What does it mean "fairly priced"?

Let me ask you a couple of questions --

When you go to the doctor's office for a routine check-up, do you haggle the $450 bill or the co-pay?

When you go to the bank, and they tell you, "You have to deposit $1500 in the account to open the account, do you negotiate the number of fixed fees?

When you go into a brick & mortar store, and you see the $78.99+tax price tag on a pair of jeans, do you barter?

We agree that all of the above are experts in their fields, so when they name a price, we don't doubt it. Worst case, we can compare prices with other vendors and choose where to conduct our business. Or, if you are like me, and you are loyal to a particular brand, you will purchase those damn pair of jeans from Lane Bryant at any cost - even if they don't have a sale, just because you love how your legs look in their jeans, and you know the high quality you receive with your purchase. 

So why, when it comes to small service businesses, do people feel the need to say to that small business owner, "Just make sure to give me a fair price?"

When I hear or read that sentence on Facebook, or on X and other websites, I have to fight and suppress the urge to comment and ask, "Fair to whom?" 

Fair to the client - that doesn't want to spend much money? Or fair to the small business owner - let's say a translator, who studied and honed their expertise for years? 

What does it mean to "fairly price" a translation?

How do you even put a price tag on it?

When you do a Google search for translation, you will find all those big translation companies, which put many financial resources into being those top-rated results on your Google search, so you will contact them and pay them the big $$$$ for your translation. But then, they reach out to all those tiny working ants who pay them a meager amount per word. 

Those translators are aching for work and will work for any income, sometimes from multiple sources. I know, because we used to be one of them. 

In our younger days, we worked for a company that charged $95 to translate a birth certificate from Hebrew to English and paid me about $4.86 for the translation. So that you'll understand, here are some numbers:

• A birth certificate in Hebrew is about 120 words. 

• To determine the English word count, multiply 120 by 1.35 (35%) to get 162 words, as on average, there are 35% more English words when translating.

• If you divide the rate the big company gives you, you will find they charge about $0.58 per word in English. 

• They pay the translator only $0.03 per word!

These companies have an outrageous profit at your expense! ​

So why not cut the middleman? Why support those big companies that sit in China, India, or even Spain and give them your hard-earned money when you can get a much better translation from a small translator? 

If you had come to D.O.L. Group directly, we would charge about $55 for that certificate. Those $55 will pay for our expertise and the time and quality of our linguist's work. You pay for a human to sit and translate, and not a machine. You would have received an exact translation, formatted to look the same. Or as close as can be.

Not only that, as a small business, we have the need to maintain you as a client, so we will come and tell you, "but did you ask if you need the translation company to send the documents to the admission office at CUNY?", instead of just taking your money. 

So when someone comes and says, "I have a 30k word project, and I need a fair price", that someone will need to think hard if he wants a "cheap" price, where he can go Fivver and pay a guy from Turkey that says he translates Hebrew for $5 a page, and he will get that cheap machine Google Translate translation - and if you want to know why it's so essential to hire a native translator read our blog!

Or, that someone can come to a small translator who doesn't work with Memo-Q (one of the CAT tools used for translations), read what he worked hard to write, and want the best-quality translation he can buy, and work directly with the small translator. So he will pay more than $5 per page, but the result will be so much more! 

Now, how D.O.L. Group determines its prices is up to us, and when we say we also offer Russian and French translation services, it is because we only employ people we personally know and trust, who are native speakers of these languages. But, I also know that we will do our best to give the best translation you can receive!

And the price is fair for us all!

So, if you have any translation you need, a book you worked hard to write, a blog you need to translate and edit, or a PDF catalog or brochure you want translated and designed, you know where to turn!