Translation FAQ

When translating, it can take more words to express a concept in one language vis-à-vis the other. Translations are commonly 10-20% longer than their original documents. In some cases, the word count increases by up to 30% by the time the final translation has been polished. The rate of expansion (or contraction) hinges on which languages are involved, which direction (to English or from English), what style of writing, abbreviations or metrics that need to be written out, etc. 

 

Technical writing is less flowery than business correspondence, so the expansion rate is typically lower -- even for the same language pair. If the original document contains many cultural references that need to be explained in the target language, these explanations logically involve more words. International aid documents famously involve a plethora of abbreviations that ought to be written out and translated.

 

Many languages require direct or indirect articles (the, a, some, these) to indicate gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and count (singular or plural). Some verbs are intransitive in one language and transitive in another (require a direct object). Romance languages, like Spanish or French, are known to be significantly longer than English. On the other hand, German tends to create compound words. Where there are three adjectives and a noun in English, there may be a single compound word in German.

Average expansion rate for English to Spanish: 25% 

 

All of these factors and the exact word choices made when writing the original document and when translating affect the final number of words in the translation.