The translation brief checklist agencies keep skipping.

Most briefs that land with a linguist are missing the same six things. Add them and the rework rate falls in half.

1. Audience. Not "France". A persona, a register, an age band.
2. Channel and length constraint. Caption character limits, on-screen text, voiceover seconds.
3. Brand voice reference. Not a brand book. Three recent examples in the target language, with one to copy and one to avoid.
4. Do-not-translate list. Product names, claims, legal phrases. The thing that turns a 2-day project into a 2-hour project.
5. Tone of the source. Earnest, ironic, playful. The source rarely makes this explicit, so the brief has to.
6. Where the work will live. A press release reads differently from a paid social asset, even when the words are identical.

None of this is exotic. It just doesn't fit in the file name.