Translation costs

English to Spanish

[andrea99]

I recently machine translated my highest traffic page into Spanish as an experiment and today it made it into the Google index and is getting significant traffic.

Well, the experiment succeeded but now I want to make it more legitimate by hiring someone to translate all my pages professionally. I'm wondering what I should be charged for this if by the page or by the hour?

I'm located near a University in the US but am also on the border near a large city in Mexico. Would I be better off seeking someone online or offline?

Has anyone done this, or had any experience translating their site?

The page is already doing well with AdSense being served ads in Spanish but I'm concerned that my click-through rate is good because the machine translation is so bad...

[Mr Bo Jangles]

If you Google for Frelance Translation sites - there are some *very* good services. I have used them to get frelance translators to bid on my jobs - excellent results. I would, though, recommend that if your site is very important you pay a second translator a lesser fee to double check how the finished product reads.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

If you are near a university and they have a languages department contact them and ask them if they can do it. Sometimes they look for work like this as student projects. The benefit of this is that it will be checked by a lecturer and you will know that it is essentially correct.

(They may even do it for nothing :o)

[andrea99]

Thank you for these suggestions. I hadn't thought about getting it done free at the University, but considered possibly hiring a local student through the school. This will be one other thing to consider. :) I have well over 500 pages and there is endless possibilities for more. Thanks again.

[andrea99]

For the record I've found out that 1-3 cents per word is the low end of the pay scale, with specialties, credentials and experience costing more.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Is that from the University?

[rogerd]

One other suggestion - use a native Spanish speaker for translating into Spanish. If you are targeting a particular market, e.g., Spain or Latin America, I'd lean toward someone from that market.

I'd try a freelance site to get an idea of what's out there. You can even find specialized translators (legal, medical, technical, etc.) if your content is topical.

[andrea99]

The 1-3 cents per word figure is mentioned in a thread at a translator's discussion board ("a translation workplace, the largest translator community in the world.")

...use a native Spanish speaker for translating into Spanish.

My inclination is to hire a non-professional translator, native speaker familiar with my product specialty which is very common (women's apparel). I will be better able to gauge a native Spanish speaker's proficiency in English than the other way around. Some years ago I had occasion to visit a private language school's English class in Baja California, Mexico and was horrified to find the children parroting their teacher's heavy accent. Unless one is themself bilingual, it is a difficult thing to judge.

I live in the US but am 50 miles north of Ciudad Juárez, the sixth largest city in Mexico and so should not have any trouble finding a native speaker. The low end of the pay scale in the US will still be an exceptionally good rate of pay in Mexico.

I still plan to visit the NMSU campus first but suspect I will find a better deal in Mexico. If this works well for my own site I may solicit translation business from other English language sites--a good way to duplicate content without penalty. :)

Thanks for the helpful suggestions!