A customer who loves your product writes you a glowing testimonial. The sentiment is unmistakable and the praise is specific — and the English is rough. Articles are missing, a tense is wrong, a phrase is translated a little too literally from their first language. You are now caught between two instincts that both feel right: publish it untouched because it is authentic, or rewrite it so it reads smoothly. Both instincts, followed blindly, lead somewhere bad. Publish it raw and a prospect may read the broken grammar as a sign the quote is fake or the customer is unsophisticated. Rewrite it freely and you have put polished words into the mouth of someone who never said them — which is the one thing a testimonial can never afford to be.
This is one of the most common editing dilemmas in B2B, because the customers who switch tools and write enthusiastic reviews are disproportionately international. The good news is that there is a principled line between fixing readability and fabricating eloquence, and once you can see it, the decision stops feeling like a gamble.
Why raw non-native English actually hurts conversion
It is tempting to argue that imperfect grammar signals authenticity, and there is a grain of truth to it — a too-perfect testimonial can read as ghostwritten. But on a sales page, the dominant effect of obviously broken English is friction, not trust. A prospect skimming your wall of testimonials gives each quote about two seconds. If they hit a sentence they have to re-read to parse, the quote has failed at its only job: transferring confidence quickly. Worse, a percentage of readers unconsciously attribute the awkwardness to you — "did they even proofread their own marketing?" — rather than to the customer who wrote it.
There is also an unfair-but-real perception risk. Rough English can trigger a prospect's assumption that the customer is from a smaller or less sophisticated operation, which undercuts exactly the credibility a testimonial exists to build. None of this means the testimonial is worthless. It means the raw text is a draft of a great testimonial, not the finished thing — and your job is to finish it without lying.
The line: fix the form, never invent the substance
Here is the principle that resolves almost every case. You are allowed to correct how something was said. You are not allowed to change what was said. Editing for grammar, spelling, and natural word order is presentation work, the same way you would clean up a transcript's filler words. Adding claims, sharpening vague praise into specific metrics, or swapping the customer's modest wording for marketing superlatives is fabrication, no matter how well-intentioned.
Concretely, these edits stay on the safe side of the line:
- Grammar and syntax. Fixing missing articles ("the," "a"), subject-verb agreement, verb tense, and prepositions. "Product help us very much for save time" becomes "The product helped us save a lot of time." Same meaning, readable form.
- Word order and idiom. Untangling literally-translated phrasing into natural English, as long as the rebuilt sentence means exactly what the original meant.
- Spelling and punctuation. Uncontroversial, and covered by your general editing, grammar, and punctuation guidelines.
- Light trimming. Removing a redundant clause so the quote is tighter, without removing any actual claim.
And these edits cross the line into fabrication:
- Inventing specificity. Turning "it saved us time" into "it saved us 12 hours a week." If the number wasn't in the original, you cannot add it — that is the difference between a real and a manufactured specific-metrics testimonial.
- Upgrading the sentiment. Rewriting "we are happy with it" into "it completely transformed our business." You have promoted a mild endorsement into a rave the customer never gave.
- Adding claims about features or outcomes the customer never mentioned.
- Changing the meaning of any sentence to make it sound better, even slightly.
The test you apply to every edit is one question: if I read this cleaned-up version back to the customer, would they say "yes, that's what I meant" — or "I never said that"? If it's the first, you're editing. If it's the second, you're fabricating.
Always send the edited version back for approval
Because non-native testimonials require more rewriting than usual, the approval step is not optional — it is the thing that keeps your heavy edit honest. After you clean up the grammar, send the customer the polished version with a simple note: "We tidied up the wording for our website — does this still capture what you wanted to say? Happy to change anything." This does three things at once. It catches any place where your grammar fix accidentally shifted the meaning. It gives the customer ownership of the final words, which matters especially when they are not editing in their first language and may not have noticed a subtle change. And it documents consent for the exact text you publish.
This is the same discipline that should govern every quote you run — a clean quote-approval workflow that gets sign-off without stalling the momentum. For a non-native testimonial, treat sign-off on the edited version as mandatory rather than a courtesy. A customer who happily approves a smoother rendering of their own praise has given you something far stronger than the raw text: a polished, readable, fully-consented quote.
When the rewrite would be too heavy, get on a call instead
Sometimes the original is rough enough that a faithful clean-up would require so much reconstruction that you can no longer be confident you are preserving the meaning. In that case, do not guess. The better move is a five-minute conversation: "I love what you wrote — can I ask you two quick questions so I quote you accurately?" Ask them to say, in their own words, the one or two things the product helped them do. People are almost always clearer and more specific out loud than in written second-language prose, and you walk away with a quote you can stand behind. This is the same instinct behind turning a thin one-liner into something usable — when the raw material is too sparse or too tangled, you go back to the source rather than embellish.
A call also sidesteps the most dangerous failure mode: a heavy silent rewrite the customer never sees, which is fabrication wearing the costume of editing.
Should you ever keep the original phrasing on purpose?
Occasionally, yes. If the customer is a well-known figure, or the slight non-native flavor is clearly part of an authentic, recognizable voice and the meaning is perfectly clear, light-touch editing that leaves some natural character can read as more genuine than a sanded-flat corporate sentence. The deciding factor is comprehension, not perfection: if a prospect can read it once and understand it immediately, a little texture is fine and even helpful. Only intervene more heavily when the roughness creates a parsing stumble. The goal is never a quote that sounds like your marketing team wrote it — it is a quote that sounds like the customer, at their clearest.
The bottom line
A testimonial in broken English is not a problem to hide; it is a strong endorsement in rough packaging. Fix the grammar, the word order, and the spelling so a prospect can absorb the praise in two seconds. Never add a claim, a number, or a superlative the customer did not give you. Send the cleaned version back and let them approve the exact words you will publish — and when the rewrite would be too heavy to do faithfully, get them on a call and let them tell you, clearly, what they meant. Do that, and a quote you were tempted to shelve becomes one of the most credible proofs on your page: enthusiastic, specific, readable, and unmistakably theirs.