Greater than 2 minutes, my friend!
Translations on the Fly How long does it take to complete a (good) translation?
“I could translate 2,000 words in less than 30 minutes”, a potential client said to me, declining my offer to deliver the job within close of business on the same day. “Wow, how quick you can type!”, I thought*.
Translators may be superheroes with resources beyond imagination, though there are objective or reasonable limits to be considered. In general terms, a professional specialised translator can translate around 2,500-3,000 words per day, but there is a but.
How long does it take to complete a professional translation?
Variables are numerous. Delivery time varies with the language, length and difficulty of the text. Needless to say, specialisation and availability of the translator are also to be taken into account.
- Language. It depends on the translator’s expertise. Moreover, rare language combinations may require more time. Personally, I am much quicker when I translate from English into Italian than from German.
- Length. Word count is crucial. Microsoft Word pages cannot be considered a standard. A Word page may be long or short, written in big or small characters, with or without charts and images. That’s why we need another standard, such as the number of words or characters. To complicate calculations, word processors do not always use the same method. For example, PowerPoint uses a calculation method different from Microsoft Word. Then, there are tables, text boxes, uneditable images, and there may be reference material or numerous repetitions, which could speed up or slow down the translation process.
Last Thursday, a project manager at a big translation company emailed me: “Are you available for a legal translation project from English into Italian of 12,000 words due tomorrow 2 p.m. How many words could you translate?” Considering the amount of words, she was going to ask five or six translators to work on the same file to meet the deadline. Translation companies often split long urgent documents among various translators. However, for quality reasons, they should review the text, prepare a glossary, and check consistency. That also requires time and money, and results are not always good. - Specialisation. Very technical documents are usually more difficult than general topics. A newspaper article about spending habits in Italy is probably easier than an expert’s paper on shale gas and fracking techniques. However, specialisation matters. Translating financial documents every day, I am probably more at ease with market outlook commentaries. A drig rill manual is much more difficult for me, since it is not my specialisation. Meanwhile, translating a marketing persuasive document may be trickier than translating a letter confirming an appointment for tomorrow.
Time varies from project to project. There is no precise rule.Professional translators must examine the documents to be translated and have as much information as possible to produce an accurate estimate.
- Last but not least… Availability and human limits. Translation is only one single element of the process that starts from the client’s quotation request and ends after delivery with the client’s feedback.
Time management should take into account all these tasks, quotation, glossary, proofreading. Most professional translators are freelancers wearing many hats, as project manager, accountant, marketer, and they may have several clients asking for urgent translations at the same time. (See my presentation: What’s in the Translation Price?)
Time dedicated to translation in itself may not be longer than 6/7 hours a day, since it requires great concentration, or your brain starts smoking!
What do you think? As a client, what do you expect from translators? As a translator, can you estimate your average daily output?
*This post is 599 words long by the way.
Claudia Befu 
Ayman Saa'd 
Francesca, thanks for another interesting article!
I think that we, as translators, have to educate our clients with regard to such inherent topic as translation process so that they understand us better.
As for the average word count, I can translate up to ~2500 words per day. But, of course, this amount depends on many factors like text subject, availability of TMs and glossaries, reference materials, and so on. However, even having relevant experience in the subject matter and armed with TMs it is not always possible to ensure the same stable translation speed.
For instance, I have just completed legal translation project amounting to 6500 words. Due to the extremely complicated structure of sentences with several subordinate clauses is a row (this was a part of 150 pages long Merger agreement) I spent over 4 days for this scope of work. That means my average translation speed was only ~1650 words per day.
I remember Translation Theory course at the university, where we learned about the translation process stages. Following all of them is essential for quality translation but, in many cases, is not applicable for real life translations due to the urgency and tight deadlines… since the clients usually forget about translation until the last moment they need it.
Thanks Simon for sharing your view and experience.
Professional translators should achieve more visibility about our work, and we should be able to explain the process and value of our profession to clients – who are not supposed to know how it works…
Unfortunately, if a client forgets about translation until Christmas eve (most of the time because of lack of organisation), and asks a professional who is not available on Christmas, they will ask an on-line unprofessional translation company that pays a couple of newbies 0.0000 EUR or USD to translate 10000 words of a financial report (or complex agreement) for Boxing day.
I think it up to us, professional translators, to gain recognition for “value” work 🙂 Do you agree?
I totally agree with you, Francesca. And now, thanks to OM and our mutual efforts, we can do it even more effectively than ever before 🙂
“I think it up to us, professional translators, to gain recognition for “value” work 🙂 Do you agree?” – amen to that, Francesca! That’s what I’m trying to do with The Open Mic! We need a better online community that represents our interests and promotes the image of our profession. This is one of the ideas behind The Open Mic.
Francesca, thank you so much for your article.
You are right, I can translate about 3000 words/day or more if the text is not very technical but, when I translate clinical protocols (I am specialised in Medicine), the first 2 or 3 days (when I do the research, etc.) my average can be just 1500/day or less! Fortunately, my clients are aware of this, but still I am always very busy during Christmas 😉
Same here, Mercedes. Translation that requires extensive research or non-standard creative approach (when translating literature or poetry, for example) can take much more time than generic and simpler texts.
Yes, Mercedes & Dmitry. Every project is different and we are not selling a commodity 🙂 Happy Holidays and let’s give more visibility to translators’ work 🙂
Couldn’t agree more! Happy Holidays!
Great post, Francesca! A few people told me the other day that translating 20 pages a day is pretty normal, but in my humble opinion every translator is different. I specialize in video game localization, for example. Most of the time I have be extremely creative and use non-standard approaches. That’s why it’s almost impossible to provide that kind of volume without damaging the quality. Your posts reminds me that we need to focus on value and the outcome more that the delivery timelines or volumes.
We’re not machines after all, and if you’re looking for high-quality, chances are you’ll have to wait a little bit longer. But the same thing applies to any other providers of professional services.
Really useful and interesting post, Francesca! I would recommend it to all potential customers who know nothing about real abilities of translators. That would also help them understand that when a translator offers them 5000 per day capacity 7 days a week, it is 99% low-quality translation. Personally I calcualted my own capacity as 2500 words per day, but of course it may vary due to many reasons mentioned above by my colleagues. Sometime I can even translate 5000 words per day, but it is a rare exception.
Thanks Natalia for taking the time to comment and share your data. Happy to connect and Happy New Year!