Need a cost and time quotation to have a website translated?

Very often we'll be asked to provide a cost quotation based only on a website address (URL or domain name). In many cases this way of estimating translation volume is awkward for us to handle since we don't know the exact link and file structure of your website. In fact it can be quite difficult and risky for us to come up with cost-and-time estimates based on just a web address.

Consider: What if we tried to count but missed a link or two? Or what if we count some content that you didn't intend to have translated? With a website that's new to us and without any help in navigating it, we too often struggle to get an accurate estimate of the scope of the proposed translation order. And, after all, we don't translate files, do we? We translate the meaningful (and usually persuasive) intent of your website copy - essentially, words. So, in order to calculate costs, we have to know the number of words in the original copy (in the source language).

[Sensitive or creative copywriting may be calculated differently. See copywriting. But in the case of the average website translation we simply count words.]

We'll need to rely on your own team to manage your website content and send us only the text that needs to be translated, the files containing countable text content, so that we can calculate the translation budget and give you a quotation. In the ideal case, the files you send us will contain the exact text content to be translated - literally no more and no less than that. We refer to that as the scope document.

Too much hassle?
Sorry if this policy sounds rather strict and inflexible, but experience tells us that careful content management on your side facilitates quick and confident cost and schedule calculations on our side. And having your content organized is clearly good for your organization, too, as it makes it easier for your own website management staff to start juggling additional language versions. Right?

Step One...
As mentioned above, we need to know how many words you want translated from the source language to the target language. We'll need to get all the text into MS Word for counting purposes. You could copy each page to a different Word file if you like, or you could put it all in one big Word file. Additionally, and optionally, you can send us a .zip folder of all the files on the server to use as reference.

NOTE: If you really, really feel certain that you would prefer that we work with your scripted files (PHP, XML, etc.) please see "Localization tasks we sometimes handle - translating between tags" farther below on this page.

But for the word count and the actual translation we'll use the Word files. Often there are bits of text hidden somewhere on the server - email response code, error messages, etc. - that we don't have access to. If you'd put any such text also into Word for counting, that'd be great. These Word files form a definite and unambiguous scope of the translation order.

When you have the text scope documents ready please let us know. We'll review, count, calculate and get right back to you with quotation.