botminds.aiBook a walkthrough
WorkfloweDiscovery & Litigation Support

Foreign Language Document Review

Foreign language document review that sets each Japanese, German or Portuguese sentence beside its English, so English-only reviewers code first level and bilingual hours go where they matter.

Watch it workBook a walkthrough
Walk the review pane by pane ↓
Watch with transcript →
The problem

A bilingual bench takes weeks to staff, and flat English hides code words

A cross-border production lands with custodians who write in Japanese, German and Portuguese. The contract attorneys already on the matter read only English, and a bench of bilingual reviewers takes weeks to find and costs far more per hour. Meanwhile the review deadline does not move.

Machine-translating everything looks faster until the coding happens on the translation. A phrase that means push back a date comes out as bring backward, and a word for coordinate reads as vote. Privilege calls rest on English words the court never sees. Then each hot email that becomes an exhibit goes out for certified translation whole, greetings and signatures included.

Built forReview managersContract review attorneysBilingual reviewerseDiscovery counsel

The Problem Today

Bilingual review attorneys are scarce, and machine translation on its own loses the words the court will read.

$65–100
an hour, posted for Japanese-speaking review attorneys published
73%
the share of eDiscovery production cost spent on review published

Read and certified by hand today

  • Email
  • Chat
  • Scans
  • Glossary
  • Coding the translationCode words smoothed into harmless English
  • Whole documents certifiedGreetings and signatures paid for, page by page

The Solution

  1. Each sentence alignedA link from each sentence of English to the original it came from
  2. Coding on the originalRelevant, privileged or hot proposed with the sentence cited
  3. Bilingual hours targetedOnly low-confidence sentences, hot documents and the quality sample
  4. Certify only hot paragraphsThe reviewer nominates the paragraph and the review manager approves

Built-in controls

  • Coding stays on the original, never the English
  • Each source country's data stays in its own region
  • The client's documents train no model

What You Get

Teams review any language with the English reviewers they have, and certify only what goes before the court.

420
bilingual hours for 140,000 documents, against about 2,800 our estimate
  • One click to the sourceA click on any line of English opens its original
  • A glossary that learnsEach translation fix becomes an approved case term
  • Exhibits ready for depositionsCertified paragraphs ordered against the deposition date
Original first, English beside it

Foreign language document review from the first English pass to the exhibit

Nine features in the order a cross-border review runs: reading through cited English, coding on the original, then certifying only what becomes an exhibit.

  1. 01Original and English

    The original and its English side by side, joined sentence by sentence

    How it works

    • The original on the left as the record, the English on the right as a cited rendering
    • Clicking a sentence lights it in both panes
    • A confidence score on each line of English, 0.93 to 0.99 on this email
    • Glossary terms are shaded in both languages

    Contract review attorneyCodes first-level batches of Japanese email without reading Japanese, and sees which sentence each English line came from.

  2. 02Source sentence

    A link on each English sentence back to the words it came from

    How it works

    • A link on each line of English leads to its source sentence
    • The link opens the paragraph, the position and the confidence
    • It names each glossary term the rendering used, with its meaning in this matter

    Second-level reviewerChecks the words a court will see before calling a document hot, instead of trusting smooth English.

  3. 03Case glossary

    A case glossary where each term is approved by a bilingual reviewer

    How it works

    • Each term with its reading, its literal sense and its meaning in this matter
    • 127 terms, Japanese 64, German 41 and Portuguese 22, each with its hits and approver
    • An agent proposes new terms; a reviewer for that language approves or rejects with a reason
    • Approved terms re-render each sentence that uses them

    Bilingual reviewerKeeps a code word from being smoothed into harmless English in each document that uses it, and fixes it everywhere at once.

  4. 04Coded hot

    Hot, relevant and privileged proposed on the original, reasons cited

    How it works

    • An agent proposes the coding with the sentences behind it
    • Relevant across sentences 2 to 5, hot on 3, 4 and 5, not privileged: no lawyer on the thread
    • The reviewer confirms on the original, and the hot count goes from 379 to 380
    • Overruling the proposal takes a reason that goes into the quality sample

    Second-level reviewerCodes the record itself, so a hot or privilege call rests on the original words and can be checked against them.

  5. 05Hot chronology

    Hot documents in three languages read as one English chronology

    How it works

    • The key sentence of each hot document in English, its original underneath
    • Filters by language and by issue: price revision, shipment timing, competitor contact, avoid writing
    • Each line opens its original sentence, with its certified order beside it

    eDiscovery counselReads the story across Japanese, German and Portuguese files in one place before a deposition, each line traceable to its source.

  6. 06Paragraph order

    Certified translation ordered for the hot paragraph alone

    How it works

    • An agent picks the paragraph likely to become an exhibit
    • Paragraph 2 only, sentences 2 to 5: 1 page and 118 words of a 2-page email
    • The order shows purpose, vendor, rate, due date and the budget used
    • The reviewer sends it; the review manager approves it

    Second-level reviewerPays to certify the four sentences a deposition needs and leaves the greetings, signatures and boilerplate out of the order.

  7. 07Certified orders

    Certified orders tracked by paragraph, page and budget

    How it works

    • Each order with its paragraphs, pages, words, purpose and status
    • 61 certified pages against about 988 for whole documents: Japanese 34, German 19 and Portuguese 8
    • A meter shows $5,795 of the $8,000 budget at $95 a page
    • Spend over budget goes to eDiscovery counsel

    Review managerApproves each order against the budget and the deposition calendar, and can show the client why hot documents needed so few certified pages.

  8. 08Quality sample

    A quality sample whose translation fixes turn into glossary terms

    How it works

    • 600 first-level decisions checked by bilingual reviewers, 13 overturned, 2.2%
    • Each overturn shows the first call, the second call, why and who
    • 240 English sentences checked: 5 meaning corrections, all from 2 terms now in the glossary

    Review managerCan defend first-level review by English-only attorneys with a measured overturn rate, and stops one mistranslation from recurring.

  9. 09Hours by language

    Bilingual hours by language, set beside an all-bilingual review

    How it works

    • 420 bilingual hours by language beside about 2,800 for all-bilingual review
    • 190 hours on 2,770 sentences below 0.90, 160 on hot documents, 70 on the quality sample
    • English-only reviewers at 54 to 62 documents an hour
    • Certified pages and spend shown beside the hours

    Director of litigation supportStaffs the next cross-border matter from this one's figures by language, and gives the client a translation cost it can follow.

What the bilingual quality check caught that smooth English hid

Each one was overturned or caught by a bilingual reviewer, and each went back into the glossary or the coding.

Push back read as bring backward

In three sentences of Japanese, the shipment term was rendered as bring backward. The fix is now an approved term with 1,186 hits, and every sentence using it is re-rendered.

Coordinate read as vote

A German verb came out as vote where the writer meant coordinate. Two sentences were corrected, and one document moved from relevant to hot.

A phrase that may be a code word

A plain Japanese phrase for that matter appears in 412 documents, 61% of them within 3 days of a meeting. One document coded not relevant went to relevant, and the term waits for approval.

Advice forwarded by the legal department

An email first coded not privileged carried outside counsel's advice, forwarded internally. It was overturned to privileged and the call was signed by eDiscovery counsel.

Around the review

More screens from a review in Japanese, German and Portuguese

Documents in the other two languages, the audit list and the rules the review manager sets for the matter.

A German email, already certifiedTwo hot sentences: a competitor's price adjustment date, then a request for nothing in writing. Paragraph 1 went out as a one-page certified order.
A chat in PortugueseA 7.5% increase in October tied to a competitor's, then a request to delete the message. Lowest confidence on the thread is 0.95.
Disagreeing with the agentA reviewer who thinks a proposed hot call is wrong saves it as relevant only, with a reason kept for the quality sample.
One issue across languagesFiltered to the avoid-writing issue, the chronology holds a Portuguese chat and a Japanese one, each with its certified order.
Who did whatAgents' steps sit beside people's decisions: a rendering, a proposal, a released quality sample, a signed privilege call, a delivered certificate.
Rules for the matterLanguages turned on, the 0.90 confidence line, approved glossary terms only, and certified translation by the paragraph at $95 a page.

Bilingual hours for 140,000 documents in three languages

All-bilingual first-level review at 50 documents an hour, against review with cited English.

LanguageAll bilingualEnglish-only, cited EnglishBilingual, with agents
Japanese, 68,400 documents1,368 hours1,267 hours at 54 an hour230 hours
German, 47,900 documents958 hours798 hours at 60 an hour140 hours
Portuguese, 23,700 documents474 hours382 hours at 62 an hour50 hours
Total2,800 hours2,447 hours420 hours

estimatedOur estimate.

Who signs off on coding, glossary terms, orders and privilege

The agents detect, render, propose and draft. These calls stay with named roles.

Final codingThe agent proposes with cited sentences; a reviewer codes on the original.
A sentence below 0.90 confidenceNo guess on uncertain text: the sentence goes to a bilingual reviewer.
A new glossary termA bilingual reviewer for that language approves it or rejects it with a reason.
A certified translation orderThe review manager approves, and no reviewer approves their own order.
Privilege, the production certification and spend over budgeteDiscovery counsel signs each one.
Data leaving its regionEach source country's data stays in its region unless counsel approves the move.

Foreign language document review when the coders read only English

What is foreign language document review?

Foreign language document review is the review of email, chat and scanned records written in another language for relevance, privilege and hot documents. Here each sentence is translated beside its original and linked to it, coding is applied to the original, and bilingual reviewers check only low-confidence sentences, hot documents and the quality sample.

Is machine translation good enough for document review?

As a reading aid, with the original kept as the record. A confidence score and a source link sit on each sentence of English, sentences below the line go to a bilingual reviewer, and the case glossary keeps terms and code words from being smoothed over. No coding decision rests on the English alone.

Can contract attorneys who read only English code foreign-language documents?

At first level, yes, from the cited English. The quality sample measures how often their calls are overturned by bilingual reviewers, by language, and each translation fix it finds becomes a glossary term for the next batch.

How does it decide what needs certified translation?

An agent finds the hot paragraphs likely to become exhibits and drafts an order for that paragraph alone, with its purpose and deposition date. The reviewer sends it, the review manager approves it against the budget, and a certified translator certifies it.

Which languages does it handle?

The matter here runs in Japanese, German and Portuguese. Korean, Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch can be turned on in the matter's settings, and mixed-language documents are detected sentence by sentence.

How is personal data in cross-border documents protected?

Each source country's data stays in its own region, personal data the review does not need is masked or pseudonymized, and each read is logged. Moving data across regions needs counsel's approval.

eDiscovery & Litigation Support

Related eDiscovery solutions for review teams

All 7 solutions →
Slack and Teams eDiscovery

Chat reviewed as threads, not thousands of one-line fragments, with every deleted message back in place.

1-min filmESI Protocol

Sign an ESI protocol that does not promise what you cannot deliver, with every clause priced before you negotiate.

1-min filmData Breach Document Review

The notification list in days, each person linked to the files that expose them.

1-min film

Code the original from its English
and certify only the paragraph a deposition needs.

We’ll walk your review team through the aligned panes, the glossary and a paragraph-level certified order on a document set like yours.

Book a walkthroughBrowse solutions