Translation cost: World's rates and tips for reducing
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Today, translation and localization are highly profitable when users are just one click away from the businesses. The latest research, for example, claims that each 1$ spent on localization brings a 25$ return, which is a great ROI. Such a success of localization implementation is conditioned by the high impact of the native language on the users and as a result their increasing loyalty.
To add more weight to the word above, let's overview the CSA - Can't Read, Won't Buy report, which proves the following:
- 65% of users prefer the content in their native language;
- 40% of users wouldn't buy on the website with the language other than their;
- 73% of customers need product reviews in their native language.
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Based on all these facts above, the translation industry has become a necessary part of all the processes for companies going global. The statistic shows that the language market has doubled twice in the last decade, which is closely connected to the increased internet spreading and popularity and ability to communicate with users worldwide easily. Companies started interested in providing multilingual regional versions to stay on the same wavelength as their customers. As a result, today the translation market reaches over $40 billion with a tendency to grow.
How much does translation cost today?
When starting software translation, one of the initial challenges is understanding the fair market pricing. The cost of translation service can vary from, for example, 5$ to 50$ or even 150$ per hour, or you can meet the price per word/line, etc. All this can be confusing for customers, so we decided to talk about translation costs a bit more.
First of all, if you want to get the average cost of translation services, it is impossible because of a few factors:
- The language pair's rarity. The more common language pairs like English-German will be cheaper than rare pairs, like Sweden-Chinese. The more translators are on the market for the pair the lower will be the price and vice versa.
- The industry of the text that should be translated. Even native speakers can't correctly describe complex topics like banking, medicine, legal, accounting, etc. As these are sensitive areas, such texts should be translated by the translators who are professionals in the field, or by the experts inside the industry.
- Urgency. Here all is transparent as much as can be - the faster you need a result the more expensive the work will be, as it requires extra effort from the translator's side.
The location of the translators also impacts their salaries, and to show the difference, let's take a look at the average translation services cost in different countries worldwide
Сost of website translation. How much should I pay?
Besides all this data, there is an important question, how much tentatively does translation cost for the website or software? Let's try to count together the simple example of a small website with only three pages - homepage, contact, and about us. And to simplify this counting, let's choose the English-French pair.
The tentative number of all words on these pages will be around 1500, including all the UI elements like the menu, footer, and CTA.
To provide the most accurate pricing, we compared the prices from different agencies with those from Lingohub. In terms of noncompeting, we will provide only the tentative pricing we got without agency names
- 199$ in agency A
- 215$ in agency B
- 210$ with Lingohub translating services (70*3=$210)
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Thus, if you need to translate x10 pages with respectively 15K words, the average price will be $2000 for a general topic like a software translation. As we mentioned above, the price can vary based on multiple factors.
But here is a pitfall that usually isn't considered when estimating the website translation - you need many more resources than just a translator. Besides the linguist, you need at least a manager who can provide the correct guides for the translator, like a list of terms and a style guide, and who will manage and control the entire process. Also, companies often require a designer, especially when dealing with languages that use different scripts, such as Latin or Cyrillic, to fix UI issues, as various languages often require different box sizes, etc. Besides the professional team, you should count the tools you need to manage the translation.
Of course, when we talk about small websites/landings with up to 2-3K words, you can store all content somewhere, but when discussing mid-size and bigger resources it is impossible to handle everything without the translation management system. At this stage, you must find a solution that will save your team's time and, consequently, money spent on translation.
How can Lingohub help reduce translation costs?
Case 1. The term consistency.
Whether there is only one person working on your content or a team, having a consistent terminology base can help minimize issues and provide necessary context. For instance, if a specific feature is spelled in a particular way, it should be used consistently throughout all the texts on your website, software, etc.
You can provide a term base as a separate document, but you or your manager have to ensure after translation that all important terms were translated correctly. Also, when translating, your team has to switch between translation and documentation to find the needed term. Such a process is just about the extra time spent on the task that can be handled automatically.
As a solution, the Lingohub application has a term base that highlights all terms inside the Editor and provides the correct suggestion right during the translator's work.
Additionally, the quality checks feature is a warning if the term was used not in the exact match as the glossary suggests, which allows managers to see all the issues with terms translation initially, without a deep dive into the texts. Such an approach highly saves the time of translating and editorial teams and, as a result, the translation costs.
Extra case - imagine after some time, your team decided to change the feature name or even the company name spelling, for example, "Company Name" instead of "CompanyName." Changing all the text on your resource is a long and energy-consuming process, while with Lingohub you can automatically import all your content, and add a new rule to the term base, thus all segments with the wrong term will be highlighted.
Thus your team will see where the misspelled words are placed and quickly change them. After all fixing is done the content can be exported back in one click to your app/repository and delivered.
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Case 2. Translation speed
A lot of translators are charged per hour which means that any reduction of this time can significantly save the translation budget.
At Lingohub you have two main options that aim to speed up the entire translating process. Pre-translation feature, which can use the previous translation data, AI engine results, or any existing language to fill the text segments. The AI machine translation, which results are available during the translation process within the Editor, along with a custom searching ability, all without leaving the application. By reusing the existing translation or support of the modern robust engines you can accelerate the entire process two times like our customers already do.
Read more: → How Chipolo accelerated the localization process with Lingohub?
Case 3. Challenges with the external experts
During the long-term translating process, when the team supports various multilingual versions, the situation when the business has to hire freelancers or an agency to support the process occurs often.
If the new team members or agency are not involved in your translation management process and system, you may encounter issues when the file structure is broken (e.g., some tags are missed).
To solve this challenge, Lingohub supports the XLIFF format for efficient maintenance of file structure and to avoid potential issues when working with external translators. Using XLIFF, you can easily move localization files back and forth without risking any disruption to your code's structure.
→ More about our integrations and files supported
To sum up
The modern translation industry can't be imagined without modern tools designed to automate and simplify processes. No matter if you are working with external translators, freelancers or an in-house team, the translation and localization management software directly impacts the cost of website translation by reducing the manual tasks and efforts.
Lingohub was designed with the understanding of challenges that exist in the translator's way, so the tools we provide are thought out to the smallest detail to ensure that everything is going the right way.
If you want to get more information, book a demo with our team, and we will guide you through all the features. If you'd rather try it on your own, take advantage of the free 14-day trial period (no credit card required). We hope to see you on board soon as we work towards global outreach together.