How much should a person charge for an English to Spanish translation?

It depends on the quality of the translation and the necessity of translation.



If you are good, I've heard between 20 and 30 cents a word.



For critical government docs, you could probably charge even more.How much should a person charge for an English to Spanish translation?
On here, nothing :)

Professionally, it really depends on what it's for. If it's a few sentences, written, probably not very much. A longer document obviously means more money, but topic is important to consider; if it's something instructional (like a manual or how-to), a specialized vocabulary is needed. If it's just a business or personal letter, that sort of vocab is pretty generally known.

Spoken is sort of a tossup I bet, because if it's for a business meeting or a court room, the service is more important and the translator needs to be more fluent and sometimes specialized (vocabulary-wise).



I'm not a pro or anything, so I can't give you real numbers, sorry!