—BOOK TRANSLATION SERVICES
Book Translation Services
Book translation from $0.09 a word, or $7,200 for an 80,000-word novel. A native speaker translates your manuscript and a second native speaker checks it. No machine draft, no cleanup pass over something a model wrote first.
French, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Arabic cost more to translate well, so those are quoted on your manuscript.
—WHAT’S INCLUDED
One translator, one language, from your actual manuscript
Two people touch your book, and only two. A native speaker of the target language who has translated books before, and a second native speaker who checks their work against your original. Nothing is split across a pool of freelancers to hit a deadline.
The translator
A native speaker of the target language who has translated books. Not documents, not websites. Fiction and narrative non-fiction move differently from a product manual, and a translator who works on manuals will produce sentences that are correct and dead.
One person takes the whole book, start to finish, so the voice does not change at chapter nine because the file went to somebody else that week.
The second reader
A second native speaker reads the translation against your original, looking for what the first pass missed. A joke that landed in English and vanished. An idiom rendered literally. A character whose register slipped from formal to casual halfway through.
This is the pass most cheap quotes leave out, and it is the one that decides whether the book reads as written or as translated.
What lands in your inbox
- A clean manuscript file in the target language
- Ready to go straight into formatting
- Front matter translated
- Chapter headings translated
- Back matter translated
- Source files, yours to keep
Front and back matter sounds obvious. It is the single most common thing missing from a cheap delivery, and it is the first thing a reader in that language notices.
Rights
The translation is yours. Full rights, no royalty share, no clause tying the foreign edition to us. That is the same arrangement as every other service on this site, and it matters more here than most places, because a translation you do not fully own is a translation you cannot license onward.
What is not included: typesetting. Translated text runs longer than English, often by 15 to 20 percent, so the interior has to be laid out again rather than dropped into the existing file. Quoted separately, and not expensive next to the translation itself.
—INVESTMENT
What a translated book costs, ours and everyone else’s
Translation starts at $0.09 a word. On an 80,000-word novel that is $7,200, per language. French, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Arabic are quoted on your manuscript, because those pairs cost more to translate and pretending otherwise would mean revising the number after you had already planned around it.
Here is where that sits against the rest of the market.
| Who | Per word | 80,000-word novel |
|---|---|---|
| AI translation tools | $0.006 and under | Under $500 |
| Freelance marketplaces Commission included | $0.066 to $0.132 | $5,280 to $10,560 |
| AuthorWings This page | From $0.09 | From $7,200 |
| Book translation agencies | $0.08 to $0.20 | $6,400 to $16,000 |
| Society of Authors UK publisher rate | About $0.13 | About $10,400 |
| General translation vendors | $0.09 to $0.40 | $7,200 to $32,000 |
At the bottom of every human range on that table, and well above every machine one. That is the whole position, and it is deliberate. A translation that costs less than a restaurant meal was not done by a person, and a translation that costs three times ours is usually being sold through two layers of agency.
What a marketplace average actually is
Not a price. It is what past projects happened to settle at, and the translator working at the bottom of that band is the one with the fewest published books and the most availability. Commission usually sits on top.
You find out where in the range your project lands after you have shortlisted, sent sample chapters and waited. Our number is on this page before you contact anyone.
Why the cheap end is so cheap
A tool will translate a 50,000-word novel for a couple of dollars, and that is not a scam. It is a different product. Machine output is useful for checking what a foreign edition says or testing whether a market exists.
It is not a publishable literary translation, and the next section explains exactly where it breaks.
What is not in the price. Typesetting the translated interior, and a proofread in the target language if you want one. Neither is expensive next to the translation. Both are real, and any quote that does not mention them is quoting you for part of the job. Run the book publishing cost calculator if you want the whole picture costed against your word count.
—MACHINE TRANSLATION
Where a $390 translation breaks
Machine translation has got genuinely good. It handles grammar, vocabulary and sentence structure better than most people expect, and for large volumes of straightforward text it is the right tool. If you want to know roughly what a foreign edition of your book would say, or test whether a market exists before committing money, use it. We will tell you that on the call.
Where it breaks is not about genre. It breaks in four places, and every book has at least two of them.
Consistency
A model translates in chunks and has no memory of what it chose forty pages ago. In a novel that means a name or a recurring phrase drifting. In non-fiction it is worse: the same concept arrives under three different words across a book, and the reader loses confidence in the argument without being able to say why.
Idiom
English is dense with expressions that mean nothing literally. Rendered word for word, a business book’s “move the needle” or a self-help book’s “sit with it” becomes either nonsense or an instruction the reader cannot follow. A how-to book that has been mistranslated is not stylistically flat. It is wrong.
Register
People signal class, age, region and mood through word choice, and a machine flattens all of it to one neutral tone. Dialogue ends up sounding dubbed. In non-fiction the author’s voice goes with it, and voice is much of what that reader is buying, because they are deciding whether to trust you.
Cultural anchoring
References, examples, case studies, humour, units, currencies, legal and tax specifics. A model translates the words and leaves the reference pointing at nothing. Your German reader gets an anecdote about a US retailer they have never heard of, or a chapter of tax advice that does not apply in their country.
The hybrid pitch is where the money actually goes. Machine translation with human post-editing sounds efficient: a model produces the draft, an editor cleans it up. That works when the source is functional prose.
When the writing carries voice, or the argument depends on precision, the editor is not cleaning up. They are rewriting against a draft that has already made hundreds of small wrong choices, and undoing a wrong choice takes longer than making the right one first. Authors who buy the cheap version often pay twice, once for the draft and again for the repair.
Our position
We do not use it. No machine draft, no post-editing pass over model output, at any tier. A native speaker translates the manuscript and a second one checks it. Our AI policy covers how this works across every service on the site.
None of this makes the $390 option dishonest. It makes it a different product with a different job, and it is worth knowing which one you are buying before the sample comes back flat.
—WHEN NOT THE RIGHT FIT
For a lot of authors, translating is the wrong purchase
Translation is one line item. A translated edition is a whole book, and the rest of it does not translate itself.
What a translated edition needs beyond the translation
- A proofread in the target language
- The interior laid out again
- The cover adapted
- New metadata and categories
- A marketing budget in that country
- Reviews you do not yet have
A translation is a first edition, and first editions have typos. Translated text runs 15 to 20 percent longer, so the existing interior file will not hold it. Titles change length and sometimes change entirely. And your reviews do not follow you across storefronts.
The real number
At $0.09 a word the translation of an 80,000-word novel is $7,200. Add the rest and you are well past $10,000 before a single copy sells, in a market where you have no list, no reviews and no name.
Pitching foreign rights inverts all of it
A publisher in that country licenses the right to publish your book in their language. They pay for the translation. They pay for the copyedit, the typesetting, the cover, the marketing and the sales team who already know that market. They pay you an advance and a royalty, and if the book fails, it fails on their money.
You give up control of the edition and a share of what it earns. For an author with no audience in that country, that is a good trade, because the alternative is funding a launch into a market you cannot see.
Buy the translation when you already have the market
You are selling in Spanish-speaking territories in English and readers are asking for a translation. You have a series with a proven readership, so the cost is spread across four books instead of one. The book is non-fiction tied to a business you already run in that country.
Or you have a specific reason that is not return on investment, which is a legitimate answer and one we hear often.
Pitch the rights when you are starting cold
No audience, no sales history, no contacts in the market, one standalone title. That is the situation where a translation is most likely to sit on a storefront and do nothing.
It is also the situation almost every author asking us about international editions is actually in, which is why this section exists.
Foreign Rights Pitch
$3,495 a regionA bet on a market, not a certainty
Builds a list of 20 to 30 publishers in Europe, Asia, Latin America or the Middle East, writes a pitch tailored to each one, translates roughly five pages as a sample, and runs an eight-week outreach campaign, with us coordinating if anyone bites. If a deal happens, the agent commission of 10 to 15 percent, the translation and the legal fees are yours to pay, and they come out of the publisher’s side of the arrangement rather than yours upfront.
Most pitches do not result in a deal. We would rather say that here than let you find it later. It is a $3,495 bet on a market rather than a $7,200 certainty of owning a translation nobody has asked for yet, and that is the real choice. Full terms on book publishing services.
If you are unsure which side you fall on, tell us the market and what you already sell there. That conversation takes ten minutes and it has talked more than one author out of a $7,200 invoice.
—LANGUAGES
Which markets are actually worth translating into
Most translation companies open with the number of languages they cover. Ours is a long list too, and it tells you nothing, because the question is not what is possible. It is which market will read your book.
For English-language self-published work, four markets come up again and again, and they come up for different reasons.
Spanish is the usual first choice and usually the right one. It is the largest readership relative to cost, the translator pool is the deepest of any pair, and it is the cheapest professional translation on the market for exactly that reason. It also covers Spain and Latin America, which are separate markets with separate storefronts. A Spanish translation aimed at Spain reads slightly oddly in Mexico and the other way round, so it is worth deciding which one you are writing for before anyone starts.
German covers Germany, Austria and much of Switzerland, and it comes up often for self-published non-fiction in particular. One thing worth knowing before you commit: a share of your potential German readership already reads in English and may have bought the original. That is not a reason to skip it, but it does mean your German edition is competing with your own book.
French covers France, Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec and much of West Africa. It is also the most expensive of the European pairs, consistently, in every rate survey. Worth knowing before you plan around a Spanish quote.
Japanese is a large market with a strong reading culture, and it costs meaningfully more than the European pairs. The language pair is harder and the translator pool is smaller, which shows up in every quote. It is a serious commitment rather than a test.
Beyond those, Italian and Portuguese are reasonable second steps, and Brazilian Portuguese is a different market from European Portuguese in the same way Spanish splits. Korean, Chinese and Arabic are all viable and all sit at the higher end of the cost range. We quote those individually rather than publishing a rate, for the reason set out in the pricing section above.
Before you choose
Genre matters more than population. Romance, thriller and self-help travel well and have established readerships in every market above. Literary fiction is harder everywhere. Humour is the hardest thing in this business to move across a language, and a comic novel that works in English can land flat in translation through no fault of the translator.
If your book leans heavily on wordplay, tell us on the call. It changes which translator the book goes to, and it changes the quote.
If you already sell in a market, that is better evidence than anything in this section. Sales data from a storefront in one country is the closest thing to proof that a translation will find readers there.
—FOR PUBLISHERS
Publisher and rights-holder work
Most of this page is written for an author with one book. If you are a small press, an imprint or a rights holder with a backlist, the work is the same but the arrangement around it is different.
Volume changes the economics. A backlist of eight titles going into one language is not eight separate projects. It is one glossary, one style sheet and one translator who gets faster and more consistent with each book. That is worth discussing before you send the first title rather than after the third.
Consistency across a list matters more than it does for a single author. Series characters, recurring terminology and an imprint’s house style all have to hold across books translated months apart. That is a project management problem as much as a translation one, and it is the thing that goes wrong when a backlist is farmed out title by title to whoever is available.
Schedules run to your calendar, not ours. Publishers work to catalogue dates and sales conferences. If a title has to be with a foreign distributor by a fixed date, the schedule is built backwards from it.
Rights and provenance need to be clean. You need clear title to the translation you have commissioned, delivered in a form your contracts and your foreign licensees will accept. The translation is yours outright, with no royalty share and no clause tying the foreign edition to us.
Pricing a list
Pricing for a list is quoted rather than taken from the rate above. Send us the titles, the word counts and the target languages and we will come back with a schedule and a number.
—FORMATS
What has to be rebuilt after the words change
The translation is a manuscript, not a finished book. Whatever you had before has to be built again in the new language, and how much work that is depends on what the book is.
| Format | What changes | What it means for the quote |
|---|---|---|
| Ebook | An EPUB reflows, so longer text is not a layout problem. Metadata, table of contents, chapter headings and front and back matter all have to be translated and rebuilt rather than carried over. | The easiest case. Quoted from word count. |
| Print interior | Translated text runs longer, often by 15 to 20 percent, and that lands somewhere. A 300-page paperback can become a 350-page paperback, which changes page count, spine width and printing cost per copy. On Amazon it can also move you across a royalty rate boundary. | Laid out again. See book formatting. |
| Illustrated and fixed-layout | Picture books, cookbooks, workbooks, anything where text sits in a designed space. The words are in the artwork or anchored to it, and German text will not fit the box that held the English. | Quoted on the files, not on the word count. |
| Textbook and reference | Indexes have to be rebuilt, because an index is alphabetical in the target language and the entries are different words. Cross-references, figure captions, tables and any glossary all move with the text. | Extra work beyond the prose. Quoted per title. |
Before you ask for a quote
Tell us which formats you are producing. It changes the number, and it changes it more than most authors expect.
—HOW IT WORKS
What happens after you get in touch
Five steps, and the second one is the decision point. Most authors who contact us about translation should be doing something else with the money, and that is a ten-minute conversation rather than a quote.
Send us the manuscript
Word count, language or languages, and what formats you are producing. That is enough for a quote. If the book is illustrated or fixed-layout we will ask for the files too, because the word count does not describe the job.
You talk to a specialist
Not a salesperson. Someone who will ask what you already sell in that market, whether the book is a standalone or part of a series, and what you are hoping the edition will do.
If the answer is that you should be pitching rights rather than buying a translation, you will hear that on this call and not after the invoice.
One translator takes the whole book
Start to finish, so the register does not shift at chapter nine because the file went to somebody else that week.
A second native speaker checks it
Read against your original, looking for what the first pass missed: a joke that vanished, an idiom gone literal, a character whose register slipped, a term that drifted across chapters.
You get the manuscript back
In the target language, clean and ready for formatting, with front matter, chapter headings and back matter translated. Full rights, no royalty share.
Timelines depend on the language pair and the translator’s availability. Illustrated and technical work takes longer than straight prose. You will get a date with your quote rather than a range on a page.
—Frequently Asked Questions
What authors ask before they commit
How much does it cost to translate a book?
Professional human book translation runs from about $0.066 to $0.20 a word depending on who you use. AuthorWings starts at $0.09 a word, which is $7,200 for an 80,000-word novel, per language. Freelance marketplaces average $0.066 to $0.132 once buyer commission is added. Agencies run $0.08 to $0.20. The Society of Authors puts UK publisher rates near $0.13. Machine translation platforms will do a full novel for a few hundred dollars, but the output is not publishable as a book. The spread is mostly explained by whether a second native speaker reviews the translation, and whether a human wrote the first draft at all.
How much does it cost to translate a book into Spanish?
Spanish is the cheapest professional pair for English-language books, because the translator pool is the largest. At AuthorWings it is $0.09 a word, or $7,200 for an 80,000-word novel. Across the market, Spanish typically sits at the bottom of the range, around $0.06 to $0.12 a word. One thing to decide before anyone starts: Spain and Latin America are separate markets with separate storefronts, and a translation aimed at Spain reads slightly oddly in Mexico.
What is literary translation, and how is it different from standard translation?
Literary translation carries voice, rhythm, register and humour across a language, rather than only meaning. A standard or technical translation is judged on accuracy. A literary translation is judged on whether the book still reads as the author wrote it. The practical difference shows up in dialogue, idiom and jokes, none of which survive a literal rendering. A translator who works on manuals and contracts will produce sentences that are correct and dead, which is why book translation and document translation are priced and staffed differently.
Do you use AI or machine translation?
No. No machine draft, no post-editing pass over model output, at any tier. A native speaker of the target language translates the manuscript start to finish, and a second native speaker reads the translation against the original. Machine translation breaks in four places on book-length work: consistency across a long document, idiom, register, and anything culturally anchored such as examples, currencies or tax specifics.
Should I translate my book or sell foreign rights?
If you already sell in that market, or you write a series where the cost spreads across several books, translating usually makes sense. If you are starting cold with one standalone title and no audience there, pitching foreign rights is the better first move: a publisher who takes the book pays for the translation, the copyedit, the typesetting, the cover and the marketing, and pays you an advance and a royalty. Translation of an 80,000-word novel costs $7,200 before you add proofreading, typesetting and a marketing budget. A foreign rights pitch costs $3,495 a region. Most pitches do not result in a deal, so it is a bet rather than a certainty.
Which language should I translate my book into first?
Spanish, more often than not, because it has the largest readership relative to cost and the deepest translator pool. German is common for self-published non-fiction. French covers France, Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec and much of West Africa but is the most expensive European pair. Japanese is a large market and costs meaningfully more. The better answer than any of those is wherever you already have sales, because that is evidence rather than a guess.
Can you translate a textbook or a technical book?
Yes, and it carries work beyond the prose. Indexes have to be rebuilt, because an index is alphabetical in the target language and the entries are different words. Cross-references, figure captions, tables and any glossary move with the text. Religious and academic titles have the same characteristic, where established terminology matters more than style. Textbooks and reference works are quoted per title rather than from a word count.
What file do you need, and what do you get back?
Send the manuscript in Word or a similar editable format, plus the word count, the target languages and which formats you plan to publish. You get back a clean manuscript file in the target language, ready to go into formatting, with front matter, chapter headings and back matter translated. If the book is illustrated or fixed-layout, send the design files too, because the word count does not describe that job. Ebooks are the simplest case, since an EPUB reflows and longer text is not a layout problem.
Do you work with publishers and rights holders?
Yes. A backlist going into one language is not a set of separate projects. It is one glossary, one style sheet and one translator who gets faster and more consistent with each book. Series characters, recurring terminology and house style have to hold across titles translated months apart, which is a project management problem as much as a translation one. Pricing for a list is quoted rather than taken from the per-word rate, and schedules are built backwards from your catalogue dates.
Next Steps
❦Start with a conversation
Tell us the market, what you already sell there, and what you are hoping a translated edition will do. Ten minutes on a call is enough to work out whether translation is the right purchase, and what it would cost if it is.
If your situation looks more like a rights pitch than a translation, you will hear that first rather than last.
Mutual NDA available before the call on request. 100% rights retention guaranteed. No contracts until you decide.
AuthorWings· Transparent Pricing · 100% Your Rights
Last updated: September 2026