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Please fill out this form to receive your project price and timeline quote.
To get started, you need to submit payment for your project.
Bank details or invoice will be arranged by the project manager. For bank wire transfer payments, please provide the client’s bank details.
For regular customers, we can arrange for a postpayment plan.
Paperwork
The original Invoice and Statement of Services Rendered will be sent by mail or courier within 2 days.
If payment is inclusive of VAT, a Tax Invoice will be filed and submitted in due course.
Our Accounting Department runs like clockwork, and your staff will not have to send us reminders about the paperwork, as often happens with smaller translation agencies whose accounting is outsourced.
Translation Pricing
The cost of translation depends on three parameters:
- Text count
- Text complexity
- The need for additional file processing (for example, DTP or complex formatting)
Let’s take a closer look at each of them.
Text Count
The length of the text for translation is estimated by word or character count. Usually we calculate text length in pages, but this approach is not applicable for translation purposes. Depending on the font size, a single page can have from 700 to 250 words (5000 to 1800 characters).
In the field of translation, price calculation is word-based (internationally) or “conditional” page-based (in post-Soviet countries).
Word count is the easiest and most transparent calculation method: you just need to find the number of words in the MS Word statistics and multiply by the price per word.
“Conditional” page count, unfortunately, has become a way for manipulation for many translation agencies in Ukraine. The trick is that every translation agency has its own understanding of a “conditional” page. Some companies calculate it as 2000 characters without spaces, or 1860 characters with spaces, or 1800 characters without spaces, and some translation agencies use a “conditional” page of only 1000 characters (which actually equals 1/3 of a 12-font page).
In view of the facts mentioned above, the price for a “conditional” page that is mentioned in the agreement is not an objective indicator and doesn’t help the client to choose the best translation service provider.
Moreover, the formula for calculating a “conditional” page (no matter how many characters it contains) is quite complex: you need to divide the total number of characters with spaces (or without spaces) by the number of characters per “conditional” page and then multiply by the cost of a “conditional” page.
Source-Based vs Translation-Based Calculation
In the translation market, there is a practice of calculating the cost of translation by the number of characters in the finished translation rather than in the source text.
So, when you send a document for translation to a translation agency, you get only the approximate cost of translation, which will be recalculated upon completion.
That is, the initial budget may increase — not the kind of news a corporate customer would like as it requires budget re-negotiation or PO (purchase order) reissuance.
Cost calculation at Profpereklad
In order to make our services as clear and transparent as possible, we calculate the cost on the basis of the word count of the original document. This means that the cost of translation will not change after it is completed. Word-based count makes it easy to estimate the cost of translation or check the calculation.
Word count in other than MS Word files (e. g., PDF)
When we get such files, our managers carefully recognize the file with the help of special OCR (optical character recognition) software and then count the number of characters with special translation software.
Text Complexity
Text complexity can affect the price of translation, because the field of translator’s specialization can vary the cost.
Some highly specialized topics require the translator to have specific experience and education. And since the number of such specialists is small, the cost of their work, respectively, is higher than that of an ordinary translator.
We have a highly specialized approach to translation: instead of universal translators, we hire only specialists (clinical trials are translated by doctors, technical documents — by engineers, agreements — by lawyers).
Naturally, the work of a translator with medical education is more expensive than that of a foreign language department graduate.
That is why any purely price-based tenders or supplier comparisons tend to be a situation in which “the miser pays twice”.
This was the case with translation tenders of a Ukrainian mobile operator: each cost reduction tender led to unsatisfactory quality and the need to hold a new tender ahead of schedule. And each new tender meant significant investment of time and resources for the customer.
Additional Processing of Translation Files
Often, the text of translation is not a final product. Complex documents for corporate customers also require DTP or formatting.
Thus, the final product of a translation agency will be a PDF document or, for example, an InDesign brochure.
To do this, the agency hires DTP specialists and a proofreader, who performs an additional check of the file readiness after DTP to make sure that everything is correct and all the prepositions and periods are in place.
AutoCAD drawings require particular attention and special approach of the translator and DTP specialist. To optimize this work, we use special software developed by our IT service.
In some cases, customers do not need DTP, but they want the translation to be in an editable format (e. g., MS Word), to be formatted according to the source and to contain all its structural elements: indentation, alignment, automatic table of contents, auto-heading, footers, numbered/bulleted lists, dynamic footnotes, etc. In such cases, a formatting specialist is hired, since most translators are not fully-fledged MS Office experts.
Thus, we can provide the customer with a 100% perfect document. Only a few translation agencies in Kyiv and throughout Ukraine can provide such a high-quality service.
Detailed information on our additional services and respective software is given in the table below.
| Service | Software |
| DTP (desktop publishing) | 1. Adobe InDesign 2. QuarkXPress |
| Image processing | Adobe Photoshop |
| Vector graphics | 1. Adobe Illustrator 2. CorelDraw |
| DTP (desktop publishing) of technical drawings | 1. Autodesk AutoCAD 2. КОМПАС 3D 3. Bentley Microstation 4. Adobe Illustrator |
| OCR (recognition) and formatting | ABBYY FineReader |
| Terminology management: creation of glossaries, terminology databases, translation memories | SDL Trados Studio, SDL MultiTerm. As per clients’ requirements: SmartCAT, SDL WorldServer, Smartling |
| Localization of sites and interfaces of applications and software | Lokalise, Crowdin |
| Translation quality control | Verifika, Xbench |