standard rates for written translation

[Mike Trittipo]

On Nov 26 2007, Inna Caron wrote:
> When you have been contracted to do a commercial translation, is the 
> payment subject to agreement between the parties, or is there a more or 
> less standard rate per page of written translation? If so, . . .?

Any agreement should specify the price and payment terms. So it's a matter 
of agreement. If you don't like an offered rate or price, you should reject 
it; and of course you may counter-offer a rate or price you prefer.

E-mail discussion of "standard" rates can raise antitrust issues both in 
the U.S. and in the E.U. So it's best to steer clear of anything that 
smacks of a recommendation of X rate or Y rate. The general approach that 
Paul Gallagher has outlined is valid, however: each individual begins with 
his or her own numbers as to what he or she wants or needs, and each may 
take different amounts of time to produce a result in line with a client's 
requirements. Other decisions follow from those variables.

Most often, I have charged per word of the target English. But sometimes 
I've charged a flat price, based on a reasonably accurate source word count 
and experience with the particular kind of text. Of course, any word count 
can be turned into a page count, if the definition of "page" is agreed 
upon. (Even where the "normostrana" is common, e.g., the Czech Republic, 
there are sometimes variations on what it is, ranging from 30 lines of 50 
characters to 30 lines of 65 characters, counting spaces as characters. And 
of course there were questions even with typewriters about how to count 
partial "pages.")


Michael Trittipo
Minneapolis, Minnesota

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