– www.goihata.com
Which is correct the translation price? There is no such “correct price”, the translation price moves up and down influenced by many factors like;
* Supply and demand situation; when competition is tough prices drop and the contrary happens when professionals are in high demand.
* The text’s difficulty; Translation is a niche business, customers are highly recommended to find the right translator for the specific field. It is not the same the translation of patents and intellectual property or publicity and marketing text. A good translator for a medical subject, is not necessarily so at marketing.
* The language combination: Is not the same to translate into a very closely related language like Portuguese (from Spanish) or into a language poles apart, using a completely different alphabet, syntax and cultural background.
* The country where the translator is located: Scandinavian language translations tend to be more highly valued than others in the southern part of Europe, and does not make much sense to search for such translators in Timbuctoo.
* The translation format: It is more time consuming to translate an MSWord document with images and embedded text than plain straightforward text.
* The program being used: Elegantly presented documents in QuarkXpress, Freehand, Adobe Indesign, and other DTP document translation is more laborious.
* Documents with a lot of repetitive text: Technical manuals often have repetitive text that can be reused using a Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) program like Wordfast. Some discounts can be applied for the repetitive text in these cases.
Having mentioned all the above, we still come across bad-expensive translations and good-cheap translations. But the customer should weigh up the risks and take all the necessary steps to minimize them.
If the translation is going to be used in a marketing campaign costing a huge amount of money, it is not recommended to take risks by trying to save a few pennies.
And always remember the bad translation is the most expensive of all translations.