Why is the price of translating some languages higher than others?
On occasion, I have faced this tricky question from a potential client as to why we charged more for translation from Spanish to English than from Spanish to Portuguese. After working in the same field for so many years, one loses perspective of things. I suppose that this is what they call “discontinuing education”.
Índice de contenidos
Index of contents
Index du contenu
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Indice dei contenuti
Naturally, someone who unfamiliar with professional translation services may wonder why the cost of translating the same text varies depending on the language. After all, if it is about translating the same thing, shouldn’t it require the same effort from a Portuguese translator as from an English one?
In general, it is the market economy, with the famous law of supply and demand, that determines which languages have higher translation prices than others.
I know there are translation agencies in the market that offer a single price for various language combinations, achieving large margins when translating into more affordable language pairs.
At AbroadLink, we try to be as competitive as possible in order to offer our clients the best value for money for each combination, leading us to adjust the price according to the translation market.
Below, I present some of the factors that influence supply and demand, as well as rates in the translation market.
1. Freelance translator market
Professional translation is carried out by professional translators (see our blog How to distinguish a translator from a non-professional), so what a translator charges is the main factor influencing translation rates. Translations are carried out by both in-house translators (either employees in translation companies or companies with internal translation departments) and freelance translators.
However, freelance translators are the ones who actually carry out the majority of translations, whether hired by translation agencies or by direct clients. If we consider the number of possible language combinations and specialities (medical translation, legal translation, financial translation, etc.) and the low demand for some of these combinations, it is not viable to work exclusively with in-house translators, even for the large multinational enterprises in the sector.
I believe that if every language had in-house translators as the norm in the translation sector, translation companies would offer uniform prices regardless of the language combination. In practice, the reality is different.
2. Pool of translators offering a language combination
Closely related to the law of supply and demand is the number of freelance translators offering a particular language combination. Thus, it will be cheaper to translate from Spanish to English than from Chinese to English, simply because there are many more Spanish to English translators competing for the same clients.
Spanish is one of the options offered as the main foreign language of specialisation by translation and interpreting faculties in the UK, followed by French and German. In the case of Chinese or other languages such as Russian or Arabic, they are offered as secondary foreign languages.
It is the dynamics of the translation market that also explains why there are more translators for one combination than for others. The demand for translation from Spanish, French or German to English is greater than for other combinations simply because the economic interaction is also greater.
3. Where do translators live?
Another factor that significantly affects translation rates is where translators of a particular language combination predominantly live. In general, the majority of translators offering translation into British English will live in the UK. That is, it is normal for translators to live in their country of origin, where the language they translate into is spoken.
Knowing this reality, it is logical why a translation into Norwegian is more expensive than a translation into Portuguese. A Norwegian translator will need to earn 2 to 3 times more than a Portuguese translator to have a similar standard of living. The average salary in Norway was €62,400 compared to €18,787 in Portugal in 2019.
It is true that there are native translators who live in the country of the source language (for example, a British translator living in Seville) or even in countries where the cost of living is much lower (for example, Thailand).
Generally speaking, these are minority cases and do not influence the market price. The case of Spain is somewhat different, because there is indeed a significant number of French, German, Italian or British translators living here, a country of warm temperatures and people, and they adapt their rates to the local market.
Many of these translators will not charge the same rates to a French, German or British company as to a Spanish one, being aware of the local market reality.
4. Native translators or not
One of the golden rules of any professional translation company is to offer translations carried out by native translators of the target language. That is, if we translate into English, the translator's mother tongue will be English.
However, there are companies and even translators who are tempted to bypass this rule, thus being able to offer cheaper translations. We can find examples of this in native Spanish-speaking freelance translators who, having a high level of English of course, also offer what is called inverse translation in professional jargon. Basically, this type of translation entails translating into a non-mother tongue.
This is even more common in the Chinese to English combination. In this case, we are talking about a combination with increasing demand in recent years, to the point that I doubt it can be satisfied solely with native translators. Due to the standard of living in the translator's country and the number of freelance translators in the market, it will be 2 to 3 times cheaper to work with a Chinese translator than a native British or American one when translating into English.
If you were looking for an explanation of why translating into one language (such as Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish or Japanese) costs more than twice as much than into others (such as Spanish or Portuguese), I hope this blog shed light on a logic that’s not so obvious without having in-depth knowledge of the translation market.
Other articles you may be interested in:
Josh Gambin holds a 5-year degree in Biology from the University of Valencia (Spain) and a 4-year degree in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Granada (Spain). He has worked as a freelance translator, in-house translator, desktop publisher and project manager. From 2002, he is a founding member of AbroadLlink and currently works as Marketing and Sales Manager.
Add new comment