Have you ever noticed that some languages use long words like German or very short words like Korean?  When translating from one language to another, this can cause problems in trying to figure out word counts or designing buttons involved in website translation.

I ran across this interesting chart which shows the average length of words by language.

German, which is famous for their compound words, has an average of 6.26 letters per word.  That compares to only 5.10 letters per word for English.  Korean only has 3.05 characters per word and Burmese averages 14.76 letters per word.

Why is this important?  Well, we normally charge "per word" for translations.  If the original language has words averaging 20-30% longer than the target language, the price to translate each word will be a little higher.  That's because there will be more words after it's translated.  Here is an example when working with German Translation projects.

The average German word is 23% longer than English.  When we translate a German document into English, the word count will generally increase by 10-20%.  So, a document with 10,000 German words can increase to 12,000 English words.  And, if we are translating from English into German, we have seen the number of words actually DECREASE by as much as 15% because two English words will be combined into one longer German word.  This all goes into the calculation of the price "per word" which varies from language to language.

In addition to the price, the size of the words also matters in website translation and localization.  It's always a good idea to allow extra room when designing buttons and graphics if you know the website will be translated.  A word like "minor" in English translates to "geringfügig" in German.  Or, "fan" in English becomes "ventilador" in Spanish.

Whether you need English Translation, German Translation or Website Translation - B2B Translations will work with you to make sure the words you need are just the right length.