How much does it cost to translate?
If you’ve never engaged a professional translator, translation agency or translation company in Singapore to translate your documents/contents before, this is a reasonable and logical question to ask.
So how much does it cost to translate, say a business letter in Singapore?
Most professional translators, translation agencies or translation companies in Singapore will say that they can’t tell you their fees (yet), unless you show them your document, in this case, your business letter.
Very often, we get an email or phone call from someone who needs something translated. Ninety percent of the time, the email reads something like this “We need some documents translated. How much do you charge?”
More often than not, professional translation service is not a magic trick. Nor is it a one-price-for-all bargain basement. Every translation process and/or approach is different. So before a professional translator, translation company or translation agency can send you a proposal and estimate, they need answers to these very fundamental questions:
- What are you translating? A personal document, a birth certificate, an educational certificate, a testimonial, a business letter, a product, a service, an app, a webpage, an agreement, a book? You’d be surprised how often a query omits this basic information.
- Who will be reading the translated content? Will the audience be Chinese in China, Chinese in Singapore, Chinese in Taiwan, Malay in Malaysia, French in Canada? Chinese translation for China and Chinese translation for Taiwan are not the same. In fact, you ought to make sure that the translator you engaged is a native translator, or the translation agency/translation company use translators that are qualified/competent native translators.
- Where will the translated content be used? Will it be used for submission to regulatory authorities, posted on the Internet for web downloads, printed, published in a magazine?
- How far along are you in the process? Have you attempted to translate the content yourself and have been dissatisfied with the results? Have you already worked with a translator, translation agency or translation company and have been dissatisfied with the results? The more groundwork you’ve already done, the more you’ve learned about what you like and don’t like—and the better can we produce a translated content that meets your requirements and expectations.
- How much time have you allotted for content translation? When do you need the content translated? Most professional translators can turnaround 1,000 – 1,500 words a day, depending on the language pair, subject matter, format of the source document, volume of references to check/verify. If you need something done very urgently, a premium could be charged.
- What are your other requirements? Do you have a budget for translating the contents? Are you open to using machine to translate and manually edited by human? This can usually cost lower.
- Are you looking to translate only? Do you need to get it certified? Do you need to get it notarized? Do you need to get it legalized? Do you need layout? Do you want to get it printed as well?
Sage Languages charge a fair price for all these services and we will tell you how much we charge. But before that, we need to know what you want.
Translation and localization projects succeed only when client and translator, translation agency or translation company agree on the scope, timeline, and outcome.