José Henrique Lamensdorf - translation - tradução

MY TRANSLATION PRICES

My translation prices are about the average in the Brazilian market for the level of service I offer. I regularly survey colleagues deemed to work at the same level, as well as translation outsourcers, clients, and others. As the market is deregulated and translation quality is subjective, the breadth of variation is often surprising, both in rates as well as in quality levels

I refrain from publishing a rates table because nowadays translation jobs seldom involve only receiving text in one language and returning it in another. Current technology encompasses countless other translation-related factors, escalating the number of ways the same goals may be achieved, often leaving room for economy of scale. One of my permanent goals is to assist clients in finding the most economically feasible way to accomplish their objectives in whatever involves translation.

For those merely seeking cheap translations, I have no shame from recommending the use of free automatic translation available on the Internet. The flaws will be different from those found in translation done by amateurs, but the overall quality level will be pretty much the same. The brighter side is that if the translation has to be redone with good quality later, there will be more money left in the budget to afford it.

I haven't yet mastered the technique to lower quality and therefore cost. As a matter of fact, I haven't even tried. I prefer to keep up my standards.

Anyway, for those who really must reduce their translation costs, I've put together ten ways of doing it in this article, all different from forcing any translator to lower their rates.


Some insights on prices in the translation market

First, let's leave aside the Brazilian market for sworn/certified translations, as statutory rates are set by each Brazilian state. The law says that those rates must be practiced. On the other hand, there is always someone willing to break the law; otherwise the law would be unnecessary. If a sworn Brazilian translator offers illegal discounts, it is safe to assume that they won't abide by the law in other things as well. It's like knowingly buying a fake product. If any problem ever arises, the buyer will have received in cash (the discount) their compensation for solving it on their own.

Apart from that, the translation market is completely deregulated: each translator may charge whatever they think they are worth. Yet there is another peculiarity... thanks to the Internet, the translation market is fully globalized. The original to be translated may be e-mailed anywhere in the world, and the translation may be shipped back via the same route. There are no boundaries.

The only problem resides in finding qualified translators outside the countries where the target language is spoken, as there will be very few of them, if any. Furthermore, that translator may be out of date regarding the language currently spoken in their homeland.

To illustrate, there are countries in the Far East where the cost of living is comparatively very low, so where translation services may cost very cheap. However what would be the odds of finding a good English to Portuguese translator in India or China?

Nevertheless, the supply-and-demand law prevails. This ubiquity the Internet grants translators also provides them with a benchmark on worldwide translation rates, in order to adapt to this globalized market. Assuming that nobody wants to sell their work for less than it's worth, and that whoever practices overly high prices will be in low demand, translation market rates are gradually settling worldwide.

There are several factors at play, such as the supply/demand ratio for each of the various language pairs, that prevent rates from being more uniform. Each language pair, and each direction within the same pair (i.e from A into B vs. from B into A) have their unique distribution.

However translation services exist in countless levels of complexity and quality. A competent translator who charges too little will be overwhelmed with work, and won't be able to earn a living. An incompetent translator who overcharges their low quality work will soon run out of clients. Hence there is a natural settling of prices, though it is not sufficiently reliable for anyone to believe that translation quality will be proportional to its cost; nevertheless, it is some reference.


Though I charge for everything I do, I try to sell my clients out of requesting anything they don't need. The most recurrent case is asking me for both the transcript and translation of a video for dubbing or subtitling. The transcript adds to the cost, and is completely unnecessary for the translation. Likewise I eliminate any work that the client won't have any use for. Honest work at fair prices.