How Much Do English to Vietnamese Translation Services Cost?

Seeing the great potential of the Vietnamese market, one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia, many foreign companies are seeking high-quality English to Vietnamese translation services as an integral step in their expansion strategy. A successful English to Vietnamese translation project should balance the three factors: quality, deadline, and cost.

In our previous posts, we talked about how you can find and test your translation partners to guarantee the project quality as well as how to estimate the turnaround time of your projects to make sure it matches your business plan. In today’s post, let’s focus on the money side and find the answers to two key questions: What factors determine the rate for English to Vietnamese translation services? and What can you do to minimize the translation cost for your English to Vietnamese translation projects?

1. Factors affecting the cost of English to Vietnamese translation services

There are numerous factors that have a great influence on the English to Vietnamese translation services, like how to use personal pronouns or the capitalization system. Within the scope of this post, we will mention the top 5 most important ones that relate to the general cost.

Project Volume & Repetition Level

Translation costs are normally determined on a price-per-word basis. The more words your documents contain, the more money you have to pay. However, that doesn’t mean that all projects with a similar volume are charged the same.

Most translation agencies and freelance translators make use of CAT tools when working on a project. With the translation memory feature, CAT Tools automatically translate words, phrases, or sentences that were previously translated by human translators. To put it in other words, translators never have to translate the same phrases twice, which helps guarantee the consistency of the translations and saves translators a great deal of time.

Some popular CAT Tools that most translation agencies work with

From your side, you don’t have to pay full price for these repetitive words. Based on the match rate, translation agencies offer different rates. For example, you have to pay full price for a new word but only 70% of the full price for “fuzzy match” (74%-99% of the segment match the previous translations) or 25% of the full price for “exact match” (100% of the segment match the previous translations). Please note that the percentage we mention here is just an example. The actual figures vary among agencies.

Let’s do some calculations to help you understand this concept easier. Assuming the rate for a new word is $1. Out of 1000 words, you need translating, there are 450 no match words, 300 fuzzy match words, 250 exact match words and the weighted rates are 1, 0.7, and 0.25 respectively. Then the price you pay will be calculated as follows:

In general, the higher the proportion of repetitive words is, the less money you have to pay for your English to Vietnamese translation services.

Content Complexity

The difficulty of your content significantly reflects on the quote you receive from your translation partners. If your documents contain a high number of technical or scientific terms, you need to work with highly skilled and specialized translators who charge you more for their services. The same thing happens when you need to translate creative content for marketing campaigns, slogans, or poetry. So if the subject matter complexity is high, you should expect the rate to be 20-30% more costly than that for general content.

Types of Services

There are three levels of English to Vietnamese translation services – Translation Only (TO), Translation + Editing (TE), and Translation + Editing + Proofreading (TEP). While TO is suitable for internal content or low-budget projects, TE and TEP should be used when your content is used for external purposes. The higher the level of translation is, the more linguists get involved. Of course, the price you pay will increase accordingly.

For documents with high content of visuals, you might need to use an extra service – Desktop Publish (DTP) to make sure the final products are easy to read and well laid out. You will have to pay extra for this step.

Deadline

“I need to have this document translated immediately” or “It is an urgent project” are two requests that we are sure every translator and translation agency receives on a regular basis. If you need a translation as soon as possible, it will cost you a markup. One survey by the Common Sense Advisory (CSA) showed that 88% of language service providers charge extra for urgent projects, from 10-200% depending on how short the turnaround time is.

File Formatting

While most documents come in editable formats such as MS Word, PowperPoint, and Excel, some are in scanned PDF, Photoshop, or Indesign formats. If the latter is your case, translators are likely to ask for additional charges. It is understandable because they have to convert your source files into editable ones. Just imagine you send translators a 20-page bad scanned PDF file, it will take them hours to re-type the original content before they can start working on the project.

Now that we have gone through some major factors that determine the translation cost of the English to Vietnamese language pair, let’s take a sample project and calculate its costs. Assuming you have a 20-page website with 10,000 words that need translating (6,700 new words (x1), 2500 fuzzy match words (x0.7), and 800 exact match words (x0.25). For English to Vietnamese website translation services, we always advise our clients to use the TEP services to guarantee the accuracy and smoothness of content. For general content, our offered rate is $0.06/word. So the price you have to pay for this project will be as follows:

2. Tips for minimizing English to Vietnamese translation services cost

Now that you know which factors determine the cost of your English to Vietnamese translation services, let’s find the solutions to lower the cost as much as possible. Below are 3 suggestions from us:

• • Plan ahead – Rush translation is costly. Therefore, we suggest you always make a translation plan ahead to have time for finding the most suitable language provider and avoiding the markup expense.
  • Optimized your content – Try to cut down on the number of words by reducing wordy sentences and lengthy words; removing unnecessary parts of your content such as idioms or jargon; and avoiding text in graphics.
  • Make the most out of technology – From the example illustrated above, we are sure you have seen what benefits CAT Tools can bring to your project. CAT Tools are even more effective when you plan on using English to Vietnamese translation services in the long run. As the TM gets bigger after each project, the money you pay will be lessened.

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• How Much Does Online Korean Translation Cost?
• How Much Do Website Translation Services Cost?
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3. English to Vietnamese translation services rates

Starting as a Vietnamese translation agency before becoming a global one today, GTE Localize has a huge pool of native translators when it comes to English to Vietnamese translation services. With our localization insights into the Vietnamese market, we know exactly where to find the most capable Vietnamese translators for your projects, at the most competitive rate in the market.

Our prices for three levels of English to Vietnamese translation services:

• • Translation Only (TO) – From just $0.04/word
  • Translation + Editing (TE) – From $0.06/word
  • Translation + Editing + Proofreading (TEP) – From $0.07/word

Talk to our localization experts and let us help you reach your Vietnamese audiences through our value-for-money English to Vietnamese translation services.