Most business owners are reluctant when it comes to translating their site in another language as they believe the costs associated with it are too high. As a translation agency, we’ve met quite a few people that did not know what website translation costs are and what are the steps involved when translating a website in another language.
The most important website translation costs
1. Content translation: The very first step in establishing translation costs is gathering and extracting the text from all pages of the site and counting the words.
Content translation is the most expensive cost when it comes to translating web sites. Sometimes, a translation agency will require you to gather all text and send it to translation in multiple documents (one document for each page of the site). This should not be happening and if you hear that you may want to look for another translation company. Depending on what content management system you use on the site, the translation team can either extract the text from the site or have it translated directly on the site. If it comes to extraction of text, this should not cost you but you need to remember it is a very time consuming job.
You have to make sure all text is gathered before sending it to translation. There might be content on the site that is not related to the site directly such as documents in .pdf format like brochures or any other type of marketing materials, presentations, contracts, product specifications, technical manuals, etc.
When you have a final count on the words, it is easy to calculate how much website translation costs: number of words multiplied by price per word multiplied by number of languages to be translated into. This should give you a fair estimation on content translation.
2. Code translation. Most websites are now optimized for search engines so each page of such a site contains some hidden text that needs to be translated. This includes meta title tag, meta description, meta keywords and some other type of code (like online forms). Depending of the site’s coding, engineering work might be needed in order to fit another language into the site.
While this might prove to be quite costly, you will never know until a proper analysis of the site is done. While counting the words in the metadata of the site is easy and will give you a good estimation of the costs involved, the engineering work can only be calculated when asking for a quote.
3. Imagery (graphic) work. When it comes to website translation costs, the third cost would be associated with translating and recreating graphics for each language you want your website to be translated into. While just a few sites have few images that contain text, most sites on the internet today have images of some text. This text also needs to be translated then images need to be recreated with the translated text.
Unlike the first two, this website translation cost can only be determined when asking for a quote as it depends on the number of graphics involved and their complexity (animated images and videos will cost more as they are more complicated to recreate).
4. Quality testing. Some companies might charge you for quality testing, some will not. This cost involves counting hours spent on the site by the quality check team.
This about sums it up, if you manage to do all the above you should have a fair estimate on your website translation costs, however, you will never know until you ask a specialist. So why not contact us for a free quote?
Website Translation Costs
When it comes to website translation costs, there are many factors that must be considered. Apart from the language to which it is going to be translated into or from, the complexity of the service also matters.
For a tech website, you just can’t assign the translation to any company. You’ll have to see for yourself whether the company understands your requirements, nature of your business and the terminologies.You must emphasize on a translator who has profound knowledge of technology and digital tools.
The same rule applies to other industries as well, including medical, legal and even entertainment. If you run a blog for mental health, you’d certainly want the translator to first read all the content with a thorough understanding and then translate it accordingly.
And all these affect the charges as well. If you are going to require such an experience, you’ll have to pay accordingly. One thing that could really save you trouble here is by choosing a translation company instead of freelance or private translators. Companies value their reputation more than anything else and they only hire seasoned professionals no matter what.
