Translation rates: what a translation costs and why

What this guide covers

This is the long version, with rates for four countries and the arithmetic behind a quote. Each link jumps to its section, and the FAQ at the end has the short answers.

• Typical rates at a glance
• How translations are priced
• What raises the price
• Does the language pair change the price?
• Certified translation prices in the US, UK, Germany and France
• Agency, freelancer, online service or machine translation
• How to get an accurate quote for a scanned document
• For translators: quoting scanned source files
• Worked example: three documents, five price units
• Where LoreAI fits

Typical rates at a glance

Every figure below comes from a named survey, a fee schedule or a company's own price page, with the date we read it. None of them is an average we worked out ourselves. The translators' associations of the UK, Germany and France say competition law bars them from recommending prices, so a survey median is the closest thing to a market rate they publish[3][4][2].

Read the table as a range of reference points, not as a price list. The UK and French medians come from freelancers' own answers to a survey. The court rates are what a court pays, and the page prices are what one company advertised on the day we looked[2][1][10][6].

How translations are priced

Translation is often charged per word, or per character for languages written in characters. Some translators charge per page, a flat fee or per hour, according to the American Translators Association (ATA)[15]. Which unit you get depends mostly on the country and the document.

Per word

Common in the US[15] and by far the most common unit in France. In the French survey, 331 freelancers quoted direct clients per source word and only 16 per target word[1]

Per page

Common for certificates and diplomas, often as a flat fee[15]. RushTranslate counts a page as 250 words or less, numbers included[6]

Per line

The usual unit for German. A Normzeile is 50 to 55 characters with spaces, and courts pay per started line of 55[4][10]

Per hour

Used for revision, proofreading and jobs with a lot of formatting, where the effort is hard to price per word[4]

Minimum fee

Charged even for a document of one or two pages[15]

Source or target words. A quote on the source text is known before the work starts, so you can compare it. A quote on the target text is only final once the translation exists. The BDÜ, Germany's largest translators' association, says German jobs are usually billed on the target text, but a quote on the source text works when the source can be counted[4].

Why German counts lines. German compounds such as "Einkommensteuer-Durchführungsverordnung" are single long words, so a per-word price says little about the work. The BDÜ gives this as the reason line pricing took hold for German[4].

Per hour. In the 2023 ITI survey, ITI members charged direct clients a median of £35.31 an hour for general texts and £40 for specialised ones[2]. In France the median hourly rate for translation with direct clients was €50, and €45 for revision[1].

What raises the price

The same number of words can cost very different amounts. The ATA, the BDÜ and the French translators' society SFT list much the same factors[15][4][3].

• Language pair. Less common languages cost more[15]. In France, one English to French translator in the survey charged €0.03 a word and another €0.29[1].
• Subject. Legal, medical and technical texts cost more[15]. ITI members' median rose from £0.100 to £0.110 a word for specialised texts with direct clients[2].
• Client type. Agencies pay freelancers less than direct clients do. In France the gap was €0.04 a word, or 29 percent[1].
• Deadline. Rush and weekend work carry a surcharge[15][4]. Day Translations, for example, adds 35 percent for expedited processing[7].
• Certification and notarization. A certified translator may charge somewhat more, and notarization is an extra fee[15].
• Scans and layout. Scanned files take longer to translate and may cost more[15]. German courts pay a higher line rate when the text did not arrive in an editable electronic form[10].

Does the language pair change the price?

For common pairs the medians sit close together, and rare languages cost more[15]. The French survey is the only one we opened that breaks rates down by pair with enough answers to read[1].

Pairs with only two or three answers, such as English to Spanish, appear in the survey too, but two answers say nothing about a market, so we leave them out[1]. How much does it cost to translate English to Spanish in the US, then? No public survey answers that. Flat page services often charge the same in every language. Official Translations, for example, says its £29.95 page price applies across all languages[9]. A rare language, or a pair with few translators, is where you should expect a higher quote[15].

The direction can matter as well. German to French had a median of €0.15 a word and French to German €0.14, from different groups of translators[1]. Ask for the quote in the direction you need, not the reverse.

Certified translation prices by country

What counts as certified differs by country, and so does the price unit. These are the reference points we could open and date. They are examples, not averages.

United States. USCIS asks for a full English translation that the translator certifies as complete and accurate, with a statement that they are competent in both languages[16]. Online services sell this per page. RushTranslate charges $24.95 for a page of up to 250 words[6]. Day Translations starts at $29 a page, with notarization at 19.99 US dollars an order and an Illinois apostille at $105[7]. ProTranslate charges $0.10 a word[17]. See the certified services we compared and the USCIS translation guide.

United Kingdom. Certified translations are sold per page or per document. Absolute Translations starts at £29 a birth certificate, including certification and VAT, with extra pages from £26[8]. Official Translations in London starts at £29.95 a page[9]. In England and Wales, the Legal Aid Agency does not usually ask for prior authority in family cases when translation costs less than £100 per 1,000 words[18]. The Home Office rules are on certified translation in the UK.

Germany. A beglaubigte Übersetzung is priced by agreement with the translator. Courts pay under the JVEG, which sets €1.95 per started 55 characters for text received in an editable electronic form and €2.15 otherwise, rising to €2.15 and €2.30 for difficult texts, with at least €20 per order[10]. Who may certify is explained on beglaubigte Übersetzung, in German.

France. A traduction assermentée comes from a traducteur agréé, an expert judiciaire on a cour d'appel or Cour de cassation list[19]. The state publishes no price for private orders. In criminal cases it pays €25 a page, or €38.50 for translators who have used the option the text provides[12], and a page is 250 words[13]. ACG Trad, a Spanish sworn translation firm, for example lists €25 to €40 a page[20]. See traducteur assermenté, in French.

Agency, freelancer, online service or machine translation: compared

The cheapest option is the one the receiving office accepts. Check that first, then compare these.

For documents that only need to be understood, such as a letter, a manual or a contract you are reading before you sign, a machine translation is usually enough. See DeepL for documents and ChatGPT for documents for how the general tools handle files. For anything an office will file, ask what it accepts before you pay anyone.

How to get an accurate quote for a scanned document

A translation quote is only as good as the word count behind it. Scanned files take longer and may cost more[15], so give the translator what they need to price it once.

1. Count the words first. Run the file through the PDF word counter. It reads scanned pages with OCR and lists each page, so you know the size of the job before you ask.
2. Send a clean, complete scan. Every page, including the back, stamps and handwritten notes. USCIS asks for a full translation, so nothing can be left out[16].
3. Say what it is for. The office, the country and whether it must be certified, notarized or sworn. These change the price more than the length does[15].
4. Ask what the price includes. The unit (source or target words, page, line), the minimum fee, certification, notarization, postage, VAT and the deadline[15][8].
5. Get the quote in writing. The SFT advises asking for a free quote and sending a written order that sets out what you expect[3].

Comparing two quotes. Put them on the same unit before you compare. A quote of €0.14 a word and one of €32 a page are the same price for a page of about 230 words, and very different for a page of 400[1]. Check whether VAT is included, as Absolute Translations states it is in its page price[8], and whether certification, postage and a second reader are in the total or added later.

For translators: quoting scanned source files

How much should you charge for translating a document? Count it before you answer. A scanned PDF has no text layer, so most counters return zero, and CAT tools such as memoQ don't extract text from scanned PDFs at all[21].

• Count with OCR. The PDF word counter counts text pages free and reads scanned pages with OCR, up to 10 per file without an account and 30 with a free one. It gives words, characters and lines of 55 characters.
• German lines. For a quote per Normzeile, use the German version, Wörter zählen in PDF. The Kammergericht Berlin counts characters with spaces divided by 55, and because a manual count from a source that isn't a Word file comes out higher, it accepts bills up to 20 percent above its own count[22].
• Price the scan. German courts pay €2.15 instead of €1.95 a line when the source did not arrive in an editable form[10]. Outside court work, agree any scan surcharge with the client, and say in the quote that the count of a scan is an estimate.
• Quote the unit your client uses. Source words, target words, lines or pages. In France, per source word was by far the most common unit in the 2025 survey[1].
• Know your minimum. ITI members charged direct clients a median minimum of £35 in 2023, and agencies £25[2].

Once the job is priced, a scan still has to get into your CAT tool. In the LoreAI app, OCR Only returns an editable Word file in the source language, and on paid plans the CAT-ready option joins OCR line breaks into paragraphs and puts each table cell in its own paragraph, so Trados, memoQ or Phrase segment it cleanly. Import one page first and check the segments before you build a whole project.

Worked example: three documents, five price units

This shows how the units compare on the same job. It is arithmetic on the published rates above, not a quote. We assumed a birth certificate of 250 words, a 10-page transcript of 3,000 words and a 40-page contract of 16,000 words. For the German line count we assumed a German text of 7 characters per word including the space, which is a rough figure. Count your own file instead.

Per word, the UK and French medians land close together. The German court rate is the highest because it pays per line and adds a premium for scans[10]. And the minimum fee decides the price of a short certificate, so a one-page document rarely costs its word count times the word rate[11][2].

Where LoreAI fits

LoreAI is not a certified translation service, and it does not sign, stamp or notarize anything. It is a machine translator for scans and photos. It reads a PDF, JPG or PNG with OCR, translates it into one of 105 languages and returns an editable Word file with headings, lists and tables in the order of the original. Names, dates and numbers stay as written.

That makes it useful in two places. Before you order, it shows you what a document says and how long it is. And when a bilingual reviewer will certify the translation, they can correct a draft instead of typing the document from scratch, then sign it with the certificate of translation template. Your first document is free, up to 3 pages. After that, Basic is $12.99 a month for 200 pages. That is a software subscription, not a translation rate. To translate a file now, use the PDF translator, and see how to get a certified translation for the signed version.

Questions people ask