The Translation Pricing Calculator Pack

Eight calculators for working out how much to charge for translation per word, per page and per hour from your own year and your own speed, not from anyone's rate list.

Sheet 1 turns the income you want, your costs and unpaid hours into an hourly floor, $53.14 per paid hour in the illustrative example. Sheet 2 turns your words per hour into a per-word rate and a rate per 1,000 words. Sheet 3 sets a per-page quote against a per-word quote on the same document, sheet 4 builds a minimum fee, and sheet 5 adds rush, specialist and research charges. Sheet 6 prices an editing or proofreading pass, sheet 7 prices translating a book with a deposit and payments, and sheet 8 checks whether a finished job paid your floor.

Every figure is an example for you to overwrite. These are estimates, not tax or legal advice. Every formula was recalculated and checked against an independent implementation before this shipped.

What is in it

8 calculators, one per sheet. Overwrite the blue cells with your own numbers and everything else follows — nothing is locked, there are no macros, and it opens in Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice and Google Sheets.

• Hourly floor rate — What must a paid hour of translating earn to pay you and the business?
• Per-word rate — What per-word rate pays your floor at your own words per hour?
• Per page vs per word — On this document, does quoting per page or per word pay more?
• Minimum fee — What should a small job cost once the fixed time every job takes is paid?
• Rush and specialist surcharge — What do a short deadline and specialist text add to the quote?
• Editing and proofreading — What should a separate editing or proofreading pass cost at your own speeds?
• Book project and deposit — What does a whole book cost, how long does it take and how is it paid?
• Did this job pay — Once the translation is delivered, did it pay your floor?

Every formula was checked

This pack contains 57 formulas. Before it was published, every one of them was recalculated by a spreadsheet engine and compared against an independent implementation of the same arithmetic written in Python. All 57 agreed to within a cent, and the workbook carries a Verification sheet saying so.

That is an unusual thing to be able to claim about a spreadsheet, and it is the main reason to buy this one rather than download a free template. A formula that looks right and is wrong is worse than no formula at all, because you will act on it.

What each calculator assumes

There is a sheet listing this, because a calculator that hides its assumptions is just a number generator:

• Every working week looks the same. A lost booked hour is time you are at work and unpaid. The tax set-aside is a share you enter, not a computed tax.
• Every word of the job drafts at the speed entered, and review time scales with drafting time. A text that drafts slower needs its own words per hour.
• Both quotes use the same 1,000-word rate. The page definition is yours and should be written into the quote. Formatting time for tables or scans is not included here.
• Fixed minutes are the same on every job, however small. The minimum is fixed time plus a block of words you choose.
• The rush surcharge applies only when the client's days are fewer than your pace needs. Both surcharge shares are your own policy, applied to the word price.
• Editing and proofreading run at the speeds entered on every page. Heavy rewriting of a weak translation is slower and needs its own speed.
• The whole book runs at one pace and one rate. Payments after the deposit are equal. Query hours are a single estimate for the project.
• Business costs and unpaid hours are already inside the floor from sheet 1, so this sheet subtracts only the costs that came with the job.

What this is not

Not financial, tax or legal advice, and not a recommendation to buy, sell, borrow or sign anything. These are calculators: they show what a choice costs, not which choice is right for you. Where a published rate or threshold is used it is the one current when the pack was built — those change, the arithmetic does not.

Honest about the format

One .xlsx workbook, 8 calculator sheets plus Start Here, Assumptions and Verification. Not a PDF, not a physical product, not a Notion template. Available immediately after purchase; nothing ships.

Refunds

If this isn't what you expected, email me within 30 days and I'll refund you in full — no need to explain. Because it's an instant download I can't take the file back, so I'd rather you just had your money back.