How much to translate a book from English to Spanish?

February 17, 2010 7:48 PM

How would I find the going rate for translating a published book from English to Spanish?

I have a friend who is in the process of negotiating fees for translating an existing ~220 page non-fiction book, and wants to make sure she's asking for and/or being offered a fair amount.

posted by mneekadon to Work & Money (5 answers total)

Just google for translation services and look at their rates. For non-fiction, you're probably looking somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10-20 cents US per word, depending on the skill and credentials of the translator and how fast the work needs to get done.
posted by Behemoth at 8:05 PM on February 17, 2010

Is your friend negotiating the fee herself, or is an agent? Is she self publishing in Spanish in addition to footing the bill for the translation? Because translating a book and paying for it yourself is going to be a pretty penny, especially if you want to see it done right. I am a commercial (not a literary) translator, and my going rate is anywhere from US$ .12 to US$ .20 a word, and that is target, not source language price. Fees vary based upon the technicality of the work. I have translated books before, and in addition to being a very time-consuming process (months, years sometimes), it involves a great deal of collaboration between the author (or their literary agent) and the translator. I don't know the word count for this project, but I would ballpark it somewhere around 100,000 words (and that is pretty low), which for me would start at US$ 12,000. Then you have the revising and editing team that get involved as well, which can add an additional 1/3 to the price. Like I said, I hope an editor is paying for this, because out of pocket expenses on a book translation can get steep very quickly.
posted by msali at 8:05 PM on February 17, 2010

Msali is in the ballpark. Rates vary a lot, though, by how big a deal nonexpert mistakes would be: Translators of medical journals command much higher rates than translators of cookbooks.
posted by gum at 8:25 PM on February 17, 2010

Response by poster: Just to clarify -- my friend would potentially be the translator. She's not the author.
posted by mneekadon at 8:27 PM on February 17, 2010

Word count (or even character count) is more important than published page count. The next issue to consider is the content itself -- fiction vs. nonfiction, aimed at a technical/specialized audience vs. a general audience, etc.

I've edited art books that have been translated into a second language (or have had substantial material translated into English from a second language), and the most recent rate I remember for our German translator was $36 per 1800 characters (which worked out to be roughly 250 words for the particular texts he was working on). This was actually a pretty discounted rate; his usual fee is, I believe, closer to $50-60/1800 characters.
posted by scody at 8:29 PM on February 17, 2010