How to get in touch?
The most certain way to receive a quick response from me is by writing an email to katjabrill@splashtranslations.com.
How do I calculate the cost of a translation?
The basic rate per word is currently 0.10 euros.
In order to offer the greatest possible transparency, I calculate the cost of translation services based on the number of words in the source text. For you, this is an unambiguous and fixed number, and I can give you a precise quotation before the start of the project.
What influences the cost of a translation? A glimpse of the wizard’s cauldron …
In my day-to-day work there are chiefly two elements that influence the cost of a translation:
- A non editable file format: A non editable file format such as image files or older pdf makes the translation process less fluent and requires much more attention to exclude errors, first and foremost of terminological inconsistency.
Let me go one step further up the line to explain this: Professional translation software, so called CAT-tools (CAT is short for Computer Aided Translation), is an integration specialist: it brings together my glossaries and my pool of previous translation work in any current project. It is able to remember each phrase I’ve ever translated and it continuously updates and adds on its own memory, allowing me to build on all the work I’ve done. I can feed it with terminology to build glossaries in very structured ways; it won’t touch any layout features. In short, it’s by my side putting to qualitative value everything I’ve ever had the pleasure to work on. The one thing it can’t do – apart from teaching me crochet and copperplate – is digest a non editable file format. So that means no more integration. I’ll need more time for consulting my term bases and translation memories and most of all I’ll need more time to ensure terminological consistency and translation quality. In the end I’ll probably need more time for formatting, as well. All this sums up needs to be reflected in the per word rate, which hence for any non editable file format is 0.12 euros.
- Repetitions and matches: The magic software analyses any text or multi-file project right during set up. It recognises repetitions of segments (usually phrases) as well as phrases that match with segments in my translation memories. It is only fair that for repetitions and for matches with previously translated texts you don’t pay twice. For phrases that have 100% to 92% similarity with previously translated material I won’t charge anything, as long as they appear to a reasonable amount throughout the text.