When translating web pages, the price is usually determined on a per-word basis. This way the client is presented with a seemingly low price that sometimes sounds incredibly tempting. Actually, these kinds of cost-assessments don’t present the full picture and as time goes on hidden costs will emerge and blow up that original price considerably.

This is why we reveal what all you need to take into account when determining the price of your translations and why the offer you were given sounds too good to be true.

 

Experience and technical knowledge

 

The method of charging per word is often used to determine the price of translation for offline content. However, if we are looking at websites, the situation is not that simple. Namely, in addition to the text seen in an internet page for which it’s easy to determine the word count, there are other types of digital content that also need to be translated – images, videos, PDF files and forms.

These web page elements might be hosted on completely separate servers and databases which may lead inexperienced translators who don’t have enough technical knowledge to make errors when estimating the word count of their translations. This means that your expenses will be significantly increase and of course disrupt the plans you’ve made in the start.

 

Malingering

Low translation estimates can also often hide the translator’s intent to make up for the low price in the following ways:

– Overpriced costs of editing the translated text that isn’t included in the original price.
– Charging to translate all content, even if it’s repeated in many or all pages of the website (such as header, product description elements and the like)
– Using various machine translation software that results in low quality translations
– Slow translations and/or multiple deadline breaches
– Various other complications such as a lack of understanding of the content themes

 

On the other hand, professional translators will take into account all aspects of website translation, provide you with an accurate estimate and stick to the price they’ve told you from the beginning so that you’ll always know your expenses and how much you need to invest to get a high-quality website translation.

 

The price covers more than just translation

 

Unlike documents, your webpage is a living, dynamically changing entity. You will most likely frequently alter the offers displayed on your website (such as seasonal discounts, creating product presentations…), or you will add new elements, expand the existing content as needed, add new pages…

All these activities surpass the simple one-time translation of your website. This is why professional translation agencies also offer flat-rate payment options so that they’ll always be at your disposal as needed. This means you’ll never have to work under stress or encounter a problem that you won’t be able to solve easily and quickly.

In conclusion, when you are expanding your domain to international markets, bear in mind that the lowest possible translation prices might not – and often will not – be the best choice for you.

Feel free to contact our translation agency Alfa prevod and you will get a realistic and fair estimate as well as quality translation for your website.

Contact us and get a free price estimation for your translations