Translation market in Russia. How and where you can translate your site and do not put foot into it

You made up your mind to open your own business in the net, didn’t you? Wonderful! But what is the way to make it more profitable and propherous? There are some components without which your project will not be so popular and one of them is accessibility for numerous audiences. It is mandatory to get across a real meaning of your words to each user. But how to do it if the audience is multinational and only a small part of it understands a language of your site?

Everything is very simple! The only need is to get a “talker”. But not to know some enemy’s plans, the aim is to translate the site into any language understandable for the most of users. And here we have a question where one can get such specialist? There are dozens and even hundreds of translation agencies and offices as well as so called freelancers.

If you have seen a range of prices, terms and conditions, it is like over choice and, eventually, you can ask a question why it is so difference here? Let’ try to understand it.

What does a price per translation page consist of? Firstly it is a price of the work done by a translator. Secondly it includes expenses of the translation agency’s owner born by him at managing of this translation. And finally it includes profit of the translation agency’s owner. Expenses includes administration costs (salaries of managers, accountants and so on); process costs (costs of telephone connection, Internet, software purchasing); taxes (VAT, unless translation agencies are subject simplified tax system, wage taxes and other taxes); marketing costs (advertisement, market researches and so on), and, of course, profit of the owner. Usually the main part of the price is translator’s salary but occasionally it is happened when agency’s premium may equal 100 or even 200%.

Why the prices so much vary?

Firstly, as we said above everyone has its own marketing campaign. The more advertisement is in the mass-media the higher will be prices of an agency and someone should pay for the advertising which by the way is not so cheap. For example, based upon data from Smart money as of June, 2007 the context advertisement with phrase “agency of technical translations” cost 19,31 s.u. It is worth to notice that some agencies do not place their advertisement at any time. Umpteenth quantity of the translation agencies function at notarial offices and other organizations where there is a necessity in translation. There they have their own steam of clients and new clients with their orders provide only 30% of the profit.

Secondly, about 70% of all translation agencies are located in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. It means, leasing of very expensive offices for which you have to pay. Accordingly 30% of agencies work from province that give them a possibility to save money for offices rent but they have to pay more for advertisement.

Thirdly, despite of the fact that Russian translation market started to develop at the beginning of 90-ties it is still in the process of development. And development rates are much higher than development of the world market. So if the world market grows approximately on 8% annually Russian segment increases on 20%. There was a prediction that with the beginning of crisis this growth would stop but these predictions were not justified. Conversely need in investments and equity injection in business led to a new wave of translation ordering. Nevertheless the most profitable and large translation segment has suffered. We speak about technical translations as crisis affected, first of all, the industry.

And fourthly, there are no laws governing activities of translation agencies, i.e. pricing completely controlled nobody but owners of the translation agencies.

By the way, prices per translation page are always firm. And they count not pages but quantity of characters on a page. Prices are usually set up based on 1800 characters counted together with blank characters or upon quantity of words. Why exactly 1800 characters? Because this number of characters is placed on a page with A4 format, Arial font and 1,5 interval. However, it is common practice in the foreign countries to count quantity of words but not characters.

And what are the other factors which can result to extra charges?

Primarily, it is subject of the text to be translated. The most expensive are the specialized texts where a translator should know professional terms and have an idea about translated issue. They are, of course, technical, medicine and juridical texts.

Then it is worth to draw attention to the scope. Frequently translation agencies give discount in case of large volumes. Moreover, some agencies provide their service at “special” tariff for the regular customer so it is good idea to think about trustiness to one agency.

Terms. The shorter are translation terms defined by you the more expensive will be your translation. Also we should note that the languages are different. For example, translators from the Oriental languages such as Japanese, China, Arabian, etc. translate longer than translators from European languages.

Also there is a service named as translation by a native-speaker. In that case prices are usually 1, 5-2 times higher.

Is there any alternative?

There is always a variant. So, for example, you can address to freelancers, that is, you can communicate directly with an executor. No extra charges for premises rent, taxes and so on. But because of skimping you can receive translation of poor quality. Translation agencies give guarantee on their translations as they are translated by certified translators and revised by professional editors. In the sphere of free-lance the only guarantee are references from the users, which are easy to organize. For example, they promise to translate a page only for a good response. At that, a customer will save only 5 dollars but anyway it is saving!

There is one more variant. It is to find an agency from the province or on-line, as translation agencies may be official or unofficial, with or without office, registered or not. If you are lucky, you will find an agency, unofficial, without office and necessity to pay taxes where price of translation consists of translator’s salary and profit of translation agency’s owner only. But it is worth to take care with such agencies. Never trust them implicitly. Read responses about the agencies and do not give them large orders at once. Work only with certified people.

Also it makes sense to cooperate with the same agency in order to keep uniformity of the translation style. And in agencies they try to distribute orders from the regular customers among the same translators.

You can find some more recommendations bellow:
• Always specify and discuss terms with a translation agency;
• Always specify price at the managers as real prices and prices on the site may differ;
• Try to make advance payment as soon as possible because ordinary the agencies begin to work only after receipt of the advance payment. Nevertheless there may be exclusions for the regular customers;
• For operational efficiency it is desirable to use momentary payment tools, such as, e-payment systems - WebMoney and Yandex.Money or terminals with momentary payment;
• Define very exactly your requirements to the translation in order to avoid casuses and inaccuracies at translation execution.

And remember that at making translation in the agencies you always have a right to claim and to require reimbursement or return of the money in case of poor quality of the translation.

Make your business qualitatively!

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