Are you paying over the odds for your business translation service?

Every company seeks to achieve value for money from the services that it buys in. This includes professional translation services. But how does a business know that the translation service that it is using offers good value for money and that it is not paying over the odds? 

Translation companies aren’t always forthcoming in sharing the costs of their services. Looking for a translation service that offers transparency in terms of its pricing is a good place to start. This can either be in the form of prices listed on the company website, or an instant quote service that offers an immediate calculation of the cost of translating a document. The cost of translation can differ wildly from company to company, so finding out prices in advance is essential. 

The cost of your business translation is, like so many other things in the corporate world, dictated by the laws of supply and demand. If you opt for two commonly paired languages, such as English and Spanish, the abundance of translators available will mean that the price per word that you will pay should be relatively low. However, if you opt for a more unusual language pairing, such as Kannada to Zulu (for example) then the cost per word will be substantially higher. This is due to the fact that there are fewer translators available to undertake the work, so those who do offer this language pairing can command higher rates for doing so. 

The field of translation can also impact on the price, with specialisms such as medical translation and legal translation commanding higher prices than the translation of documents with less technical content. This is again down to supply and demand – medical and legal translation are specialist skills and there are therefore fewer translators available who can provide these niche services. Thus the translation of medical documents from Lingala to Chewa will cost more than the translation of a business letter from Mandarin to English, even if the two documents contain the same number of words. 

The speed with which the translation is required can also impact on price, with most translation agencies offering an urgent translation service at an additional cost. Planning your translation needs out in advance can therefore be a good way to ensure that you don’t pay more than you have to for your translations. 

Of course, value for money is about more than just the costs you lay out for your translation work. You also need to be sure that the quality of the translation is top notch. A cheap service that produces poor quality translation doesn’t offer any better value for money than an expensive service that produces bad translations – both can damage your brand’s reputation in equal measure. It’s therefore essential that your company checks the quality of its translations regularly, as reassurance that you are achieving good value for money from your chosen translation agency. 

If you wish to discuss the cost of translation services for your company’s documents, why not contact Tomedes today? We’ll be happy to answer all your questions and provide you with clarity on our pricing. Remember that you can also use the instant quote service on our website to get a price estimate straight away.