Employee Handbook Translation Basics

We are often requested to provide quotations for translating employee handbooks into Spanish. Many of the quotes we issue proceed on to become actual projects.

Some basic information and facts about employee handbook translation services follow:

How Large Are Employee Handbooks?

When we assess the scope of employee handbook translation projects the metric we use is the word count. Pages are not a good metric since the number of words on a page can range significantly from just a few words to more than 500. So a per page fee typically cannot be provided.

Among the employee handbook translation projects we’ve performed the word count range is generally between 5000 and 20,000 words more or less.

How Much Time Is Needed For Translation?

The time requirement for employee handbook translation services scales with the scope of the project. Obviously larger handbooks require more time to translate than smaller handbooks. The general rule of thumb that we tell prospective customers in advance of reviewing their handbook documents is that an average rate for human translation services is about 2500-3000 words per day. At our company time is also allowed for proofreading of the translation by a second linguist. Translators are native speaking in the target language.

What About Document Formatting?

Our process includes formatting of the document to visually match the original English version in the target language version handbook. Clients may notice that page correspondence is somewhat different in the target language document because some languages require more words relative to English to express equivalent meaning. The word counts for Spanish translations tends to average 15% more relative to English. Most often employee handbooks documents have basic formatting although sometimes more elaborate formatting using desktop publishing applications such as InDesign are seen.

 

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Employee handbook Spanish translation services