The standard
How the score works.
Every Assurance Report leans on this page. This is the published standard behind the SPT Quality Index: what we measure, how the review runs, how it's calibrated, and what our certification does and doesn't claim. Version 0, stated in the open and revised in the open.
One calibrated index
Every report carries one overall score out of 100, the SPT Quality Index. It's calibrated to the same criteria on every report, so the same number means the same thing on every book, in every tradition, at every price tier.
The exact thresholds between quality bands are being calibrated on our first projects, against expert judgment, and will be published here as they lock. Until then, every band named on a report comes with what it means in plain language.
What would a 100 mean?
Let's answer this head-on: there is no perfect translation. A translation is a work of judgment, by a human or a machine or both, carrying meaning from one language into another, and two excellent translators will render the same sentence differently, both defensibly. So the index doesn't measure distance from a perfect text. No such text exists.
What it measures is how the work stood up to our published review. A 100 would mean every check, every reviewing lens, and every expert ruling found nothing left to change. That's rare, provisional, and still not "perfect." It's a review with nothing to add. Distrust any vendor who promises perfection. Including us.
The four dimensions
The index summarizes four dimensions, each scored separately on every report:
Source accuracy
Does the translation carry the meaning of the source, sentence by sentence, with no additions, no omissions, no drift?
Fidelity to tradition
Are the tradition's concepts handled the way the tradition itself would handle them? This is the dimension where generic tools fail without telling you.
Terminology consistency
Are the tradition's key terms rendered the same way from the first page to the last, according to the expert-approved glossary?
Readability
Does the translation read naturally to a native reader, with the register held and the voice preserved, nothing that smells of translation?
How the review runs
The draft passes deterministic checks: terminology adherence, consistency, formatting, completeness. Then an AI panel reads it through five lenses: source-language scholar, native reader, domain expert, literary stylist, lay reader. The layers are built to disagree. Every disagreement, and every passage the system can't vouch for, goes to a human expert whose rulings are recorded and feed the scores. The full pipeline, stage by stage, is on the Method page.
Read the methodCalibration, honestly
A score is only meaningful if it's anchored to human judgment. Generic machine metrics don't reliably grade this kind of translation, as our own evaluations confirmed, so our scores are calibrated against expert review. We started with our first blind study and re-anchor as the evidence base grows.
The goal is simple to state and hard to earn: when the system says 90, it should mean 90. That work is ongoing, and its results will be published on this page as they land.
What certification claims, and doesn't
An Assurance Report certifies that this specific translation went through the review described here, with the stated results, and that a named, credentialed expert ruled on every passage the system flagged. It doesn't warrant that the translation is flawless, and it doesn't endorse a book's ideas. We attest to the translation, not the theology. The full statement of what the report is and isn't lives on the Assurance Report page.
See the Assurance ReportVersion 0
This standard is version 0, published July 2026. When it changes, whether that's thresholds locking or a dimension being refined, the change gets logged here with a date. If the standard moves, you'll see it move.
Be early to something careful.
We're early, and small on purpose: a handful of projects, taken on with care, while we measure the method in the open. The people who talk to us now will shape what this becomes. Bring your questions and your doubts. Or bring a book you already paid to translate and see how we compare.