How much does it cost to translate a website?

Do you have a website and would you like to translate it, but do not know how much it might cost? Here we explain why it is important and which factors affect website translation. You will also find out where to find a professional translator for this translation service.

The importance of translating a website

Do you already know all the advantages that a website translation can offer? One of the fundamental benefits of globalisation is the near disappearance of borders in trade. If you want to welcome customers from all over the world, commission the translation of your website: besides increasing sales volume, you will improve your presence in a competitive, international market. As if that were not enough, you will also convey a polished, professional image by showing your customers that you speak their language.

Isn’t machine translation enough?

We all know the services offered by free machine translation platforms, which transfer a website’s content into another language. However, as a translation agency committed to excellence and quality, we strongly recommend hiring human translation services. Why? Only then can you be sure of avoiding the blunders that come from automatic “translations”. Besides, robots do not take into account many of the factors essential for a quality translation. Among others, we would highlight: knowing the profile, goals and context of the company, or knowing the target audience and the conventions of the target culture. Only human translation can verify that every word is correct in the place where it stands. It is also the only kind that adapts to the client’s requirements and wishes (although we do not set aside the options technology offers us, as we explain below).

Do I need to translate the Legal Notice, the Privacy Policy and the Cookie Policy? The answer is very clear: yes. Every user of your website must be informed about legal protection, the privacy of their data and the use of cookies and, most importantly, you must protect yourself properly against possible complaints or GDPR penalties. At Overseas we are committed to human translation, but we know that some clients prefer, for example, to leave the Legal Notice and the Cookie and Privacy Policy sections untranslated (at most in English), since they can run to some 5,000–10,000 words (€400–800 or more depending on the language). With the aim of offering the client a top-quality service while also trying to watch their budget, we offer a hybrid version for website translation. What is our hybrid solution? Very simple: depending on the content, we combine human translation and machine translation. For legal texts we offer the post-editing service (MTPE), which consists of machine-translating the legal texts with a (professional version) machine translation engine and then having one of our native translators review it in detail and edit the translation so that it sounds natural and, most importantly, is free of errors. After this step, as with any other translation, at Overseas Translations we carry out our internal quality review, where we check all the content from the first sentence to the last.

In this way, the client benefits from a professional, creative translation for the website texts to convey their commercial message and, on the other hand, has the legal texts at a more economical price to be well covered legally, knowing that the translation has been reviewed and endorsed by a native human translator.

Factors that affect the cost of translation

Several factors affect the price. The main ones are the following: the type of website you want to translate; the number of words it contains; the language(s) you want to translate the website into; the degree of specialisation of the language you use; and the delivery time you need. Read on to find out more about how these parameters affect the price.

The type of website

Not all websites are the same. Their purposes can differ and vary according to their complexity and the functions or services they offer the consumer. The most common types include business or personal websites; e-commerce sites; blogs; and portfolios. The cost of the translation service varies depending on the type of site. The most important point is that today all platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or any e-commerce platform allow the content to be translated to be extracted through a translation plug-in (such as WPML, for example), usually in .xliff, .po, .csv or any other compatible format. This way, once all the content has been exported, we can carry out the translation. Once the whole process of human translation, review and translation memory update is finished, we regenerate the files in the original format and, with a single click, we can import the translated content into the website, and that is when the “magic” happens. The translation appears on the website keeping all the formatting, links and multimedia aspects of the original language. In this way we save clients a great deal of time by avoiding the (tedious) job of copying and pasting all the content from a Word or Excel file, and we reduce any possible error from copying content wrongly, omitting a full stop, and so on. Below we explain the price range for the most common types:

Rate for translating my website

Business or personal websites are the business cards of the 21st century. There we present what we offer, our history, our mission and values and, very importantly, we provide our contact details. The price per word for this type of site varies, but for example into English, Italian, German or French it can range from €0.08 to €0.10.

Rate for translating my e-commerce site

E-commerce sites are online shops. Translating them is a bigger investment because the format is more complex than that of an ordinary website. However, it is very worthwhile, since today it is essential for competing in an international market. On this type of site there are often many repetitions in product descriptions, on which you will benefit from large discounts. You can discover more advantages and keys to translating e-commerce sites by clicking here. The price per word for translating e-commerce sites starts from €0.08 per word.

Rate for translating my blog

Blogs seemed to have been forgotten with the website boom of 15 years ago. But they have risen from their ashes and SEO has given them back the importance they deserve. Today we know they are essential for increasing visits to our websites. The price of translating blogs into English or French can range around €0.08–0.10 per word. The final amount will depend on how specialised the content is and the language it is translated into.

Rate for translating my portfolio

Portfolios are essential for professionals in the arts or people who work on large projects. If you belong to one of these professions, you are in luck: since most of the site is based on images or videos showing your career, the number of words is smaller. Remember, however, that we apply a minimum rate of €40 per project.

The number of words to translate

The price of a translation is normally calculated by assigning an amount to each word of the source text. The calculation is easy: we multiply the set price (which varies according to the type of text, language, degree of specialisation or delivery time) by the number of words. Larger translations cost more and vice versa. Bear in mind that we set a minimum rate per project, although for website projects the minimum word count is usually exceeded. Thanks to the CAT tools we have, we run an analysis of all the files to be translated on your website. This analysis gives us the total number of words to translate and tells us whether there are repetitions, to which we apply a reduced rate. With this software we can also store the translations in a translation memory so that the content can be reused in future translations, keeping consistency while reducing the client’s costs.

For large or multilingual projects we usually apply a discount, which you will see detailed in our no-obligation quote.

The target language

There are different groups of languages and each has a price range. Languages such as English, French, Catalan, Basque, Galician, Italian or Portuguese are charged according to price range A. Languages such as German, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Czech or Romanian fall into price range B. The final price will vary depending on the degree of specialisation and the type of website

The degree of specialisation

Simple texts belonging to a general field are cheaper than those with specialised language. Terminology requires demanding documentation and research work. The translator will need to invest more time, so the price per word will be higher.

The delivery time

Delivery times are very important: both for the client and for the professional language service provider. The best and cheapest approach is to plan and organise in good time, but sometimes unforeseen events or simply an emergency arise. Imagine the following situation: next week is the leading international trade fair in your sector, but your website or your catalogue is not yet in German. Do not wait any longer and hire an urgent translation service!

How much would it cost to translate my website? Two examples of website translation prices

Suppose we have a business website. It does not use specialised terminology, has 10,000 words and the client wants it translated into English. We agree a delivery time of 2 weeks with the client. The exact price would of course depend on a real, specific case, but it would be around €800–900. Let us take a very different example: 2 blog articles translated into German about sustainable and second-hand fashion. In the articles, which add up to 2,200 words, there is terminology related to the environment, fashion and clothing manufacture. In addition, the client needs them in less than 2 days. The price would be around €200–220.

Where can you find a professional translator?

Now you know the benefits of a translated website and the estimated translation rate. Have you caught the bug? At Overseas Translations we have a team of professional translators. Besides knowing and using the sector’s leading tools, they have specialised knowledge of the field they translate from and into. So you can be sure your website is in the best hands. As if that were not enough, Overseas Translations also guarantees the highest quality standards. Proof of this is that we hold two ISO certifications (9001 and 17100). What are you waiting for to ask for a no-obligation quote for the translation of your website? And as a finishing touch, a quote from the famous English writer Anthony Burgess, with which we strongly identify: “Translation is not just a matter of words: it is making a whole culture intelligible”.