Good morning,

I’ve received about 10 different quotes from various translations agencies. All of them are different. In fact, some of them are very, very high and some of them are unbelievably low. Why is this?

 

Question from Theo

 

Answer

Good morning Theo,

The difference in quotes for translations is a hot topic these days. Many people have the exact same question that you do. I’ve done my best to explain below:

As translations go – price can usually be related to quality.

When you order a translation, it might seem strange that different companies provide very different rates. After all, it’s the same project – so why the huge disparities?

Well, some companies have more overhead costs than others. Some companies use better translators than others. Sadly, some companies use translators who are totally unqualified for the job. Usually, this gets reflected in the price you are quoted.

Because we are in the translations business, we deal with other linguistic companies on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes clients require translations for enormous projects that run into the millions of words. It can sometimes be too much for any single company to handle. Often, this leads us to interactions with our peers – and sometimes it can be very scary out there.

I’ve provided a sample of an email correspondence from a translator we dealt with a few months ago.

 

“Dear agent, I am cooperating of the project requested by XXXXXX Inc. My question of today is needing what of the five susections required or the due date? Please kindly answer your responsibility here.”

Another sample below:

 

“Dear Sir, I am seeking full employment of your agency in translation tasks. My skills are well-known of late amongst many different agencies. I have been employed in the translation for 4 years. My expertise is of French-English and Spanish-English. Please respond me of your pay rates.”

As you can see, the internet has done great things for business – but it has also opened the door for unqualified people to pass themselves off as being qualified for something they are not.

Unscrupulous companies may hire unqualified translators simply to save money on salaries and benefits. This means that - once they collect the money from a client – there is very little that can be done in terms of correcting mistakes and dealing with quality issues.

Here’s a sample from an agency that offers ultra-low rate translations online:

“Dear Customer, Yes- we provide translates for all languages. We specialize in languages from Europe and North America. We will provide best case service for your needs. Please provide us with projects for short deadlines forthwith hoping for best future cooperation with you.”

As you can see, if this is the quality in English that is being demonstrated by a customer service agent for the company – we can only speculate about how bad their translations are.

Our company never hires unqualified translators. All of our translators receive strict background checks to verify their educational backgrounds and past work history. We also make all of our translators pass translations exams in order to verify their language skills and their knowledge of the subject matter they handle. Obviously, not all translations companies apply these types of standards to the people they hire.

This helps to explain why there can be such variation in terms of translations rates. Basically, you get what you pay for – this is as true for translations as it is for any other service.

There are other reasons why translations rates vary as well.

There are differences in the way pricing rates are structured and these can impact prices.

There are also companies that bill differently by using source and target languagesas benchmarks

The source language is the language that you send materials in as to be translated. The target language is the language your materials are translated into.

Our company quotes based on the source language. We find this to be the most effective way to provide and accurate and fair price to our clients.

Using the target language as a rate benchmarks opens up the ability to the translator to stretch the wordcount and bump up the price. In our view, this is unfair.

You can see examples of run-on sentences and overly expressive language in translations that are billed by the target language.

We’ve all tried to stretch out our writing in school to fit page requirements. This can have a real impact on the quality of your translations and it happens all the time with companies that bill by target word.

We only use the source language to determine prices – and this means our quotes are accurate and there are no surprises on the final bill.

 

Types of languages

The language pairs being translated can impact the rate.

There are more translations experts who specialize in English and French than there are who specialize in Swahili and Russian. The more obscure your language pairs are, the more you will likely pay.

The more translators who are available to translate your document, the less expensive it will be: simple supply and demand.

Any technical materials and complicated formatting issues will tend to cost more.

Highly technical documents require translations done by people who are expert linguists and experts in the technical field involved with the materials. This means it costs more. If your materials require a lot of graphical manipulation or formatting, this will cost more as well.

For example, a document sent to a translation company in .doc format will cost less than one sent in a more obscure format.

Some translators will charge premiums for any non-standard work involved with the project. Our company tries to reduce these costs to the extent that is possible.

The deadline or due date

The longer a translation company has to finish your translation, the cheaper it’s likely to be. If you send a rush file in with less than 24 hours’ notice before you need it back, it will likely cost you much more than if you give the company a month to handle it.

Translators can typically only handle about 2000 words per day. Any more than this and they start to make mistakes.

This means that rush jobs with 20,000 words will likely need to be divided and given to multiple translators at once. As this starts to happen, the agency incurs more costs and you will likely pay more.

Technology is also sometimes needed to help with highly specialized documents or source materials that are unclear or unreadable. This will also add to the cost.

Translation discounts and promotions

Sometimes translations companies offer specials and discounts at certain times of the year. This can lead to price fluctuations and discrepancies between quotes.

As an example, our company offers specials at some times of the year and volume discounts all year round. This can cause prices to differ.

To sum it all up:

Every translation company uses its own rate model and structure. The more you look around – the better deal you’re likely to find. That being said, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Our company offers translation with great quality at affordable prices. We strike the right balance between costs to our clients and reliability. That’s why we’ve been so successful.