To make your website truly international, a quality translation is a must. This investment is sure to increase your conversion rate. Calculate the cost of translating your website.
The average cost of a website translation
In the case of websites with high volumes of words, translation often requires a significant investment. Nonetheless, there are ways to reduce translation costs without ¡ resorting to machine translation.
Generally, translation prices are calculated by the word. So, the more content, the more expensive the translation. The language must be taken into account too; some language combinations are more expensive than others.
If you have a limited budget, you could start by translating your website into just one language, such as French or Spanish.
Translation rates from English
By choosing a translation agency, you are sure to receive a quality translation, carried out by professionals who know about all the subtleties of your target market.
You might want to look outside your home country. For example, if you want to translate your website into Spanish, choose a translation agency based in Spain. The translation costs will be lower and the translators are sure to be local.
Ways to reduce translation costs
To lower the cost of website translation, there are a number of strategies.
For product catalogues, for example, you have several options:
- Translate categories and best-selling products – then, depending on the return on investment, other products later on
- Translate titles and short descriptions for all products, then full descriptions later on, depending on the return on investment
- Translate the CMS but leave the product descriptions in English This strategy is viable in countries where English is widely used, such as Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries.
What is more, in the case of a long-term project with millions of words to be translated, charging by the word is no longer ideal. Request an overall rate from your translation agency, or perhaps a fixed price per product description, for example.
Reduce translation costs by disregarding repetitions
When choosing a translation agency, opt for one that specializes in web translation and uses translation tools to create translation memories. These tools automatically recognize content that has already been translated so that you will not be charged for it.
This is useful if you have several products with the same description, or if some content is repeated on several pages.
The repetition rate on an e-commerce site tends to fall between 20% and 45%. You will therefore make a considerable saving by choosing an agency that does not charge for repetitions.
Please note: translation memories can only be used if the content to be translated can be extracted (in formats such as xml, .csv, .html, etc.). This is the only way that professional translation software can analyse the content and count the repetitions. This is not possible if the translator has to translate directly in the back office.
If you want to know more about translation costs or would like a quote for your translation, don’t hesitate to contact us.
