Hi,

I’ve got a lot of different quotes here from different translations companies. Some of them are giving me quotes based on the number of hours they think it will take them to translate. Others are asking me for a wordcount on my documents and others are saying they bill by the total number of pages. Your website says you bill by the number of total words in the source document. Can you tell me a little about how this works?

Hello Jennifer,

Great question!

We charge by the wordcount of the source document because we believe that this is the most effective way to bill clients. It promotes fairness and it ensures there are no surprises in the end. By using the source wordcount for our billing, there’s no chance that a translator will artificially inflate the final wordcount of the target document in order to charge you more.

There isn’t really any standard definition about what constitutes a ‘page’. Some pages contain more words than others. Some pages are formatted to accept large numbers of words and some are formatted to only hold a few.

Also, fonts are different. You can fit a lot more words on a page with size 8 font than you can with size 12 font. It would be unfair for a client with fewer words per page to pay the same rate as a client with more words per page.

Page rate billing creates complications and usually leads to confusion and anger. The page is just not a very good tool for measuring the size of a document in terms of its content.

The same thing applies here. Depending on the font, and the page format, there can be more information on some lines than others.

Also, there is no definition about the length of a standard line. Some lines can run on in great lengths when pages are formatted in landscape format.

It’s not just paper formats. These days, we have to consider lines in different formats like mobile phone messages and URLs. Things quickly can become very complicated.

It is insufficient to say that all lines will contain the average number of words. Our goal is accuracy – both in our translations and in our billing practices. Billing by the line just doesn’t provide the right level of accuracy for our clients or for us.

This is probably the worst way to calculate translations fees. First of all, it’s very difficult to determine how long a translation is going to take. This means that quotes are often wildly inaccurate. This leads to anger and frustration on the part of the client once the final bill comes in.

Similarly, different types of documents take more time to translate than others. Technical materials may also require a lot more work. Languages differ in terms of their complexity as well. This means that it’s very difficult to come up with a standard hourly rate that is fair to everyone.

Another unknown variable involved with hourly rate is the fact that the translator may actually take too long on purpose in order to earn more money. When companies bill by the hour for translations – the client usually loses any control over the final price. This, in our opinion, isn’t fair at all.

For all these reasons, we believe that billing by source wordcount (i.e. the total number of words in the document you originally send to be translated) is the best and most fair way to calculate our rates. It’s simple. It’s fast – and it avoids surprises when the final price is presented.