Calculating Website Translation Fee Thread poster: nkingles
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nkingles 
United States
Portuguese to English
How do you generally calculate the price for the translation of a complete website? It would be from Portuguese into English.
Thanks
| | | | | I ask for a file containing the content | Jul 10, 2015 |
and then apply my usual rate.
This is generally the least fiddly way of doing it and ensures both you and the client know exactly the scope of the work. Make sure that you have a clause to ensure that any additional or forgotten texts are billed extra and not to be included in your initial quote.
All of my clients so far have been happy to provide the source files.
[Edited at 2015-07-10 23:57 GMT]
| | | | Vladimir Pochinov
Russian Federation
Local time: 00:47
  Member (2002)
English to Russian
| Ask for the entire batch of source files to be translated | Jul 10, 2015 |
I agree with Andrea on this point. Otherwise, you risk facing a problem with dynamic content, if any, which might result in a much larger scope of work and, therefore, in a nasty dispute with your client.
| | | | Elif Baykara
Turkey
Local time: 01:47
 Member (2015)
German to Turkish
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| Whether you use a CAT tool or not, | Jul 10, 2015 |
ask for clear and definite source files, be it .doc, .xlliff or .xml. I don't know what the client supposed but it is not rational to translate directly from the website. I recommend to clarify the source word count beforehand.
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| Hourly rate if they don't have the wordcount | Jul 10, 2015 |
If they can't manage to tell you the wordcount, you can apply an hourly rate. Use this formula:
(Average number of words translated per day X typical rate per source word) / number of hours in your average working day = hourly rate.
| | | | | | LegalTransform
United States
Local time: 18:47
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
+ ...
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nkingles
United States
Portuguese to English
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you for all of the great feedback! I am always pleasantly surprised by everyone's participation and feedback! I think I will try to get some type of document with all of the website content. Many thanks!
| | | | | Room for automation | Jul 11, 2015 |
In most cases, the client is the site owner, who doesn't know much about web development, though they might be somewhat familiar with the target language. They'll use a thoroughbred monoglot web developer, so there might be a missing bridge there.
First, they ask me for a cost estimate. How do I proceed?
I use HTTrack to download the entire site to my hard disk. Then I use an ancient free version of CatsCradle to count words in all pages. Then I apply my rates on the word count, and have a cost estimate.
CatsCradle is quite affordable, $50, so I'd buy it if I had any large request. However in all these years, all web site translation orders I got were:
a) so small, that the old free CatsCradle could handle it;
b) given for translation in DOC/DOCX; or
c) assigned to cheaper translators (or machine translation).
The thing with CatsCradle, which has its own internal CAT/TM system is that it will leave page URLs and links untouched. In fact, it will overwrite the original page files with their translations.
I consider this good, since I don't know their webmaster's strategy.
I mean, if it's "site.com" for Brazil, I don't know if they'll be using br.site.com, site.com.br, site.com/br or whatever.
So I'll copy the entire downloaded site to a new folder, and translate it there. The web developer will then have an identical site in PT, and may edit all the links/URLs according to their stategy, leaving the text untouched.
Of course, if there are any images with embedded text, I'll charge separately for graphic editing.
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. I gave a quote based on my word count. Post-translation, they came back to say I'd missed some and they needed the rest urgently. It was amicable but obviously I'd boobed
. The second time, I insisted on getting the files from them. Post-translation, they came back to me in a huge rush to say that the end-client wasn't happy as THEY had missed some
! We still collaborate and we've clearly both learned that particular lesson.
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