Where to Find a Proofreader for Your AI Book Translation

Before you publish an AI translation, I recommend a light proofread by a native speaker of the language you're publishing in. A good translation is close enough that a quick read-through usually closes the gap, and since humans and AI make mistakes in different places, that second reader is worth having. translateabook.com offers advanced AI proofreading, but it doesn't offer human proofreading itself. I'm working on a directory of vetted proofreaders, and until it's ready, here are the common places to find one, starting with the sites that cover every language.

I haven't hired through these sites myself, so for each one I describe what it offers, as I checked it on its own pages in October 2026.

Proofreader or Translator?

A proofreader reads only the translation. A native speaker of your target language will catch grammar mistakes, typos and sentences that sound translated, without reading your original. It's the cheaper option, and for a good AI translation it's usually enough.

A translator can check the translation against your original as well, which catches a misread sentence or a missing passage that a proofreader can't see. It costs more. The industry calls this machine translation post-editing, or MTPE. Some translators also offer a "translation assessment", which is a written report on how good the translation is, with no corrections in the text.

Not every site offers both, so each one below says which.

Marketplaces for Any Language

These three sites have people for every language pair, whatever the language of your original.

• ProZ.com (proofreading and MTPE) calls itself the world's largest community of translators. Its search, ProZ Find, is free and works without an account: choose "Proofreading" or "MT post-editing", then your language, and narrow it down to native speakers or to Certified PRO members, who were certified by a professional association or screened by their peers. You can also post a job there for free, with no commission.
• Upwork (proofreading and MTPE) works through job posts: you describe your project and receive proposals from freelancers, and you can also invite those whose profiles you like. Its Top Rated badge marks the top 10% of its freelancers, and Top Rated Plus the top 3%. On a fixed-price contract, Upwork holds your payment until you approve the work, or releases it on its own 14 days after the work is submitted if you don't respond.
• Fiverr (proofreading and MTPE) works the other way round: freelancers sell fixed-price services, usually in Basic, Standard and Premium packages, and you can message them before ordering or ask for a custom offer. Its levels go from Level 1 and Level 2 to Top Rated, which also takes a manual evaluation by Fiverr, and Fiverr Pro freelancers are hand-vetted. Fiverr releases your payment when you accept the delivery, or on its own 72 hours after delivery.

On Upwork and Fiverr in particular, the quality varies a lot from one freelancer to the next. If you're publishing in English, French, German, Spanish or Italian, the specialized directories below are worth a look as well.

If You're Publishing in English

English has the most choice:

• Reedsy (proofreading in English, and translators) is a marketplace of publishing professionals that accepts only a small share of applicants (the top 3% of translators who apply, by its own count). Its editors and proofreaders work in English. Its translators mostly work between English and French, Spanish, Italian, German or Portuguese, and Reedsy suggests searching their profiles for "AI" to find those willing to edit an AI translation.
• The CIEP directory (proofreading) comes from the UK's Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading and is free to search. You can look for a proofreader by genre, and filter on members who work with indie authors. Every listed member has shown the institute evidence of their training and experience.
• The EFA (proofreading), the US Editorial Freelancers Association, has a free member directory that filters by skill, such as "Proofreading", and by genre, plus a free job list where you can post your project.
• The ITI in the UK and the ATA in the US (MTPE) are translators' associations with free directories, for a check against the original. Qualified ITI members carry the letters MITI or FITI, and the ATA can filter on a "Literature" specialty and on members certified in your language pair.

Specialized Directories If You're Publishing in Another Language

For French, German, Spanish and Italian, the national associations have free directories in which you choose the service you need:

For Latin American Spanish and other languages, start with the marketplaces above. If you know a quality directory for another language, please let me know.

Before You Hire

A few things that are worth settling with any candidate, whichever site you use:

• Say it's an AI translation. A number of Reedsy's translators won't work on one, while on ProZ alone thousands of translators list MT post-editing as a service.
• Say which service you want. A proofread of the translation alone and a check against the original are different jobs, priced differently.
• Ask for a short sample first. Send a page or two and see how they correct it before you commit the whole book.
• Look at their reviews and past books, ideally in your genre.
• Get a quote for the whole book. As a rough guide, proofreading a book often costs around 1 to 2 cents a word: the EFA's 2026 survey of its US members puts fiction at 1.2 to 2 cents, and Reedsy's average quote is 2 cents. That's roughly $500 to $1,000 for a 50,000-word novel. Rates vary with the language, the country and the proofreader's experience, and on Upwork the median rates of proofreaders run from $18 to $35 an hour. A check against the original costs more, because translators price it from their translation rate.
• Agree on the deadline and the file. Working in a Word file with tracked changes lets you see every correction they made.

Send Your Proofreader the Translation Guide

In Author mode, translateabook.com builds a translation guide before it translates your book, so that the names of characters and places, key terms, the tone and the level of formality stay the same from the first chapter to the last. On your translation's page, click the "..." button next to "Proofread with AI" and choose "Download translation guide": you get a Word document to send to your proofreader with the translation. A proofreader who knows that a name or a term was chosen on purpose won't "correct" it.

If you hire someone through one of these sites, I'd love to hear how it went: write to me, since it will help me build the directory.