Translation Costs Per Page or Word?

We often hear the question “how do you charge for translation … by the word or by the page?” Our translation fees are based on the number of words in the source text and here’s why.

Translation services that price their services based on a per page formula are often dealing with limited types of documents, for example things such as birth certificates or other types of personal documents for immigration purposes. Often these types of documents have some degree of standardization so the scope of effort required for translating them might be generalized to arrive at a per page fee.

Full Service Translation Pricing By The Word

Full service translation services such as Affinity Translation work with many different types of text files including manuals, technical publications, marketing materials, and more. Each of our translators have specializations in various subject domains and are tasked with assignments as projects in their areas of specialization are received. Per page pricing generally does not work for more complex translation projects. Pages might have 50 words, or they might have 500 words, and the work load requirement for these two scenarios is obviously quite different. A standard fee is therefore not an appropriate pricing metric.

For this reason translation clients are asked to send us electronic files with text for translation in order to allow our project managers to review the text and determine the appropriate costs. In all cases our standard service fees include both translation and post-translation proofreading by a second translator. Translators are native speaking in the specified target language (the language we’re going into).