Translation Rates
Text Translation ...................................... US$48/hour
Translation Proofreading ...................... US$36/hour
Rush-Job Surcharge ............................................ 20%
Why not charge by the word?
Most translators charge by the word, but here at NTS we are of the opinion that per-word rates often go against the client’s interests. The principal disadvantages are:
The degree of difficulty faced by the translator varies greatly from one text to another. A simple 800-word text takes less than an hour to translate, while an 800-word technical specification requiring extensive terminology research can take over two hours to translate. In order to prevent overcharging the client for simple text translations, a translator would have to establish several different per-word rates.
Many documents contain a certain amount of repeated text that only needs to be translated once, but with a per-word rate the client pays for every word, whether repeated or not.
When calculating word counts, word-processing applications also count numbers that appear in the text, so the client ends up paying for work that does not need to be done.
So, how much translation can be done in one hour?
Here at NTS, we offer average productivity of 700 words per hour with Spanish legal translations. Depending on the source text’s degree of difficulty, legibility (in the case of scanned images or PDF files), amount of repeated text, and the clarity of the author’s writing style, the translator’s productivity can range from 400-1000 words per hour in extreme cases.
Even assuming a low productivity rate of 500 words per hour for text with a high degree of difficulty, at $48 per hour the client will end up paying less than 10¢ per word. Any client would have a hard time finding an experienced U.S.-based translator specializing in legal or semi-technical documents who charges only 10¢ per word for difficult texts. NTS can offer you average productivity of 700 words per hour. At $48/hour, that’s only 7¢ per word. Try finding quality translations in the U.S. at that price!
Our Price Quote Policy
Here at Naranjo Translation Service, our years of experience enable us to briefly review a source document and know how long it will take us to produce a quality translation formatted according to the client’s requirements. We offer free project price quotes, with the following commitment to the client: We will never charge the client more than our original price quote. That means that if a translation project ends up taking more hours than we originally estimated, the client is charged only the amount we originally quoted. Period.
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Feel free to Contact Us here at Naranjo Translation Services for further information, references, translation samples, or project estimates. We are confident that you will not find equivalent quality Spanish translations at more competitive rates. We look forward to hearing from you.