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Translation calculator

How long is your script in their language?

A 1,000-word English script is about 1,250 words in Spanish, 800 in Arabic and 1,600 characters in Chinese. Paste yours, pick the two languages, and see the translated length, the reading time and the price, before you book anything.

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Your estimate

Paste a script, pick the language you need, and this panel fills in: how long the translation will be, how long it takes to read, and what it costs.

Why the count changes

Same message. Different number of words.

Languages spend words differently. Spanish, French and Portuguese use more small ones: articles, prepositions, connecting words that English leaves out. Finnish, Turkish and Arabic glue those pieces onto the word itself, so they need fewer, longer words. Chinese and Japanese have no spaces at all, so translators count characters instead.

None of that changes how long the recording runs by much. Languages that use more words are spoken faster, so a translated read comes out close to the original length. What changes is the word count, and on The Voice Realm the word count is what sets the price. That is exactly why this calculator exists.

The figures here are the ones translators and localisation agencies work from. Every result shows the typical range as well as a single number, and your translator confirms the exact count when they see the script.

1,000 English words inbecomeschange
Spanish (Latin American)about 1,250 words (1,150 to 1,300)+25%
Portuguese (Brazilian)about 1,220 words (1,150 to 1,300)+22%
Frenchabout 1,180 words (1,150 to 1,200)+18%
Italianabout 1,180 words (1,100 to 1,250)+18%
Germanabout 1,080 words (1,000 to 1,150)+8%
Dutchabout 1,100 words (1,050 to 1,200)+10%
Polishabout 1,100 words (1,050 to 1,200)+10%
Russianabout 1,050 words (950 to 1,150)+5%
Greekabout 1,100 words (1,050 to 1,150)+10%
Romanianabout 1,150 words (1,100 to 1,200)+15%
Hindiabout 1,200 words (1,150 to 1,350)+20%
Tagalogabout 1,200 words (1,100 to 1,300)+20%
Vietnameseabout 1,350 words (1,250 to 1,450)+35%
Indonesianabout 1,050 words (1,000 to 1,100)+5%
Koreanabout 870 words (850 to 900)-13%
Turkishabout 820 words (780 to 880)-18%
Hungarianabout 850 words (800 to 900)-15%
Swedishabout 900 words (880 to 920)-10%
Danishabout 880 words (850 to 900)-12%
Finnishabout 720 words (700 to 750)-28%
Arabicabout 800 words (750 to 850)-20%
Hebrewabout 750 words (700 to 800)-25%
Chineseabout 1,600 characters (1,500 to 1,700)in characters
Japaneseabout 2,200 characters (2,000 to 2,500)in characters
Thaiabout 5,000 characters (4,500 to 5,500)in characters
How the price works

Two counts, two prices.

1Translation: the script you upload

Priced by the length of your original and by the pair of languages, on the translation rate card. A Chinese or Japanese original is counted in characters, about 1.6 and 2.2 per English word, and the bands are shown in characters too.

2Recording: the translated script

Priced by what the voice actor reads, at the standard voice over rates for the kind of recording it is. If the estimate sits near the top of a band, the calculator says so.

3Same person, both jobs

Every translator here is a professional voice actor. Book the translation, then the recording with the same voice, and the script is read by the one person who understands every word of it. Find them here.

Questions

About the numbers.

Why does a translated script have a different word count?
Languages spend words differently. Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian use more small words (articles, prepositions, connecting words) than English, so a translation runs 15 to 30 percent longer. Finnish, Turkish, Arabic and Hebrew attach those pieces to the word itself, so they need fewer, longer words. Chinese and Japanese have no spaces at all and are counted in characters. The calculator applies the figures translators and localisation agencies work from, and shows you the range, not just one number.
Which count is the price based on?
Translation is priced by the length of the script you upload, because that is what the translator works from. A recording of the translated script is priced by the translated script, because that is what the voice actor reads. The calculator shows both, so there are no surprises when you book.
How does it handle Chinese, Japanese and other character languages?
It counts characters, not words, and converts using the rule of thumb translators use: roughly 1.6 Chinese characters or 2.2 Japanese characters for each English word. Because a Chinese script takes about as long to read aloud as the English it came from, recording bands are set from the English-equivalent word count, which is shown alongside the character count.
Does a longer translation mean a longer recording?
Usually not by much. Languages that use more words tend to be spoken faster, so the finished audio comes out close to the original length. The word count still matters because that is how voice over rates are set, and the calculator uses the translated count for the recording price.
How accurate is it?
It is an estimate built on published industry figures, and every result shows the typical range. Your translator confirms the exact count when they see the script, and if a script lands near the edge of a rate band the calculator says so, so you can budget for the band above.
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