How to price translation services: a margin model for agencies

Most agencies set their first prices by looking at what everyone else charges and shaving a little off. It feels safe. It also means your prices have nothing to do with your costs, and you only find out which jobs lose money when the bank balance tells you.

There's a better way, and it isn't complicated: work out what a job actually costs you, add the margin you need, then decide how to express that as a rate the client understands. This guide walks through it with a worked example.

The four ways to charge for translation

Per word is the default for most documents. It's easy to explain, scales with the work and is simple to compare. Quote on the source word count whenever you can, because you know it before you start; a target-word price leaves the client guessing until the job is done.

Per page or per document suits short, standard documents such as birth certificates, driving licences and degree certificates. A one-page certificate can take as long to lay out, check and certify as a three-page letter, and a fixed price per document reflects that better than a word rate.

Per hour fits work that isn't about volume: proofreading a client's own translation, desktop publishing, transcreation of a slogan, or terminology work.

A fixed fee works for projects with a clear scope, such as a website translated once into five languages.

Most agencies use all four. The mistake isn't choosing the wrong one; it's having no minimum charge underneath them.

Build the price from the cost, not from a rate card

A translation price has more in it than the translator's fee. Write down every cost a typical job carries:

• The translator, usually paid per word.
• Revision by a second linguist, if the job includes it. For certified, legal and medical work it should.
• Project management time: quoting, finding the linguist, checking, delivering, invoicing.
• Certification and admin: the certificate, stamping, scanning, posting.
• Payment fees: card or PayPal fees on the client's side, transfer fees on the linguist's.
• Tools and AI: your share of CAT licences, software, and the cost of any AI first draft.
• Overheads: everything else that keeps the lights on.

Here's a worked example. The figures are made up to show the method, so use your own.

If you want a 35% gross margin, divide the direct cost by 0.65: £260.50 / 0.65 = £400.77. Round it to £400 and you're charging £0.20 a word for this kind of work.

Two things fall out of doing this once. You'll see that the translator is only part of the cost on small jobs, and you'll see why a "cheap" rate on a 300-word job can lose money once project management time is counted.

Repetitions and translation memory matches

On longer documents, much of the text may be repeated or already in your translation memory. Clients increasingly expect a discount for that, and it's fair: a 100% match takes far less effort than a new sentence.

A common way to handle it is a match grid that pays a percentage of the full rate for each band. The percentages below are an example of how agencies set them up, not a standard:

If you discount clients this way, pay linguists on the same grid, or your margin quietly disappears on exactly the jobs that should be the most profitable. And count the words with the match bands before you quote, not after the job is assigned. In LinguisTriks the word count on a quote's files shows the repetitions and memory matches in bands like these, without opening a CAT tool.

Minimum charges and urgent work

Every agency needs a minimum charge. Without one, a 40-word email costs you more in project management time than it brings in. Set the minimum at the price that covers the smallest realistic job: the linguist's own minimum, the project management time and your margin. Show it on every quote, so it's never a surprise.

Urgent work deserves its own rate, because it costs more: it means asking a linguist to drop other work, paying them more, and checking more carefully. State what "urgent" means (same day, next working day) and what the uplift is.

Pricing AI-assisted translation honestly

Machine translation followed by human post-editing is now normal, and clients know it. The questions are how much editing the draft really needs, and whether the client knows what they're buying.

Two principles keep it honest:

1. Price the effort, not the label. A clean AI draft of a simple letter needs light editing; a legal contract still needs a full review against the source. Measure how much your linguists actually change, by language pair and document type, and price from that. LinguisTriks' AI effort report shows how much of each draft was edited, which gives you real numbers to price from rather than guesses.
2. Say what the client is getting. Agree with the client whether their document will be AI-drafted and fully revised, or translated from scratch, and never sell an unedited AI draft as a professional translation.

For certified translations, the linguist is certifying the final text, so the review has to be complete whatever produced the first draft.

Certified translations

Certified translations are usually priced per document, because the work is dominated by fixed steps: checking the layout, translating stamps and handwritten notes, issuing the certificate and, often, posting a paper copy. Build those steps into a per-document price, with a word-based price for longer documents.

Put the price in front of the client properly

A clear quote prevents most disputes later. Include:

• what's being translated, from and into which languages
• the word count, how it was counted and any match discounts
• what's included: revision, certification, formatting, delivery format
• the delivery date and how urgent work is charged
• how long the quote is valid, and your payment terms

For private clients, ask for payment before starting. A quote that the client can accept and pay online in one step removes most of the chasing.

Review your prices every quarter

Prices aren't set once. Every quarter, look at what each client and each language pair actually earned you after the linguist, revision and project management time. You'll usually find a handful of clients or pairs that make no money, and a few that could stand a higher rate.

If your quotes, jobs and linguist costs live in one system, that's a ten-minute report rather than a weekend with spreadsheets. See how LinguisTriks handles quotes and word counts, or try it free.