Terms and Conditions of Services

General Services

The award of a quote assumes the acceptance of the following terms and conditions that rule the provision of language services by Verbarium – Luso Translation Boutique® (Chancexpression, Lda), hereinafter referred to as Verbarium.

Object

These general terms and conditions of sale shall apply to any provision of services requested from Verbarium—by mail, by hand, fax, e-mail, or any other electronic means—unless otherwise agreed in writing, and without the need for express agreement between the parties or their formal acceptance by the customer.

Texts Submission

Texts shall be submitted by the customer, in hard copy, typed, printed, in electronic form, or in any other way agreed between the parties.

Every service allocated must be accompanied by a purchase order or by written acceptance of the proposal, including the fees agreed upon by the parties, without which Verbarium reserves the right not to initiate the work.

All technical documentation shall be accompanied, where necessary, by customer supplied reference documents, and/or drawings or diagrams to facilitate understanding of said documentation. Terminology will be standardized according to the definitions in the technical dictionaries consulted.

In case of difficulty with understanding the text, the customer undertakes to provide any elements that will enable Verbarium to carry out the work assigned.

Requests for changes to the texts must be made in writing, and accurately, and will be charged in addition to the amount initially quoted.

Quote

Quotes shall be valid, for the purposes of the assignment, for a period of 30 days from the date of their issue, unless otherwise stipulated, and shall be subject to revision after that period.
Any expenditure caused by changes to the original on which the quote is based shall be charged additionally.

Delivery Dates

The deadlines set by Verbarium are subject to the date the services were awarded.

Verbarium shall not be liable for delays caused by faxes, modems, e-mails, and/or other methods of sending mail or carriers not under its direct control.

In the event of late delivery where the delay exceeds one third of the stipulated delivery date, and where this is directly and solely attributable to Verbarium, a refund, to be determined by the parties, of up to 100% of the work delivered late, shall be paid.

Rates, Invoicing, and Payment

The cost of a translation shall be calculated by the word count in the source language, except if otherwise stipulated in writing.

Proofreading, revision, editing, creative writing, transcreation, and layout services will be calculated by the hour, unless otherwise stipulated in writing.

Transcription services will be charged by the minute.

The budgeted value serves as a reference for future orders and is always subject to the availability of suppliers on the date of award.

The amount does not include Value Added Tax (VAT). VAT is applicable to all private customers residing in the European Union, to customers with EU-based companies that do not have a VAT registration number, as well as to Portuguese private customers/companies.

Should a customer request to postpone the delivery of an assignment already carried out by Verbarium, for reasons unrelated to the company, Verbarium reserves the right to inform the customer within a period of 10 working days that it will proceed with the delivery and invoicing. No assignment may be left un-invoiced and delivered for reasons exclusive to the customer and without the prior agreement with Verbarium. Our company reserves the right to take note of and accept or refuse the situation.

In case of cancellation of an order by a customer, all work already carried out will be charged in full, while suspended work will be charged at 50%.

Unless otherwise specified, all invoices must be paid within ten (10) days from the date of issue indicated in each invoice.

Any delay or non-payment shall constitute grounds for immediate claim of the full amount due, without prior notice or further formalities.

Verbarium reserves the right to charge interest for late payments, calculated based on the official rate in force in Banco de Portugal, with effect from the date the payment was due. The customer must also reimburse any expenses incurred by Verbarium to resolve the problem.

Any work and orders in progress will be suspended in case of a late payment.

In the event of failure to make payment, any representation of the partial or total reproduction of the said translation shall be considered unlawful. Verbarium reserves the right to require that any customer who uses unpaid material shall pay for the translation immediately and compensate for the applicable copyright.

Confidentiality

Verbarium undertakes to respect the confidentiality of the documents submitted and not to disclose any information to third parties either during or after the provision of the service, except to its suppliers involved in the provision of the service in question, who have signed a confidentiality agreement with Verbarium.

• Business Documents

Unless expressly requested by the customer, we will retain all business document’s translations, in strict confidentiality, for a maximum of 2 years, to ensure future updates requested by the customer.

• Documents Containing Personal Data

In application of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in force as of May 25, 2018, all personal data relating to natural persons will invariably be deleted after fulfilling the purpose for which they were requested or received, except for data required for invoicing purposes.

Any personal data about natural persons provided by the customer will be used solely for the purposes for which it was provided, and for as long as necessary to fulfill such purposes. It will not be provided to third parties, except to comply with legal obligations or to fulfil the language service requested by the customer.

You must give us your written consent so that we can quote / translate / review / proofread / adapt / transcribe any document containing personal data about you or minors under your care. The consent form will be sent to the customer by e-mail. After duly completed, the Customer must e-mail us this consent form.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by e-mail.

Quality Policy

Our Quality Policy requires that all translations be reviewed by a second translator at no additional cost to the customer.

The proofreader will ensure the suitability of the translation by comparing the original document and the translation in terms of terminological consistency, tone, and style.

Translations will not be proofread by a second translator, upon written request by the customer.

Complaints

Only complaints received by e-mail within fifteen (15) days after the full or partial delivery of the work(s) will be considered. Any complaints must be accompanied by the original documents, rejected translations, and an explanation. Once the above-mentioned period has elapsed, the translation shall be deemed correct, and no complaint will be accepted.

Should the customer present a complaint within the set deadline, Verbarium agrees, at its own expense, to deliver an edited version of the rejected translation within a period of time equivalent to one third of the period previously established, plus one extra working day. This second document will be used to assess the quality of the translation to determine the amount of any refund, at Verbarium discretion.

Verbarium will not be held responsible, under any circumstances, for translations which are considered unsatisfactory from a style perspective. Especially as far as advertising and promotional materials are concerned, the services rendered will be translation only, unless expressly requested otherwise. Verbarium will not be responsible for producing the translated text, for example, in an advertising style significantly different from the source text.

In any event, Verbarium is liable only for the amount of the invoice corresponding to the services provided.

Mistakes found in a certain part of the translation shall not constitute, in any circumstances, grounds for questioning the quality of the full translation. Verbarium reserves the right to make changes to the translation in such cases.

Disputes

Only agreements made between the parties in writing should be considered. Verbarium is a member of the Lisbon Arbitration Centre for Consumer Conflicts and the company has elected the County Court of Lisbon as a competent representative to resolve any disputes.

Specific Services

• Translation Services

Verbarium provides translation services in multiple languages and at competitive rates. All translations are proofread by a second translator, a service which is already included in the rate offered to the customer.

Note on the New Spelling Agreement:

Unless expressly requested, translations into Portuguese will be made without the New Spelling Agreement.

• Draft Translations

These translations are carried out on a shorter time frame than our full three-stage process, appropriate, for example, for internal documents that are not meant for external distribution, budgetary documents, business emails, news articles, etc. In short, preliminary translations are ideal when you need to understand the gist of a document but cannot spend the same budget that you would normally allocate to a major communication or proposal. Draft-quality translations are translated by a qualified translator but not subject to the proofreading or quality assurance stages of our standard process.

• Proofreading Services

Verbarium also provides proofreading services for external translations. The quote will be made in accordance with the quality of the respective translation, so the customer should submit it for prior evaluation.

Poor quality translations will not be accepted and/or Verbarium reserves the right to propose a higher rate for a new translation.

• Quality Control/Quality Assurance

In addition to the proofreading services, Verbarium also offers quality control services (partial verification of a document) or quality assurance services (verification of the entire document) according to the LISA model.

This model is based on the metric of the Localization Industry Standards Association, which evaluates the errors based on three severity levels—Minor, Major, and Critical—and each of them has a different weight in the evaluation, as well as various types of errors, e.g., accuracy, terminology, style, formatting, and more. In the end, the document can pass or fail, depending on the errors found.

• Layout Services

In the case of PDF documents, scanned documents, or images, Verbarium cannot guarantee that the layout or formatting of the original document will be reproduced if the original files are not received.

If the customer wishes to receive a document with the exact original formatting, he/she must request a quote for the graphic work and provide all relevant files in their original graphic format.

Even if the customer intends to perform the graphic work him/herself, all assignments which are meant for online publication and/or for printing/distribution must be subject to a final verification by a professional with the appropriate skills in order to avoid typos, errors, or omissions. The quote provided in these cases includes the time needed for the final review of the PDF works.

For the revision of the final format, about 1 hour per 2000 words is considered standard—an average that may vary depending on the quality of the insertion of the online content, the type of graphics, or the layout carried out by third parties.

This revision differs from linguistic proofreading, since it is meant to check only for typos, omission of words, hyphenation, and titles during the content’s online insertion process or layout, as well as their compliance with the images. Verbarium is not responsible for errors should the content not be subject to a final proofreading.

• Creative Writing or Transcreation

Based on keywords or an original, a touch of creative freedom is added to develop content that will convey a specific message with clarity, overcoming cultural and linguistic differences. Creative writing can also involve the creation of specific content to make a product/website more commercial (“Call to Action”).

• Transcriptions

Our transcriptions are carried out by professionals, transcribed word for word according to the audio file and revised by trained proofreaders.