Most likely, you have looked for translation service providers before – perhaps because of the translation of your business website, business documentation, catalogues, marketing materials, or legal documents. You sat down in front of your computer and went hunting for prices of translation services.

It takes about 3 minutes to read the article.

When looking for a particular service, there are quite a few factors we keep in mind. The translation must be:

  • Quality – a good presentation of the company in a foreign language, a summary of a thesis without errors or stylistically and terminologically appropriate documentation are extremely important if you want to show a sufficient degree of professionalism.
  • Fast – Nowadays the speed of service is crucial. It often depends on the speed of the offer whether you will beat your competition or not.
  • Affordable ­–when searching for services, everyone inquires about the price and of course we almost always strive for the lowest one. However, it is precisely this factor that raises many additional questions.

When browsing, you probably first noticed that the prices quite differ from one another. Some providers may charge half as much for a translation than others, while some do not even have a price list published on their web site, and only quote the price upon your request.

How is translation priced?

First, the difference between a regular and a translation or copyright page needs to be clarified. A copyright page is a unit of measurement used by translators, agencies and songwriters. Typically, one translation page contains 250 words or 1500 characters without spaces or 1800 characters with spaces – depending on how you count.

Copyright pages are calculated because this method of counting is the most correct and fair for both translation service providers and their clients. One regular page may contain very little text written in a large font and with pictures, or it can contain a lot of text in a small font and without any pictures.

Therefore, if you are interested in how many copyright pages your document has, you can easily check it by counting words or characters in a word processor (for example: Word), and then divide the number of characters or words by the numbers above.

In addition to the length of the text, the price of a translation also depends on the complexity of the content, the language combination and the necessity for the translation, i.e. a shorter deadline. For texts that contain specific terminology, translators spend more time searching for appropriate terminology and tailoring the text to a specific field, which is why translations of such more complex texts may be slightly more expensive. However, in our agency, we always try to get closer to the client’s wishes so that in the end, both sides are satisfied.

Are quality and price proportional?

Many people attribute a high cost of a translation to high quality. However, that is not always the case. There are many different providers of translation services and prices vary greatly. Nevertheless, without a doubt, the cheapest translation in the end, with all the corrections, can be the most expensive.

Certainly, when it comes to translating, it is best to rely on the saying: a good name is better than reaches.