If  the translation quotation you just received sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

The rates for professional human translators are fairly consistent across the industry so someone coming in at a fraction of another firms estimate should raise red flags. The best way to discover the validity of an estimate and the scope of the work being performed is to obtain at least three quotations from respected firms who will in writing confirm the following:

-All translation efforts are handled by humans
-All translations are performed by professional full time linguists with experience in your field
-All translations will be reviewed by a qualified independent translator

If these three conditions are not met chances are the firm could be using machine translation technology instead of humans. Machine translation has its place but not in comparison to human translation.