What is your standard rate for translation

Translation Pricing Calculator and Fair Translation Rates Explained

Often clients ask me why some translators charge them more than others.

Most people have never done a translation job and so they have difficulty understanding that apparently similar translations might have a very different life.

There are many reasons behind the cost of translation. This post will help you understand what you should take into consideration when purchasing a translation job.

What is the standard cost of translation services?

This is a tricky question since there is no standard price. A lot depends on where you purchase, from whom you purchase, and what technologies you or the translators are using.

The tables or estimates you generally find online are examples that don’t take into consideration many different factors and often are not accurate or trustworthy.

Why does the translation pricing vary?

There are many reasons behind the costs of a translation. Some are related to the language, others to the type of text or media, and others depend on your requirements.

Don’t forget to take them all into consideration—and if you are a translator, don’t forget to explain all of this to your client!

Text complexity

Not all texts are the same. Translating a commercial brochure, a financial statement, a binding contract or a very niche medical study requires different skills and knowledge. This, of course, impacts the translation cost.

Although we can probably divide the level of complexity into 4 macro sets, consider that every translation vendor has its own “metric” and offer.

Type of media

Different media hides different difficulties, and this translate into different translation pricing.

Localizing a website or an app, for example, in addition to translators may require the help of a programmer.

Translating a document from a desktop publishing software like InDesign presents other challenges compared to a file from a word processor like MS Word. You need to have an understanding of how the software works, fix the graphic so that the file looks the way the designer intended it to be, and deal with amendments. In fact, edits and revisions often force the translator to do the entire translation from scratch or require lots of manual edits.

Delivery time

When your translation is urgent be prepared to spend more.

Certification

In some special cases (especially with immigration), there is the need for a signed statement from the translator attesting the accuracy of the translation. This statement has to be signed by a notary public. The added cost depends mainly on the country of provenance.

Language combinations

Business is business. High competition in the language combination results in lower pricing.

Location

The location matters both for the competition but also for the translator’s cost of living.

Structure of the translators’ team

If your project is as big as it requires someone to manage it, then this will translate into more costs.

Technology

Technology is also disrupting the translation world. From the almost futuristic Machine Translations (check this report if you want to change your perspective about MTs) to the more common Translation Memories, translators and businesses now have tools that can help them to speed up their process, improve the quality of translation, and drastically reduce costs.

Proofreading

Some translators proofread their document by default. Although this will translate into an added cost, proofreading is required if you care about quality.

Volumes

Translators might use discounts on volume to improve their customer retention.

Relationships

We often forget that any time when purchasing a service or product we are dealing with people. Creating a long-term relationship with a client or a supplier based on trust and respect is often a win-win situation and the perfect start to creating a quality/cost balance.

How to calculate the cost of translation?

Different pricing models are used to calculate the translation costs. It’s not unusual to receive an estimate structured in a completely different way from one translator or another. If you are in Italy, you might have an estimate based in “Cartelle” (25 lines of 50/55 characters). In Brazil, it might be based in “Lauda” (I found a lot of controversy on how much a Lauda is). Meanwhile, other standards are followed by the majority of the translators around the rest of the world:

Translation costs per word

This is the most common way of estimating translation costs for languages written using the Latin alphabet. The range varies widely based on the conditions we saw above and varies from US$0.08/word to US$0.25/word. For a better idea of what might be the right cost, check out our calculator.

Translation costs per character

For symbol/character-based languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc., cost is based on the number of characters since the equivalent number of words in a Latin-alphabet based language cannot be easily calculated. Again, check our calculator to gain a better understanding of the rates.

Translation costs per line

This practice is common in German-speaking countries. A line is supposed to be 55 characters including spaces.

Translation costs per hour

With websites, apps or big projects, you might want to consider agreeing on an hourly basis contract. Of course, in this case, the pricing might vary based on your location.

Translation costs per page or minimum fee

In the case of very short translation jobs, the translator might offer a fixed fee.

Calculate translation costs per word or characters

The translation pricing calculator uses data gathered online; therefore, you shouldn’t trust it completely since conditions can change. However, this is a nice tool to understand what costs you should expect.

How can you reduce your translation costs?

Planning your content upfront and introducing technology into your workflow can drastically reduce your translation costs and at the same time improve the quality of your translations and decrease the turnaround time.

Work on your content

The first step is to plan your content upfront:

Additionally, here is a list of 10 mistakes you might be making when producing InDesign documents in many languages

Leveraging Translation Memories

A Translation Memory (TM) is a database in which translations are stored for later reuse. This means that once you’ve translated a piece of content, you won’t need to translate it from scratch again but only check if that old translation still applies to the new content.

If you hire a translator, chances are that they are already using this technology. Many vendors charge a lower fee for translations coming from a TM, so reusing the same text as much as possible among your documents will drive down your translation costs.

You can also consider adding to your workflow a tool that allows you to use a Translation Memory yourself. Having control over your own TMs can be very powerful in order to reduce the translation effort and cut down on costs.

Use Machine Translation

In recent years, AI has improved tremendously and services like Google, Deepl, IBM Cloud, and many others are becoming better and better by the day and are truly challenging human translators.

Currently, the level of Machine Translation is not good enough to be blindly trusted, but it offers a great opportunity if used in combination with humans.

In this report dated November 2018 curated by Intento, you can see how good machine translation has become.

By combining two of the best Machine Translation services available at the moment, they recorded:

The recorded reduction in costs is incredible: 0.2% compared with the human translation price!

Translation Memories + Machine Translation

Now, imagine using the Translation Memories on the text that was previously translated in other documents, and on the new segments with the suggestions coming from Machine Translation.

We’ve seen how our clients that use Translation Memories reduce the number of translations they have to do by 50% (sometimes even more).

With the remaining 50%, you can use Machine Translation. In that case, the translator receives a suggestion from the AI and he can simply click on it—this can reduce the translation time of a sentence to almost immediate.

From our clients, we recorded data that is similar to the analysis made by Intento. The suggestions coming from AI (for the major languages) are so good that almost half of the segments can be translated directly using text coming from the AI.

That means, combining TMs with MT can reduce the amount of text that a professional translator has to focus on down to less than 25%.

In fact, we’ve been told by many of our clients that since the amount of content they have to translate decreased drastically using this type of technology and getting the translation done became so fast, they decided to start doing the translations internally (using native speakers inside the organization, partners, resellers).

If you have never considered using Machine Translation, you might want to test our own Redokun with its 14-day free trial and see directly in your documents how this technology could work for you.

What is a standard translation rate?

The translation rate is calculated based on the principle of supply and demand. The more translators work in a language pair, the cheaper the rate and vice versa.

How do I know I’m getting a good translation for a good price?

What is the rate difference between translation agencies and freelancers?

The rates offered by translation agencies are a few cents higher due to their complex organization and the fees they charge for paid translations. Even so, translation agencies guarantee:

“It was very easy and fast to get my app translated by ICanLocalize. Just upload the ‘Localizable.strings’ file and later download the translated versions of this file.”

Matthias Bauer

Some agencies offer fixed rates for various language pairs. In the table below, you can see ICanLocalize fixed rates for software localization projects (from English).

Translation rates per word on ICanLocalize for software projects

“ICanLocalize is the most rapid responding translation service for WPML. Once installed, I can have journalists enable translations for their articles on the fly. The support team is very well versed with WPML, and whenever I have a question, they are very willing to help.”

Todd Hanlon

The International Fur Federation

Certainly, a higher rate means that the language pair is rare, or the subject field is technical or highly specialized. If you are working with a translation agency on a regular basis, they might give you a discount as a sign of appreciation for being a loyal client.

Remember that translators, like regular employees, work with more enthusiasm on a well-paid project in which they feel their work is valued. The average range is from $0.10 per word for regular translations and up to $0.15 for more specific technical translations. The latest is usually harder to get.

What is your standard rate for translation

We have been selecting and training the best professional translators in the world since 1999, supporting them with cutting-edge technologies to help over 255,388 clients in all industries.

More complex need?

We will help you get a quote for complex documents, PDFs, websites, software, and more.

Why Choose Us

Guaranteed Quality

We support the world’s best translators with advanced quality assurance processes. And that’s not all: we provide a free comprehensive translation review if you happen to be unsatisfied.

On-Time Delivery

We offer the best performance levels in the industry, with an optimized workflow that guarantees over 95% of deliveries on time. Plus, in the unlikely event we miss a deadline, we will refund the translation up to its full cost.

Pay After Delivery

We genuinely trust our clients, which is why we have created the Pay After Delivery model. With Pay After Delivery, you can pay within five days of the translation’s delivery via credit card, bank transfer or Paypal.

High-quality translations with quick turnaround times. Google Ads and Facebook campaigns for overseas markets are no problem for us now!

Translated helped Airbnb develop a new translation workflow maximizing quality, control and cost efficiencies.

The Translated team has always been professional and helpful. They are quick to respond to requests for assistance and they respect the agreed deadlines.

Translated has been localising Google Ads and Facebook marketing campaigns for us for several years. We consider them one of our trusted partners, and they have never let us down.

The Translated team is efficient from both a sales and an operations perspective. They are especially diligent when it comes to delivery deadlines, and they quickly take action where necessary to resolve any issues after delivery.

Over the last few years, I’ve used Translated for translations from German and Russian into English. Their service is normally quick and efficient, with a transparent pricing structure.

Our clients

We proudly serve over 255,388 clients worldwide, including young innovative startups and large global enterprises from varying industries. We have optimized our processes to meet their unique needs, adapting from small, on-demand tasks to high-touch, fully managed solutions.

How much does a translation cost?

The cost of a translation depends on various factors, the largest ones being the length of the text to be translated, i.e. the number of words, and the linguistic combination. The rarer the language combination, the higher the translation rate: for example, a translation from English to Japanese will cost much more than a translation from English to Italian, because there are less translators available for this language combination and the cost of living in Japan is much higher than in Italy.

In addition to these two variables, the price of a translation can vary substantially according to the subject. The more specific and technical the terminology in a translation, the higher the translation rates. For example, the translation of an article on the operation of nuclear reactors will cost more than the translation of a brochure on the best restaurants in New York.

Lastly, prices for a translation change if it requires particular formatting work, an urgent delivery date, or if it is a specific type of translation (sworn translation, proofreading previously translated material, certified translation, and more).

Three levels of service

The table below shows indicative translation prices for different types of documents depending on the quality level requested.

The prices shown are based on the translation of a general subject from Italian to English and a standard delivery date, which is about 2,500 words per day from the project’s second business day.

1 We always invoice a minimum of 100 words to cover our production costs.
2 If you need a sworn translation, please go to this page.

Translated has offered multilingual translation services for over 20 years through a network of 348,868 native-speaking professional translators from all over the world. Thanks to this experience, we can respond to all your translation needs in terms of languages, formats, specializations, and delivery times.

The quality of the final translation is ensured by our native speaking translators living in the country where the translated documents will be published, guaranteeing that the translation is accurate, appealing, and coherent in the destination country.

Translation Rates Per Word – What Do You Get For Your Money?

The fact that you’re reading this page, looking for translation rates per word means, there is a high chance that you could be about start your first ever translation project, unless you’re just unhappy with your current language service provider.

Here are few common questions when approaching your first translation project:

Professional translation seems expensive, so can I just use Google translate instead?

Google translate is getting better every day, but it still has a long way to go to replace a human translator.

Aside from accuracy concerns, when it comes to using a tool like Google translate, you have to think about non-disclosure agreements as well because who knows where that data/text go once you hit submit?

If you just want to get a rough idea of what a passage of text means in another language, then it’s fine to use Google translate, but don’t rely on it for professional uses because the dangers could be fatal.

We wrote a post on the pitfalls of Google translate which you can find here:

How much does professional translation cost?

All human translations are carried out by professional native speakers who are paid on a per word basis, and the rates differ usually on the language or the skills of the translator rather than the industry e.g. medical translation rates per word for a document into French would but no different to the rate for a legal document into French.

If you have a lot of words to translate, then the rate per word can decrease because more words carry more repetition (repeated phrases and sentences) and the discount is passed on accordingly.

Also, the more translation projects you do with the same agency the better, because the rate will lower over time as previous translations will get recycled using CAT tools.

More on CAT Tools here:

The cost of translation can range from £100 to £160 per 1,000 words which is approximately 2-3 pages of A4 text depending on your language combination.

Example Quote: if your document has 1,600 words and the rate for translation per 1,000 words is £109 (£0.109 per word) then the total translation cost would be £174.

All translation agencies charge per word because it’s the fairest and simplest way to calculate fees as translation fees per page wouldn’t work because you could probably get thousands of words on one page if you change the font size to 1px.

When asking for a quote make sure the translator/agency you choose for your project doesn’t try to round your project up to the nearest 1,000 words because projects should always be based on the exact word count.

Translations rates per word can vary based on different factors, as discussed above, which means the final rate can be lower so always use standard rates as a ball park figure.

Now you know how translation rates per word are calculated, who do you choose for your project?

Unless you’re in a position where money is no object, you are challenged with getting the best results for the lowest price.

In business there’s only two ways to make more money and that’s by either cutting costs or increasing revenue.

Chances are you will get sucked in by the lowest price because translation providers offer wildly different rates for what most people assume is the same level of service.

You would think that it’s common sense that making a decision based on price doesn’t work if the services offered are different but it’s clearly not because most people would opt for the lowest price, no questions asked.

The questions you need to be asking are:

These questions are important and if your heading into your first translation project there’s a good chance you won’t think about any of them.

Let’s take ‘Are translators qualified?’ for example, in some countries the translation industry is not regulated, so anyone can call themselves a translator, making it easy to be mislead.

You wouldn’t want to risk a complete novice working on your legal, medical or technical document, for example, where errors could cost lives.

Because of low barriers to entry, people who can speak two languages think this qualifies them to be a translator.

At Tongue Tied (Manchester) we have over 25 years’ experience in the translation industry, so you can rest assured that you’re in safe hands and we would only place your projects with translators that have experience in your industry.

With a network of over 4,000 highly qualified translators we remove all of the guess work for you when it comes to choosing the right translator, because:

What is your standard rate for translation

As the Bible states the workman is worthy of his meat (Matthew 10:10). How should a translator define the prices for his (her) services?
Recently I heard about someone who was considering to start as a translator. The native Dutch teacher was very convinced about his linguistic qualities in German and believed he could offer his service to Dutch companies. And hey, why not? He was not entirely sure about the right price to ask but considered to charge € 0,35 per source word.
That his proposed word rate was about four times the word rate of native German professional translators was justified. He as a native Dutch had a PhD in some subject and I – stupid – did not have it.

But how should a freelance translator define his price? The rates of freelance translators are varying greatly.

To go short, the price for a technical translation from English into Dutch can be more expensive when done by a translator living in The Netherlands than by a translator living in Africa. A similar translation from Dutch to Chinese would similarly be more expensive than the translation from English to Dutch.

To come up with a good rate, no matter whether it would be a word rate or hourly rate, is therefore a bit more complicated than stating simply a rate that you consider to be worth. Of course you’re worth a good price, but when it is too high you will certainly have less work (although that will be compensated then by the word rate). In the worst case however you won’t have any work at all. Than the price you think you’re worth is against you.

What to consider when choosing a rate

When considering a rate for your work you should take into account the following factors:

That requires you to sit down and calculate all your costs at a yearly and/or monthly basis. When you know your expenses, you know what you need to earn at least to cover those expenses. But of course you want to have more. You want to have a comfortable life and some money for your holidays, retirement and car repairs when you need them.
Don’t forget your taxes. Taxes vary from country to country but you need to pay them. Period.

There’s another important thing you need to consider, which was not mentioned before. My experience in this business is that prices are under increasing pressure. Furthermore, when you have a set client base you often do not have any chance to increase your rates without consequences. In many cases translation agencies agree an acceptable rate with freelance translators. Of course there are agencies which offer rates that are not worth to wake up for, but you can turn down those offers. However, it is more difficult to increase your price once working for an agency. So in your rate you need to consider future requirements as well. If you don’t want to work 80 hours a week for the upcoming 20 years, you should increase your rate to a reasonable rate that is in line with the rates of colleagues, with your living standard and with market developments.

Calculating your hourly rate

Once you have calculated all your needs and some comfort, you can derive your rate.
Consider the following:

Calculating your word rate