Terms of service

1. Who these terms are between

These terms are the agreement between you and Polyfetti, the trading name of Sawai Nolly Auxilio, for translation of documents and text you submit. You accept them when you submit a request.

2. What we do

We do three kinds of work. Which one you have ordered decides which parts of these terms apply to you, so it is worth knowing which is which.

• Document translation. We translate official documents, such as certificates, records, diplomas and transcripts, in the language pair shown on your quote, prepare them in a consistent layout beside the original, check them, and deliver them to you digitally. A named person reviews the work and signs a certificate of accuracy with their contact details, included in the price. Sections 4 and 5 are written for this work.
• Business and marketing translation. We translate business material, such as listings, manuals, site and product copy, reports and marketing text, in the language pair shown on your quote. It is priced by the word, or by the character for Japanese, and it carries no certificate unless you ask for one.
• Copywriting and original writing. We write new material to your brief, in the language you ask for. This is not a translation of anything: it is original text written for your purpose, and section 9 says who owns it.

Business translation and copywriting are ordinarily delivered to you and to nobody else. Nothing in them is submitted to an authority, and no authority accepts or rejects them, so the parts of these terms about receiving authorities do not apply to that work.

3. What we do not do

This section matters more than most. Please read it.

• We do not prepare, complete, or submit applications on your behalf, and we do not act as your representative before any authority.
• We do not give immigration, legal, tax, labour or medical advice, and nothing we send you is advice about your particular situation.
• We do not translate contracts for now. This applies to every kind of agreement, whatever the language pair.
• We do not notarise documents, do not issue apostilles and do not make sworn translations. A notary performs the first, the authority of the country that issued the document performs the second, and a sworn translation is made by a translator registered with a court or authority, which we are not.
• We are not a government body. No document we produce is official, government-approved, or issued by any authority. Our certificate of accuracy is a signed statement of accuracy by a named person, nothing more, and we will never describe it as more.
• Where your matter needs a licensed professional, such as an attorney, a notary, a sworn translator or a tax adviser, we will say so. Any such mention is information, not a recommendation or a guarantee.

4. Acceptance is never guaranteed, and results are never promised

For a document you are going to submit. We cannot promise that any authority, embassy, school, employer or court will accept a translation. That decision belongs entirely to them and often turns on things outside the translation: the form of the original, its issue date, its recency, whether they require a sworn translation or an apostille, or a rule that changed last week.

For business translation and copywriting. We do not promise a result. How many people read, click, reply, book or buy depends on your product, your price, your audience, your timing and your market, none of which we control. We will not quote a figure we cannot stand behind, and if anyone tells you we have, they are not speaking for us. What we are responsible for is the work itself: that it says what you asked it to say, in correct language, and that it is ours to give you.

What we do instead: if a submission is declined, we check our own work against the reason given. If the rejection is caused by an error in our translation, we correct it free of charge and refund if a correction cannot put it right. If it is caused by something else, we cannot refund.

5. What you are responsible for

• Authorisation. You confirm you are entitled to submit the document and to have it translated, including where it contains information about other people.
• Completeness. Send every page and both sides. A missing reverse side is the single most common cause of a document being sent back.
• Name spelling. Tell us the exact spelling used on your passport or identity document. Names written in another script have many valid spellings, and an authority may reject a mismatch. If you do not tell us, we use the standard reading and note the assumption.
• Checking the delivery. Look at what we send you promptly, and tell us about any error within the correction window.
• Lawful use. Do not ask us to translate a document you obtained unlawfully, or to alter meaning, omit content, or produce anything intended to mislead a third party. We will refuse and cancel the order.
• The facts in your copy. Where we write or translate material about your product, service, price or business, the facts in it come from you and remain yours. We write what you tell us, clearly and well. We do not verify it, and we will not invent a claim, a figure, a review, a testimonial or an endorsement; if you ask us to, we will say no. Advertising law makes the advertiser responsible for a misleading claim, and in your material the advertiser is you.
• Rights in what you send. Where you send us someone else's text, images or brand to work from, you confirm you are entitled to use it for that purpose.

6. Ordering, pricing and payment

• We check your file for readability and completeness before quoting. The check is free.
• The quote shows the total before you pay, with the certificate of accuracy included for a document.
• Prices are shown in US dollars and charged in Japanese yen at the rate shown on your quote. The amount your card statement shows in your own currency depends on your card company's rate on the day.
• Documents are priced per page, at the rates on the prices page.
• Business and marketing translation is priced per word, or per character for Japanese, with a minimum per order. Where text repeats within your document, or repeats work we have already done for you, it is charged at a reduced rate, and larger orders are reduced further. Every count and every reduction is itemised on the quote before you pay, so you can check the arithmetic rather than take our word for it. Before you pay for business or marketing text, we send you a watermarked draft of the first part of the translation. The rest is held back until you accept and pay.
• Copywriting and original writing is priced per product, as on the prices page, and a brief that fits none of them is quoted individually before any work begins. Nothing is charged and nothing is written until you have accepted the price.
• Work begins once we have confirmed your payment has arrived.
• Where a document cannot be priced automatically we quote manually before any work starts.
• Full details are in the legal notice.

7. Corrections, revisions, cancellation and refunds

Set out in full in the refund and correction policy, which forms part of these terms. In summary: cancel free before work starts, and get 50% back if you cancel after work has started and before we deliver; errors we made are corrected free; if a correction cannot put it right we refund; we cannot refund for an authority's decision to reject.

Revisions are a different thing from corrections, and it matters which one you are asking for. A correction is us putting right something we got wrong, and it is always free. A revision is you changing your mind about what you want, such as a different angle, a shorter version or a warmer tone, and it is normal, expected, and part of writing. Where a piece of work includes revision rounds, your quote says how many, and using them is not a complaint. If you want more rounds than your quote includes, we will price them and tell you before we do any of the work, never after.

8. Your documents and your privacy

Governed by our privacy policy. In short: used only for your order, seen by the fewest people possible, source files deleted after 17 days and delivered files after 30, never sold, and never used to train anything.

9. Ownership

What you sent us stays yours. Your original document remains yours throughout. We will not publish it or use it as an example, even anonymised, without asking you first.

Translations. Once you have paid in full, the translation is yours to use for any lawful purpose.

Writing we made for you. Copywriting and original writing are new work, so copyright in them begins with us. On full payment it transfers to you, along with the right to edit it, cut it, adapt it, retitle it, translate it and publish it wherever you like, with or without our name on it.

Japanese law does not permit an author's moral rights to be transferred to anybody, so we cannot sell you ours and no agreement can. What we do instead is undertake not to exercise them, against you or against anyone you licence the work to. In plain terms: you can change what we wrote, use it without crediting us, and we will not object.

It is ours to give you. We write original material. We do not copy anyone else's work into yours, and we do not hand you text we are not free to hand over.

What stays ours. Our templates, glossaries, translation memory and software are not part of what you are buying, and remain ours.

10. Our responsibility if something goes wrong

We take responsibility for the accuracy of our translation. If we make an error we correct it, and if a correction cannot put it right we refund what you paid.

Beyond that, our liability for any one order is limited to the amount you paid for it, except where the loss is caused by the intentional act or gross negligence of us, our representatives or anyone we use to carry out your order, in which case we are liable for your loss in full, or where the law does not permit that limit. Nothing in these terms limits any right you have as a consumer under a law that applies to you and cannot be set aside, and any clause that would do so does not apply.

11. Suspending or refusing an order

We may decline or stop an order where the document is unreadable and cannot be replaced, where we have no approved template for it and cannot safely produce one, where the request falls outside what we lawfully do, where we are asked to alter meaning, or where payment is not confirmed. If we stop an order after you have paid and the reason is not your fault, we refund in full.

12. What we will not translate

We will decline, and cancel an order already placed, if we are asked to translate a document obtained unlawfully, or to change meaning, omit content, add anything that is not in the original, or produce a version designed to mislead whoever reads it. Where we have already been paid, we refund in full.

This is not a formality. The documents you send us are used to make decisions about people's lives, and a translation that quietly says something the original does not is a serious thing. It is also the one request we will refuse regardless of what is offered for it.

13. Who may place an order

You must be 18 or older to order, or have the agreement of a parent or guardian. You may order a translation of a document about somebody else, such as a child, a parent or a spouse, where you are entitled to hold that document.

We do not verify age, and we are not going to ask you for identification to buy a translation. This clause exists so that the answer is written down, not so that we can police it.

14. If we cannot work

If something outside our control stops us working, such as illness, a disaster or a failure at a service we depend on, we will tell you within one business day and give you the choice: wait for a new date, or take a full refund. We will not hold your money while we are unable to deliver, and we will not quietly let a deadline pass.

An unmet deadline caused by us is not something we ask you to absorb. If the delay makes the translation useless to you, that is a refund, whatever the cause.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The version that applies to your order is the one published when you submitted it. Significant changes are notified to customers with an open order.

16. Governing law and courts

These terms are governed by Japanese law. This does not take away any mandatory consumer-protection rule of the country where you live that applies to you by law. For a dispute about these terms or your order, the district court that has jurisdiction over our place of business has first-instance jurisdiction in addition to any court that has jurisdiction by law; this does not exclude any other court, and it does not limit your right to bring a claim in your own local court where the law gives you that right.

17. Contact

hello@polyfetti.com. Our address is 〒104-0061 東京都中央区銀座1丁目12番4号 N&E BLD.6F, and we do not take telephone calls. See the legal notice.