I was under the impression ( and have charged the same ) that going rates are somewhere between 5

and 14 cents per word. 5 cents being on the lower end, and 14 being extremely high. I have even seen
20 cent for very difficult translations, and for very specialised texts.

I assumed therefore that the average would be maybe 6-12 cent per word. I have charged 8-10 before.
Now, with the global recession, I would assume that the days of 12 cents per word are happy memories,
and what would be realistic to expect these days would be maybe...6- 8 cents?

However, on some website I recently saw the average of 0.3 cents ( US) per word. Surely a third of one
cent cannot be correct??

In my case, still being a student, even when I start out, I would not dream of charging what " proper"
translators charge. I would think that would be quite insulting, and I would not be at the standard yet to
be able to charge that anyway. I would like to find out the average, and to start out, charge half to two
thirds of that. I think that would be fair. Once I have improved with experience I could then adjust my
rates accordingly.

There are agencies in the U.S. who regularly bill clients up to .40 a word (which would currently be
around .27 euro cents) though most are in the .30 range. Therefore, I think the range is more from the
bottom rate of .18 (freelancers working with agencies) all the way up to .40 (working with direct clients)
or (currently .12 - .27 euros).

Translators and clients were asked to give a rough "per page" estimate of how much they would expect
to pay for translation. (In reality, translation is usually charged for by word count, but my own
experience tells me that many translation clients tend to "think" in pages and may not be familiar with
what, say, 1,000 words actually represents in real terms.) The graph above shows the somewhat telling
results of this question. Of those who were able to give an estimate, 60% of clients/general public
indicated that they would expect to pay $10 or less for the translation of a single page. In a typical
document, this would equate to $20-$40 to translate 1,000 words of source text. Conversely, none of
the professional translators responding indicated that they would expect clients to pay such a low rate,
with most expecting clients to pay $50+ per page. There is a general downward trend in the percentage
of "client" respondents willing to pay prices between $20 and $50, although 15% of "client" respondents
able to give a figure did indicate that they would expect to pay $50+. (Perhaps these 15% are the more
"educated" clients who frequently contract translation and know what realistically to expect for their
money?)

I think that was a typo; I believe Jeff meant EUR 0.12 or 12 eurocents, which is within what I would
consider a not completely unrealistic price range.

No, 0.12 x 500 words = EUR 60.00 per page (or around U.S. $90.00).