Education Communications

Translated and accessible materials for school districts, colleges, universities and education publishers.

Almost every school notice asks a parent to do something: sign a form, come to a meeting, or respond to a decision about their child. If the parent can’t read it, the school still has to wait. Your staff also needs the translation back in time to send it, without chasing anyone or repeating the same instructions.

The Translation Company works with K-12 districts on enrollment packets, family handbooks, IEPs, classroom materials and accessible documents. We also work with colleges, universities, education publishers and online-learning providers. We have done this since 2005, and we manage our projects in the United States. It costs more than managing them elsewhere, but that is what it takes.

We are probably not the right choice if you’re comparing only price, or if you need one job done with no relationship after it. We learned this in our early years, when we took on work with expectations we could not meet, and it went badly for both sides. So we say it plainly, before we ever talk.

Operating to ISO 9001 and 17100 standards  ·  Women-owned (WBENC)  ·  Education-methodology leadership  ·  U.S.-based linguists and U.S.-only data handling  ·  Serving school districts and colleges since 2005

ON THIS PAGE

• Who You Will Work With
• Our Education Clients
• One District, Many Offices
• Education and IEPs
• Parent and Family Language Access
• How the Work Gets Easier Over Time
• How We Check the Work
• Classroom and Course Materials
• Colleges and Universities
• Accessible Documents and Alternate Formats
• Interpreting for Meetings
• Student Records and Confidentiality
• Purchasing and Onboarding
• Books for a School in the Amazon
• Questions from Districts
• Start with a Test Assignment

Who You Will Work With

Eleven people work with the firm continuously, and you deal with them directly, owners included. Camila, one of our two founders, completed a teacher-training qualification in Brazil alongside her secondary education. She has also completed shorter programs in translation, interpreting, and project management. Before founding the firm in 2005, she spent years as a consultant helping companies do business across borders.

A parent can understand every translated word and still not know what an “eligibility meeting” or a “placement decision” is. We keep the official term, because the school needs it, and make the sentences around it easy to follow.

When something goes wrong, Camila will get on a call. Our project managers handle the day-to-day work, so nothing sits waiting for an owner to be free. If a reviewer has a question or a deadline moves, we get the right people on a call and decide what to do. This is usually why clients choose us over larger vendors: they are not one more number for a project manager who gets replaced every six months.

Our Education Clients

We have worked with Newark Public Schools in New Jersey and Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District in Wisconsin. 

Our broader published roster includes Christine Valmy International School and the Academy for Educational Development. It also records work for New York University’s Cardiovascular Center and the University of California in medical research. Our work with university clients includes those research and clinical settings, alongside the school and education organizations named here.

See our client history page for a list of our public clients.

One District, Many Offices 

In one district, the central office, each school, special education and family engagement may all need translations. None of them should have to start over with a new vendor. We work across all of them and keep track of what each one needs.

What We Translate for Districts

• Enrollment: registration packets and residency forms
• School rules: student handbooks and codes of conduct
• Student progress: report cards, progress reports and attendance letters
• Forms and notices: health forms, consent forms and discipline notices
• Family outreach: surveys, newsletters and website content

We also translate the scripts for recorded phone calls, and the short text messages that point parents to the full notice.

We also translate IEPs, Section 504 plans and evaluation reports (more on these under Special education below), classroom materials, admissions documents and academic records. If a document isn’t listed here, ask.

Recurring Work and One-Off Requests

Back-to-school packets come every year, so we plan for them with you. A new family’s enrollment papers or a changed meeting notice can’t wait for the next batch. We learn your calendar, so we know which is which. When it is genuinely urgent, call and say so; a person who can commit capacity will take the call.

A district handbook can have different contacts or procedures for each school. We keep those differences, even when twelve files are all called “Student Handbook.” Before we send anything back, we check four things: the right school, the current version, the right language, and the format your staff asked for.

See our K-12 school district translation service page for more on district-wide work. 

Education and IEPs

An individualized education program, or IEP, mixes standard wording with details about one child. A service frequency, a caveat in an evaluation, or a note on progress has to say exactly what the English says. We translate the student’s information as written. When a passage is unclear, we ask your reviewer instead of guessing.

The same care goes into Section 504 plans, assessments and eligibility documents, and into the paperwork around them: prior written notices, procedural safeguards notices, meeting invitations and consent forms.

Which Rule Covers What

It is easy to treat special education language access as one duty. IDEA sets out two separate ones.

• The IEP meeting – IDEA requires the district to make sure parents understand what happens at the meeting, including arranging an interpreter for parents who are deaf or whose native language is not English (34 CFR Section 300.322(e)).
• The prior written notice – IDEA requires it in the parent’s native language unless that is clearly not feasible. If the language has no written form, the district must explain the notice orally and keep written proof that the parent understood (34 CFR Section 300.503(c)).

In California, SB 445 requires the state’s standard IEP template to be available online in the ten most common non-English languages in the state by January 1, 2027 (Education Code Section 56348). The template helps. It still leaves the parts written about one child in English, and those are the parts a parent most needs to read.

Your specialists decide eligibility, services and what assessment results mean. Your district decides what each case requires under federal and state law. Our job is to make sure the family reads what the team actually decided. See our IEP and special education service for more.

Parent and Family Language Access

Ask families what language they need. Don’t guess from a student’s name or how the student does in class. A parent may read one language, speak another, and also need large print or an accessible file. We work from what your district tells us, and we ask when something is missing.

We work in more than 200 languages. We confirm the script as well as the language. A request for “Chinese” needs a decision on Simplified or Traditional characters for a written notice, and Mandarin or Cantonese for an interpreter.

Sometimes the English is the problem. If a sentence would still confuse a parent after an accurate translation, we point it out. Any change to what the notice says goes back to your team for approval. We don’t make it quietly.

What Federal and State Law Require

Under ESEA section 1112(e)(4), as amended by ESSA, Title I notices to parents must use an understandable, uniform format and, “to the extent practicable,” a language parents can understand. Special education and state rules sit on top of that. 

In California, when 15 percent or more of the students at a school speak the same primary language other than English, notices to parents must go out in that language as well (Education Code Section 48985). The threshold is counted school by school. A family at a school below it still needs to understand what the school sends home.

See our parent and family language-access service for the day-to-day work. If you need help working out which languages you must cover, or writing a language access plan, see Language Access Programs. 

How the Work Gets Easier Over Time

Once we learn how your district works, we write it down as step-by-step instructions for our own team: which version is approved, who gets questions, how files are named and sent back, and which documents need an accessible version. Your staff shouldn’t have to repeat those details on every job.

After a few assignments, you should only need to send the files.

If your district has no glossary, we can suggest building one. If yours is out of date, we’ll say so. Once a term is agreed, it stays the same across handbooks, notices and letters. Where a school or program uses its own wording on purpose, we keep it.

Your translation memory is the stored record of past sentences and how we translated them. The bottom line is that the more you translate with us, the bigger your translation repetition gets. It is always for you to take with you whenever you want. Student information is handled separately from the reusable wording.

We also invest in the people doing the work. Our translators have worked with us for more than a decade on average. Fair, timely payment helps sustain those relationships and the knowledge that recurring clients rely on.

How We Check the Work

Each job goes through three steps. 

1. A translator translates it. 
2. A separate reviewer compares the translation with the English for meaning. 
3. Then we check the finished file itself, looking for a missing instruction, a table entry in the wrong row, or an answer box that has drifted away from its question. 

Your staff should be able to send the file as it is.

We follow ISO 17100 for translation and ISO 18587 for full human post-editing of machine translation. We don’t claim certification to either. Our quality assurance page explains the process in more detail.

When the English changes, we find every language and format it affects and update them all. We note your reviewers’ preferences for next time. Changes to policy or to a student’s information go back to your district to decide.

What matters in schools	The Translation Company	Typical vendor
Education expertise	Methodology-led, education background	Generic; no education focus
Compliance awareness	Title VI, ESSA Title III, IDEA	Not considered
Cultural sensitivity	Adapted for families and tone	Literal, word-for-word
Delivery model	In-house linguists, one team	Brokered to subcontractors

Classroom and Course Materials

We translate what gets used in class: textbooks, workbooks, lesson plans and teacher guides, plus online modules, videos and handouts. We do this work for districts, education publishers, training providers and online-learning companies.

A worksheet only works if the directions, examples, labels, answer spaces and teacher notes still line up after translation. Some exercises break in translation. If a worksheet asks students to circle words with a certain sound, the translated words probably won’t have that sound. We point this out and work with your content owner on how to adapt it.

Simpler isn’t always better. A science lesson needs its technical words. A guide for parents may need the same word with a short explanation. We decide case by case, based on who is reading and what the lesson is for.

Tests need extra care. A translated test doesn’t automatically measure the same thing as the English one. IDEA’s evaluation rules (34 CFR Section 300.304(c)(1)) require tests to be given in the language and form most likely to give accurate results, and to be valid and reliable for their purpose. We agree on how much translation and adaptation is needed before we start. Checking that the translated test is valid stays with your assessment team.

For online courses, we keep the language consistent across slides, on-screen text, narration scripts, caption files, quizzes and downloads. See our curriculum and instructional-materials service page for more.

Colleges and Universities

On campus, the work comes from different offices: admissions and enrollment, international student services, and financial aid. We translate campus policies, handbooks, orientation materials, research communications and professional education courses.

Admissions offices receive transcripts and diplomas from other countries and often need certified academic-record translations of them. A translation tells you what the document says. It doesn’t tell you what the degree equals in the US. A credential evaluation does that, and it is a separate step.

If your orientation materials need to be translated and accessible, tell us both at the start. Otherwise you can end up with an accessible English file and a translated one a screen reader can’t use.

If your institution uses the HECVAT, the security and privacy questionnaire many campuses send vendors, note that Version 4 includes 19 accessibility questions at WCAG 2.1 AA and 32 questions about AI use. See our higher-education service for more. 

Accessible Documents and Alternate Formats 

A translated PDF can look fine on screen and still be hard to use with a screen reader. If a family or student needs a translation and an accessible file, both jobs have to be done, and it is easier to do them together from the start.

We do accessibility work in-house, in the same place as translation and layout. That matters when you need a notice in several languages. A shop that starts from a finished PDF has to fix each language file separately. We work from the source file, such as Word or InDesign, and then check every language version, because each one needs its own reading order, language settings and image descriptions.

The work is led by Camila, who is an IAAP Accessible Document Specialist and holds DHS Trusted Tester credentials.

The ADA Title II web and mobile rule requires public entities, including public school districts and public colleges, to meet WCAG 2.1 AA by April 26, 2027 if they serve a population of 50,000 or more, and by April 26, 2028 if smaller. For a school district, that number is the population of the area it serves, not student enrollment. Your current duty to communicate effectively applies now, before either date.

Not every file needs the same attention. A form parents use to enroll a child matters more than an old report sitting in an archive, and the rule treats archived content differently. We help you decide which files to fix first. We also provide large print, Braille, audio and accessible electronic files.

See Section 508 & Document Accessibility for how we remediate documents and Alternate Formats for Braille, large print and audio.

Interpreting for Meetings 

A translated invitation gets a parent to the meeting. Once they’re in the room, they need an interpreter. We arrange spoken-language and ASL interpreting for parent conferences, IEP meetings, enrollment meetings and school events, typically through partners and subcontractors coordinated by The Translation Company.

Before each assignment, we confirm the language, who will be there, whether it’s in person or remote, what the interpreter should read beforehand, and any confidentiality rules. A private IEP meeting and a presentation to a full auditorium are very different jobs. The interpreter says what the teacher says; the teacher does the explaining.

For districts we work with regularly, we can plan for meetings outside normal hours. We can’t promise every language, in every location, on the same day. We would rather tell you that now than after you’ve booked the room.

See our school interpreting service page for more information.

Student Records and Confidentiality

A school calendar is public. A child’s evaluation is not. Before any student information reaches us, we agree with you on who can see it, how it’s sent, how long we keep it and when we delete it.

FERPA lets a school share education records with a contractor under the school-official exception, but only under certain conditions. The school has to keep direct control over how the records are used and stored, and the contractor can’t pass them on without permission. Hiring a translation company doesn’t meet those conditions by itself. We work to your district’s data-protection terms.

When your contract requires student information to stay in the United States, it stays here. Some other work, such as blank forms with no student data, may go to linguists outside the US if your contract allows it. We say this up front rather than let you assume everything is done in the US.

Your reviewers can examine our SOC 2 Type II report and ISO 27001:2022 certification within their respective scopes. Those support vendor assessment; they do not replace student-data terms or establish a blanket FERPA certification. Our confidentiality and security information covers how we handle data. 

Machine Translation and AI

Your school systems may already have a translate button. We can work within your technology policy and help you decide which documents need a professional translator or a qualified reviewer. Machine output can read smoothly and still get a name, a date or a service wrong.

We use only professional-grade AI tools. Our vendor terms forbid them from training on your data or keeping it for their own use, and we will put zero-retention terms in writing. Which tools we use, and what they can access, goes in our agreement with you. We don’t put a child’s record into any system you haven’t approved.

Purchasing and Onboarding 

We understand that districts purchase through their own procedures. Our WBENC certification supports supplier-diversity review; it does not replace your evaluation of scope, security, and delivery. Bring your purchasing requirements, student-data terms, approval process, and required documentation into the discussion early.

If you want to understand how translation is priced before we talk, our guide to translation pricing covers current rates, how machine translation changes the cost, and how to compare quotes.

When plans change, we would rather get on a call and fix it than trade long emails defending the original plan. Camila and our project managers will get the right people together and rearrange the work if needed.

Books for a School in the Amazon

A friend of our founders told us about a school in the Amazon that had no library. We used company profits to buy more than 200 books for it. Luciano chose them, picking books the children would actually want to read.

The books traveled from São Paulo to Manaus by truck, then continued by river to Maués. The journey took close to two months. Buying the books was only part of the undertaking; getting them to the school mattered just as much.

That project is part of our history, alongside the paid work. It is a concrete expression of an interest in education that extends beyond selling translation. Read the account of the book donation.

Questions from Districts 

Can we start with one school or department?

Yes. Many of our clients started with a single test assignment. The first job settles the terms, the review steps and how files come back. We write those down, so the next department doesn’t have to start from scratch.

Can you work alongside our own bilingual staff?

Yes. Your bilingual staff know your community and your approved terms, and we use both. We handle the translation and review you hired us for. Your staff shouldn’t end up redoing it.

Start with a test assignment