TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
> Of course, this means I have the task of researching what
> it's going to take
> to localize our docs. I am not sure where to start. Anyone
> know of any good
> resources on the subject? Books, websites, etc. Anyone know of any
> consultants or companies that localize docs that you could
> recommend? Any
> other suggestions, hints, tips, warnings, cautions, or
> pointers in the right
> direction would be helpful.
>
> I am particularly interested in anything that would help me
> estimate the
> cost of translation. Even just rough ballpark figures for page or word
> counts.
It's a lot of work to figure out a ballpark estimate for translation
costs, but there are a few ways to make rough guesses about your
proposed costs.
The most direct way is to just send copies of your stuff to a translation
company
and ask them for an estimate in the languages you need.
But if you don't want to do that yet and you really want to take a stab at
guessing at your overall costs, here are some ways I use to come up with a
ballpark
price. Remember that all this is for your initial translation and as you do
revisions,
the cost won't be for much more than the word count for the changed parts.
You also can
get discounts for multiple languages, for re-used parts of text,
and more pages may result in lower per-word cost and per-page cost.
For estimating purposes, I lump languages into three price ranges, plus
Japanese,
and figure the average:
20-28 cents per word:
Spanish, Portuguese, French, Polish, Chinese, Korean
30-38 cents per word:
Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Dutch, German, Italian
About 43 cents/word:
Japanese
44-56 cents per word:
Arabic, Hebrew, Tagalog, Icelandic
In addition to the word count, factor in for the type of documentation:
1. If it's plain text or if you extract it from an HTML file and provide the
company with text strings that you then re-insert into your HTML, there
should be no
added cost (except for project management, glossary, etc., which I cover at
the end).
Figure the average of the prices I gave above. Specific prices will differ
according
to the company you use and the availability of translators.
2. If it's PDF or print docs, add DTP costs. These also range in price,
depending
upon different character sets and whether the text reads right to left.
For DTP estimates, all languages listed above are approx. $14-$18 per page
EXCEPT
Chinese and Greek, which run around $24/page, and Arabic, Korean, Japanese,
Tagalog, Hebrew, which run around $34/page.
If your documents contain screen shots, determine what, if any, translation
you need for
those. If you are not translating the application's UI, you will probably
just
have them add some callouts when a new screen is shown.
3. For estimating help files, figure the high end of the per-word prices I
gave above.
4. If you are having the UI translated, that seems to be the highest cost.
You should give samples to a translation company to get
an accurate estimate. Ballpark is $1.00/word.
After you calculate all that, add about 10% of the total for
administrative/project
management costs and about $500 for glossary development.
Want a REALLY rough estimate? $25,000 for a 300-page document with source
files provided
in FrameMaker.
Since it's all done remotely, you can use translation companies from
anywhere in
the country. There are a lot of companies in the midwest, and some of them
appear to have lower prices. In general, though, I've found that the prices
do not
vary hugely. Get an estimate (including a time estimate) from two or three,
and
plan to go with the one who gives you the best service and the least
complicated
proposal. You should try to plan to
have one company do all of your work if possible, so they can re-use chunks
of text
and word definitions. This will start to save you money.
Good luck,
Krista
================================================
Krista Van Laan
Director of Technical Communications
VeriSign, Inc. http://www.verisign.com
487 E. Middlefield Rd. Mountain View, CA 94043
tel: (650) 426-5158 fax: (650) 426-5195
Sponsored by eHelp Corporation, makers of RoboHelp - the industry standard
in Help authoring. Download a trial version today or get special savings when
you buy the RoboHelp 2002 Holiday Edition. Visit http://www.ehelp.com/techwr
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
