Status of Labels

The Translation Consumer Labels Project Team (Labels Team, for short) was tasked by ASTM to provide a more accessible description of the labels to assist in disseminating the concept and its use. Expanding on the text of ASTM F2575-2023, section 10.2, the Team strives to make known that labels are used to differentiate professionally verified translations from those that are not.

The factors behind the new labels are the process*, the qualifications of the translators involved, and accountability (who is responsible for flaws in the final project).

In October 2024, at the fall meeting of ASTM Technical Committee F43 held in Portland, Oregon, in conjunction with the 2024 ATA (www.atanet.org) conference, it was agreed that F2575 should be revised to feature the labels Professionally Verified Translation and Un-Verified Translation. It was also agreed to seek protection for the character mark PVTQ. And a new work item (WK92487) was set up to formalize the new labels, with Alan Melby as the technical contact. A team of fourteen people was formed to discuss exactly how the content of section 10.2 of ASTM F2575 should be revised.

As a result of the work order, a ballot was issued at the subcommittee (F43.03 — translation) level and closed on April 9, 2025. The votes were counted, and, on April 11th, the ballot was deemed to have passed. At the April 17, 2025, meeting of ASTM F43, it was agreed that the ballot to change the labels would be sent out to the entire technical committee.

The plan is to leave the text of section 10.2 exactly as it is in the ballot (associated with WK92487) and explain outside the standard in a non-normative fashion that if someone feels compelled to treat “PVTQ” as an acronym, they can expand it informally as an unofficial abbreviation based directly on the balloted text of section 10.2 (a Professionally Verified Translation that exhibits Quality because it meets specifications) without replacing the official label—Professionally Verified Translation—in the standard. This approach results in essentially a short form and a long form of the written-out label, but only the short form would be attached to a translation that is delivered to consumers.

Going further, we recommend, in the materials we develop about the labels, that the long form be used only when an explanation of the characters in the certification mark is requested or needed.

*Common Processes: traditional translation, which involves a translator, a reviser, and a reviewer; post-edited machine translation, which may or may not involve a professional translator; or raw machine output, etc.

This page was last updated on April 24, 2025.