For companies with multinational operations, communication in other languages and multilingual content have become part of their everyday processes. Thus, investment in translation and localization enables companies to streamline their workflow. However, how to invest and how much to spend are of paramount importance.
Choose the adequate service according to your needs
Neither all content must be translated nor it must be translated in the same manner. Knowing what and how to do it enables companies to be aware of how much they need to invest in translations.
The type of content, the speed of response, accuracy in translation, purpose and quantity define what type of translation is best in every case. A clinical trial translation, where specialization and more quality control processes are required, is not the same as customer support services, where the response time is vital, in which case automated translation enables streamlining translations, with up to 18 times faster turnaround.
Price per word depends on the number of steps involved in translation; however, an automated translation and post-edit costs up to 70% less per word than human translation services.
Differences in prices
There are big differences in the price charged per word for different combinations of languages. A survey performed by the GSA revealed that average price per word is USD 0.21, being English-Spanish the most economical combination at USD 0.16 per word and Japanese-English the most expensive at USD 0.25 per word.
Like in almost every market, this difference partly stems from the basic principle of supply and demand. This means that the higher the number of translators and persons speaking a language, the lower the price per word.
Another factor to take into consideration is that for accuracy and quality purposes, texts should be translated by native translators. The cost of living is not the same in Venezuela or Miami; the cost of living of the country of residence of the resources hired indirectly affects the costs of service.
Therefore, not only the languages to be translated must be known, but also where you are hiring resources.