Turnaround time is the agreed elapsed time between the start of a translation or localization task and the delivery of the completed work, usually measured in hours, business days, or calendar days. In translation and localization documentation, it appears in project schedules, quotes, service-level agreements, and scheduling notes, where it sets the deadline for individual workflow steps or the entire project.
In translation and localization work, turnaround time is set during quoting and scheduling, and may vary by service, language pair, volume, and available resources. Project managers use it to plan translation, editing, proofreading, and QA steps, and clients rely on it to coordinate launches or content updates across multiple locales.
A common error is agreeing to a turnaround time that ignores real workflow dependencies, such as SME review, client clarification, or final publishing, so the date only covers translation and leaves no room for downstream steps. This can force teams to skip QA or rush in-country review, increasing risk of defects.
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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