How much does software localization cost?
Translation costs vary by language, typically corresponding to the cost of living in the target countries. For example, translation into Simplified Chinese is about a third of the cost of translation into Swedish.
You should expect to receive discounts based on repeated text and leveraging from the translation memory (in essence you only need to pay to translate content once, not again and again for each update).
To try to calculate a rough total budget, including formatting and other related services, we usually recommend the following formula:
Cost = Number of Languages × Number of Words ÷ 2
How long does it take to localize an application?
Translators usually translate software at a rate of about 1,500 words per day. You can generally accommodate almost any required schedule by adding more translators, but this also reduces consistency. SimulTrans has some projects with over 100 translators per language working simultaneously to translate millions of words in a matter of days.
If you are not in a huge rush, we usually recommend limiting your translation team to three translators and two reviewers per language. A group of this size would complete about 4,500 words per day. Since the translators for all languages work simultaneously the number of languages does not have an impact on the schedule.
Aside from translation, there are usually a couple days for set-up and some time required for engineering and testing at the end of the project.
