This ongoing series will provide succinct guidance to buyers of translation services.
Why does my document have 2000 words but my estimate is for 2800 words?
Great question. Most invoicing and billing for translation is done on the final target word count. Agencies that hope to give you estimates that will not be exceeded, will estimate the expansion of words in the translation process. Because of this, you will see a larger word count on the estimate. It is also because of this that you will see different word counts on your final invoice for different languages. The Spanish may say 2800 words, while the Italian may say 2200.