quality and is audited against it. That is genuinely useful, because it is evidence of an organisation that can be held to a process. It is an organisational claim, not a linguistic one.

Reading ISO 9001 as a translation-quality guarantee is the most common misreading in vendor evaluation, and vendor marketing rarely corrects it.

The question neither standard answers

Neither one tells you whether a vendor can deliver your language pairs, on your dates, at the review depth your content needs.

A standard describes a system. Your project is an instance. ISO 17100 tells you a revision step exists in the process. It does not tell you whether a qualified reviser exists for Sylheti in the week of your launch. That is a roster question, and it is answered pair by pair or not at all.

This is why a standards list belongs in a supplier file rather than at the centre of a shortlist decision. It is a floor rather than a differentiator: it filters out vendors with no documented process, and among those that remain it separates almost nobody.

Read the scope, not the logo

The useful question about any standard on a vendor page is not whether they hold it. It is what it covers.

A certification covers named services, and the boundary is where the information is. If a vendor lists ISO 17100 on a page selling interpreting or AI-data work, the standard is not reaching most of what is being sold, and that gap should be filled by something else: a described review process, a named QA model, evidence from comparable work.

MoniSa states on its trust centre that ISO 17100 covers translation services in the same sentence as the claim, because the alternative is letting a reader assume it reaches the AI-data work. It does not, and a buyer who discovers that later has been told something untrue by omission.

Where this sits in the procurement cluster

Read this while the supplier file is being assembled; the others answer what comes after it.

what to establish during qualification

Ask about coverage rather than collecting logos.

  • Which services each standard covers, and which of your services fall outside that boundary
  • For ISO 17100, confirmation that the reviser is a different person from the translator
  • What governs the services the translation standard does not reach
  • How the review depth is set for your specific content type
  • What evidence exists for work comparable to yours, as distinct from the standard itself

how standards claims go wrong

None of these means a vendor is dishonest. Each means the claim needs a follow-up question before it reaches a supplier file.

  • ISO 17100 cited beside interpreting, subtitling or AI-data work with no scope note
  • ISO 9001 offered as evidence of translation quality rather than of a management system
  • A standards list presented as the answer to a capability question
  • No description of what governs the services outside the translation standard
  • A revision step described, but with no statement that the reviser is independent

what to send us

Send the compliance requirements rather than a request for logos, and the reply maps them to controls.

  • The standards your procurement process requires, and whether equivalents are accepted
  • The services in scope, so the translation-standard boundary can be addressed directly
  • Any data-handling requirements that need answering alongside the standards
  • The review depth your content needs, which is the part a standards list will not settle

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