One Stop Shop Translations: Fixing Translation Rates and Prices

One Stop Shop Translations: Fixing Translation Rates and Prices: As an independent translator one of the most important things to consider is what translation rates to set. A professional translators dile...

Fixing Translation Rates and Prices

As an independent translator one of the most important things to consider is what translation rates to set. A professional translators dilemma is being caught in one of two undesirable situations: ” Am I pricing myself out of the market or I seem to be working all day yet barely making enough to pay the bills?” The following article discusses some of the issues facing the translator when setting their translation rates:

Background and Experience

An experienced translator with an established client base can afford to set higher translation rates than a graduate with little or no experience. The experienced translator has been tried and tested and has the luxury of relative financial security with other clients. They are not desperate for the work. On the other hand an inexperienced graduate with little or no commercial experience is more desperate for the work and they have little or no financial security. This is why their rates are often cheaper.
The area of specialization often affects pricing. Highly specialized fields with a lot of technical jargon like for instance pharmaceuticals, technical engineering, legal and medical translation often require the translator to have a skilled qualification as well as experience in this field. This often leads to fewer qualified translators in this sector leading to higher prices. For example general business texts are less technical with less terminology and most translators can translate them no problem. This means there is a huge supply of translators to choose from leading to lower translation prices in this area.

Language Combination

The language combination has a huge effect on translation rates. It also often boils down to the old case of supply and demand. The more translators there are for a particular language combination the cheaper the prices will be. Certain combinations are simply more competitive than others for translators thus pushing the prices down.
The cost of living in the target language country where more often than not the translator is located influences translation rates. We notice that when the target language is a language from a developing country for instance Spanish translation services for Peru, the rates tend to be much cheaper as the GDP or standard of living in this particular country is very low. The translator can afford to charge much lower translation prices. A hundred EURO in Peru goes a lot further than in Spain.
We also should note that rare language combinations, for example Icelandic to French tend to be more expensive than more common language combinations such as English to Spanish translation. This is of course because there are fewer translators for the Icelandic to French combination so the translator can in effect name his price.

Culture

The culture of a country. For example we notice that German translation rates tend to be much higher than Spanish translation rates. This is down to a number of factors but a major bearing is the simple fact that a German translator will not work for €0, 05 per word whereas it seems to be a standard rate in Spain and Italy. This also ties in with the fact that the cost of living in Germany is much higher. From my experience there seems to be a lot of German translators but they just charge higher rates.
All in all setting realistic translation rates is one of the essentials to a successful translation career as a freelancer. A very low translation quote tends to have potential clients wondering why is this guy so cheap, plus often leaves the translator short of salary whereas too high a translation quote simply prices the translator out of the market. It is indeed a delicate balancing act that must be approached with caution.

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Mark Kieran, CEO, One Stop Shop Translations

One Stop Shop Translations is a translation services company based in Madrid, Spain. If you just want to browse over our translation rates, click here or get a great value personalised translation quote here.

Try One Stop Shop Translations for Quality, price and timeliness!

Understanding Translation Quotes

Time and time again clients are left baffled by the translation quote process. The fact that there is no formal method for translation quotes means that quotes can be interpreted in many different ways. A client may think he is choosing the cheapest quote while in fact this may be the opposite.
The following article describes some of the headaches and remedies to confront the quoting process. Normally, someone looking for translation services will shop around and receive at least three quotes. Firstly the needs of the client must be taken into consideration.

Is the client is only looking for a single language to be translated with no additional translation services such as software localization, desk top publishing or software localization?

In this case it is often recommended to go straight to the translator and avoid the middle man, the translation services company, as they of course take a percentage of the translation which in some cases can be up to 50% of the translation quote. This is justified by the additional value they add to a translation.

Does the client need multiple languages translated?

In this case the client may have the in-house resources and knowledge to deal with a multiple translation language project however this is often not the case as a lot of projects tend to be one off or a lot of the multilingual projects require a lot of specific translation expertise and skills which are only available within a translation company. For instance, the use of translation memories, the availability of a large database of specialized translators, Desktop publishing specialists or software localization engineers. For many companies this expertise and resources would be a sizable investment and not worth it in the long run so they tend to outsource their translation needs.
On the plus side a lot of translation tasks are very measurable, for instance word counts to measure the cost of translation, page counts to measure the costs of desktop publishing, string counts to measure the costs of software localization. Even though all these tasks within the translation process are very measurable translation quotes can differ to the extent that clients may even wonder if they are looking at the quote for the same project.
Here are some pointers to bear in mind when requesting a translation quote: With regard to the cost of translation some translation services companies may charge by: • Word count which tends to be the most reliable • Character count which can be especially the case with Asian languages • Page count which can be unreliable as there are often great variations in the number of words per page
Word counts and translation rates can vary greatly too due to the following factors: Some companies use Translation Memory technology. This technology can reduce the word count greatly even with new translations as there may be a lot of repetitions within a file. For instance, in the case of software a lot of the User Interface strings are repeated throughout the software. A lot of companies will offer a discount on these repeated strings or offer the repeated terms at a reduced word count. One thing to bear in mind however is that the cost of translation memory technology will be factored into the translation price. At the beginning the prices may seem a little more expensive but once the translations are in progress and the translation memories of previous work built up, the benefits of reduced word counts and more consistent translations are clearly evident. Paying that little bit extra will increases quality and in the long run reduce cost provided the translation memories are managed correctly. The aforementioned gives an insight as to why some translation prices and word counts can vary from one translation quote to another.

Does the translation quote include revision?

Some translation services companies factor the cost of revision into their translation rate making them more expensive. This has an obvious advantage in that translators are only human and a third eye to revise texts enhances quality. To summarize the use of translation memory technology and revision greatly enhance quality and give us an insight into why translation rates can vary so much between translation services companies. One must also bear in mind that a client can be more focused on cost as opposed to quality as in many cases they will have local offices doing the revisions.

Why do translation rates vary so much from language to language?

There is a simple rule of thumb here in that the rates tend to be reflected by the country of a particular language. For developing countries the local language tends to be translated more cheaply than in developed countries. For instance Chinese translation services tend to be cheaper than German translation services.
To summarize, three main factors that influence the cost of translation are: • Use of translation Memory technology • Language combination being translated • Whether there is revision
So far we have only considered the cost of translation but what about the other translation services: Software localization tends to be charged on an hourly basis but again the hourly rates can vary greatly from one translation Services Company to another. Again a major factor can be the location of the translation services company. For instance a translation vendor in a developing country tends to have much lower hourly software localization rates as opposed a vendor in a developed country where the costs of labor are much more expensive. The same principle also applies to the cost of desktop publishing.
All in all, if you are wondering why one quote is so cheap you have to probe that particular translation services company exactly what their process is, how they manage to cut their costs so much and be sure to ask for references of previous work completed. Picking the best translation quote is definitely a mind field but if all your priorities are clear there is a vendor out there to suit your needs.

If you like this post please "like" or "share" for more content

Mark Kieran, CEO, One Stop Shop Translations

One Stop Shop Translations is a translation services company based in Madrid, Spain. If you just want to browse over our translation rates, click here or get a great value personalised translation quote here.

Try One Stop Shop Translations for Quality, price and timeliness!

englishspanishtranslation.info add Medical Services Directory to their website.

englishspanishtranslation.info have just added a Medical services directory to their Spanish translation resources website. The englishspanishtranslation.info website has a links directory for everything from Spanish translation services to Business services for the Spanish region. The directory is human edited within twenty four hours ensuring high quality links.

Due to the demand for a medical directory focused on the Spanish region the team decided to add one.
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Mark Kieran had the following to say, “The website while still popular really needed a medical directory focused on the Spanish region. The amount of time, effort and professionalism put in by the team to compile a reliable links directory for Spain has been worth the effort. We now hope to get the response expected in order to grow the directory to the standards in line with englishspanishtranslation.info´s professional standards.

Translatemefree.com re-vamp English version of their website.

Translatemefree.com has just re-vamped the English version of its website. The Translatemefree.com website has a free website translation widget in the most popular languages of the world and different designs. In addition the website also has a business directory with everything from translation services to computer services.

Due to the popularity of the “flags with border” website translation widget design the company has introduced an additional three variations of this design called: “All major world languages”, “major European languages”, and “French, German, Spanish and Italian”. The new designs are due to popular request and mean that the user does not have to mess about with code. All they have to do is a simple no frills cut and paste onto their website for seamless website translation
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Mark Kieran had the following to say, “The website, while still popular really needed a re-vamp aesthetically. Also, we kept receiving the same requirement requests for the same design. To save time for us and users we decided to add the code for variations of the most popular design based on the most popular requirements. The result is that we are now receiving lees requirement requests but more use of the different variations of the design, “flags with border”. It’s a win-win situation where we have managed to keep everybody happy.”