Governance Pricing

AI Translation Governance Pricing

The EU AI Act makes ungoverned AI translation a compliance liability.
What does proper AI translation governance cost?

Compare the cost of quality monitoring, hallucination detection, and human oversight against the liability of publishing ungoverned machine translation output at scale.

See the hidden costs ↓

Five costs of NOT governing AI translation

The question is not whether governance costs money. The question is whether the cost of no governance is higher. In every regulated, customer-facing, or brand-sensitive context, it is.

Cost 01

EU AI Act non-compliance exposure

The EU AI Act requires documentation of AI-assisted content processes. Organizations without systematic quality monitoring, decision trails, and risk classification face regulatory penalties. The governance gap isn't a quality problem — it's a compliance problem.

Regulatory penalty exposure
Cost 02

Hallucination liability

AI-generated translations that say the wrong thing fluently create liability. A hallucinated medical dosage, an inverted legal clause, a culturally offensive marketing message — each incident has a cost that far exceeds governance investment.

Fluent but wrong output
Cost 03

Quality degradation without detection

MT quality drifts over time as engines update, content types change, and terminology evolves. Without systematic monitoring, quality degrades silently until customers or regulators notice. By then, months of content may need re-translation.

Silent quality drift
Cost 04

Brand damage from ungoverned output

Customers don't distinguish between "your company" and "your AI-translated content." A culturally inappropriate translation published at scale damages brand trust in ways that are expensive to repair and difficult to measure.

Brand trust erosion
Cost 05

Audit trail reconstruction

When asked "how do you monitor the quality of your AI-translated content?" most organizations cannot answer. Reconstructing an audit trail after the fact — reviewing months of published content — costs far more than monitoring it in real time.

Retroactive audit cost

Three approaches to AI translation governance

From no governance to full orchestration. The right approach depends on your content risk profile, regulatory exposure, and translation volume.

No Governance (MT + Hope)

Lowest cost until something goes wrong.

No quality monitoring, no hallucination detection, no audit trail. Acceptable for internal reference content only. For anything customer-facing, regulated, or brand-sensitive, this is liability without a price tag.

When an incident occurs — and with unmonitored AI output, it is a matter of when — the remediation cost includes content recall, re-translation, regulatory response, and brand repair. None of these have predictable budgets.

Acceptable for: internal reference content with no external audience.
Internal QA Team

Manual review that doesn't scale.

Hire quality analysts to review AI output manually. Expensive at scale — one reviewer handles approximately 50,000 words per month. No systematic hallucination detection. No cultural scoring. Limited to the languages your reviewers speak.

Works for small volumes but doesn't scale with AI translation adoption. As your MT output grows, the QA team either becomes a bottleneck or coverage drops. Neither outcome is acceptable for regulated or brand-sensitive content.

Works for: small volumes, limited language pairs, non-regulated content.

The cost equation: governance vs. ungoverned risk

The governance investment is measurable and predictable. The cost of no governance is neither.

Cost of Governance

Measurable investment, predictable quality.

Quality monitoring, hallucination detection, cultural scoring, and human oversight add a governance layer to AI translation. This layer costs a fraction of the AI translation itself. The return: measurable quality (97% terminology accuracy), audit compliance, and brand protection.

The investment pays for itself with the first prevented incident. Every month of governed output builds an audit trail that demonstrates compliance and quality control to regulators, clients, and internal stakeholders.

97% terminology accuracy Full audit trail Predictable cost
Cost of No Governance

Unpredictable liability, compounding risk.

One hallucinated medical claim, one inverted legal clause, one culturally offensive campaign. Any single incident can cost more than years of governance investment. Add EU AI Act compliance risk and the calculation becomes straightforward.

Published quality metrics: 97% terminology accuracy, 95% context adherence, <5% hallucination target. Without governance, these numbers are unknown — and unknowable — until an incident forces measurement.

Unknown quality No audit trail Unbounded liability
97%
Terminology accuracy to date
95%
Context adherence to date
<5%
Hallucination target
98%
Task adherence to date
0
Audit failures to date
ISO
9001 + 17100

What's always included in AI translation governance

No hidden fees, no compliance add-ons, no reporting surcharges. Every governance engagement includes these three pillars.

Always Included

Quality monitoring

Systematic evaluation of every AI-translated piece. Terminology accuracy, context adherence, and tone adaptability scored and tracked. Monthly quality reports with trend analysis. You always know where your quality stands — not just when something goes wrong.

Always Included

Risk management

Hallucination detection. Cultural appropriateness scoring. Automatic escalation to human experts when confidence drops. Content risk classification for audit compliance. Every piece of content is evaluated before publication, not after.

Always Included

Compliance and reporting

Complete audit trail for every content piece. EU AI Act-ready documentation. Quality dashboards. No "reporting add-on" fees — governance without reporting isn't governance. Your compliance team gets what they need without procurement negotiation.

Ready to budget for governance that works?

Get a custom proposal based on your AI translation volumes.

Request a Custom Pricing Proposal

Frequently asked questions

What does AI translation governance typically cost as a percentage of translation spend?

Governance typically adds 15 to 30% on top of raw AI translation cost, depending on content risk level and volume. For high-risk content (medical, legal, regulated), the governance layer is closer to 30%. For lower-risk content (internal communications, reference materials), it can be as low as 15%. In all cases, the governance cost is a fraction of the liability exposure from a single ungoverned incident.

Can we add governance to our existing MT workflow without changing providers?

Yes. Governance is an orchestration layer, not a replacement for your MT engines. We integrate with your existing machine translation providers and add quality monitoring, hallucination detection, and human escalation on top. No need to change your technology stack or retrain your teams.

How does pricing scale with volume?

AI-powered quality monitoring scales more efficiently than human-only review. As volume increases, the per-word governance cost decreases because AI agents handle initial quality evaluation and only escalate to human experts when confidence thresholds are not met. This means governance costs do not increase linearly with translation volume.

Is EU AI Act compliance included or extra?

EU AI Act compliance documentation is included in all governance plans. This covers audit trails, risk classification documentation, quality monitoring records, and human oversight logs. There is no compliance add-on fee. Governance without compliance reporting is not governance.

Can we start with a quality audit before committing to ongoing governance?

Yes. We offer a standalone AI translation quality audit that evaluates your current MT output across terminology accuracy, hallucination risk, cultural appropriateness, and compliance readiness. The audit produces a detailed report with risk scores and recommendations. Many clients use this as the first step before committing to ongoing governance.

What MT engines do you support?

Our governance layer is engine-agnostic. We currently support Google Translate, DeepL, Amazon Translate, Microsoft Translator, and custom-trained NMT models. The quality monitoring framework evaluates output regardless of the source engine. If you use a proprietary or custom engine, we can integrate with it.

How do you price human escalation for flagged content?

Human escalation is included in governance pricing, not billed separately. When AI quality monitoring flags content below confidence thresholds, human experts review and correct it. The escalation rate depends on content type and MT engine quality. We provide transparent reporting on escalation rates so you can track quality trends over time.

How quickly can you provide a pricing proposal?

Within 48 hours of receiving your volume details, content types, and quality requirements. The proposal includes a transparent cost breakdown, a comparison of governance vs. ungoverned risk, and projected quality metrics based on your content profile. No multi-week RFP process required.

Request a custom pricing proposal

Tell us your AI translation volume, content types, and quality requirements. We will send you a transparent pricing proposal within 48 hours — including a cost comparison of governance vs. ungoverned risk.

Prefer email? ricard@kobaltlanguages.com