‘Smart’ human translation is not a craft performed in one second with the push of a button… If you think that a good translation is costly, you might consider the price you will pay for a flawed translation…

Comment: an expensive translation does not guarantee that the translation will be made by quality translators, nor does a cheap translation mean it will be made by amateur translators. It is recommended to pay for the translation of 250 words and examine the work provided before continuing on with the rest of the translation project at hand.

The pricing of a translation job is determined by several factors:

The text complexity – not every translator, as well-versed as he is in a pair of languages, is familiar with all the terms of a particular field. A text that contains many terms from the medical, legal, or technology fields, may cost more to translate, as it will require the translator to invest more research time in the field

1. Urgency – expedited translation may incur extra fee depending on the circumstances.
2. Handwriting, tables, unclear text – there are cases that slow down the process of translation and the time invested, which makes the task more costly (for example: a difficult to decipher hand-writing, or the need to replicate complex tables.)
3. The amount of material – a large amount of material to translate not under a pressure of time, will typically earn the customer with a discount.
4. The material provided for translation is not the final version: some customers may come up – either in the middle of the translation work or when it’s completed – with additional text or corrections that did not exist in the original material. This makes the translation more pricy because it produces additional work for the translator.
5. Sometimes the services required are beyond translation from one language to another – customers may require complementary services such as design services – that the translation be submitted in the same layout as the original document. This service is also taken into account when calculating the cost of the translation, but it makes life easier for the customer as he gets a finished product.

Pricing according to the source or to the target language? Some translators charge by the number of words (or pages)  in the source document (“source language”), and others by the number of words in the translated document (“target language”). An example of the pricing disparity between the two methods can be seen in translating from Hebrew to English – such a document will contain about 30% more words than the source document written in Hebrew.

Pricing by number of pages/words or by number of hours? Some determine the translation price by the amount of pages/words translated, others by hours. Translators consider a ‘page’ as one that contains 250 words. 

“In Other Words” translation rates start at NIS 80 per page in the target language, meaning NIS 0.36 per word in the translated document.

Is there a requirement of minimum text to be translated? There is no such requirement, but there is a minimum price that the translator determines even if the document to be translated consists of a very short text.