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Converting 1500 character prices to per word prices?
Thread poster: Franjo Varšić
Franjo Varšić
Franjo Varšić
Croatia
Oct 2, 2018

Is there any generally accepted method for converting a price per 1500 characters to a per word price?

Someone suggested dividing by 250, which, I assume is supposedly some average number of words in 1500 characters. Is this a legitimate method?
 
Cilian O'Tuama
Cilian O'Tuama  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 11:59
German to English
+ ...
It depends on the language - there is no universal formula Oct 2, 2018

Find a representative text in the language of interest, do a wordcount and compare it to the character count. That should provide you with a rough indication of the conversion ratio between the two for that language (and that language only).
 
Daniel Frisano
Daniel Frisano  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 11:59
Member (2008)
English to Italian
+ ...
Rules of thumb Oct 3, 2018

I am not aware of any "generally accepted" equivalence.

Dividing by 250 is a good approximation for English, French, Spanish. Other languages:
Italian 230
German 210
Russian 200
 
Min Kyu Kim
Min Kyu Kim
United States
Local time: 05:59
There is no such guidelines to fix price. Oct 3, 2018

It depends on the nature of content & the way in which you feel good to charge. Some translators even charge on per word basis. It's just opting that which should yield beneficial at end of the project.
 
EvaVer (X)
EvaVer (X)  Identity Verified
Local time: 11:59
Czech to French
+ ...
My calculation Oct 3, 2018

I calculated samples for all my languages (admittedly, for RO and BG, the samples were rather small), and my results are:
English 282
French 290
Czech 257
Bulgarian 244
Romanian 252

The important thing is, it's 280 rather than 250 for English, 250 is about OK for Slavic languages, which is probably your concern.
 


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Converting 1500 character prices to per word prices?







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