A query sheet is a structured log that translators use to record questions about unclear source text, inconsistent terminology, or client-specific wording preferences that arise during a translation and localization project. It is maintained as part of project documentation and circulates between the linguists, project managers, and client reviewers so that each open issue receives a documented answer before final delivery.
Query sheets appear most often in translation workflows for marketing, legal, software, or e-learning content where translators cannot stop to email the client for every issue. The sheet may be a shared spreadsheet with columns for source segment, question, suggested translation, and client answer, and it is reviewed during query clarification calls or before in-context review.
The most common error is treating every query as urgent or sending a long unstructured email thread instead of logging it in a single sheet; this makes answers hard to track and can delay sign-off. Another mistake is recording only the translator's doubt without a proposed rendering, which forces the client to work from scratch and increases turnaround time.
For creative and consumer content the failure mode is flatness, not inaccuracy — and flatness passes an accuracy check. Terms here also carry technical constraints (reading speed, character budgets) that are part of the brief.
Angel Translation locks terms like this into a project terminology base before expert review begins, so the same source term resolves to the same target term across every document in a submission — and stays consistent in the next revision. See the 8-step AI + expert workflow.
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