Most business owners are reluctant when it comes to translating their site in another language as they believe the costs associated with it are too high. As a translation agency, we’ve met quite a few people that did not know what website translation costs are and what are the steps involved when translating a website in another language.
The most important website translation costs
1. Content translation: The very first step in establishing translation costs is gathering and extracting the text from all pages of the site and counting the words.
Content translation is the most expensive cost when it comes to translating web sites. Sometimes, a translation agency will require you to gather all text and send it to translation in multiple documents (one document for each page of the site). This should not be happening and if you hear that you may want to look for another translation company. Depending on what content management system you use on the site, the translation team can either extract the text from the site or have it translated directly on the site. If it comes to extraction of text, this should not cost you but you need to remember it is a very time consuming job.
You have to make sure all text is gathered before sending it to translation. There might be content on the site that is not related to the site directly such as documents in .pdf format like brochures or any other type of marketing materials, presentations, contracts, product specifications, technical manuals, etc.
When you have a final count on the words, it is easy to calculate how much website translation costs: number of words multiplied by price per word multiplied by number of languages to be translated into. This should give you a fair estimation on content translation.