Price versus specialization

The type, degree and commonality of specialization does matter...

The type of specialization, the degree of specialization of a given material, as well as subject commonality can influence pricing.

Type of specialization

Specialized translations in some areas require more work and broader knowledge than in other areas. One of such specializations is, for example, medical translation and translation regarding medical equipment.

Degree of specialization

Within a given subject area, documents with varying degree of specialization can be encountered. For instance, technical manuals for professional technicians and for specialist service providers are much more difficult to translate and require broader terminology knowledge than do user manuals that accompany more commonly encountered equipment. What is more, patent descriptions for equipment are vastly more complicated as translation products than are general functional or application descriptions for any given product.

Commonality of specialization

Not all specializations are equally common, and not all specialists are priced the same. In regard to some languages and specializations, the real number of competent translators and editors is limited to only a few world-wide. For instance, how many specialists are there that can translate pharmaceutical patents from Greek to Swedish? Such examples are numerous.