Translations - Source vs. Target word counts

[Natacha R]

Do you charge per source or per target word?

[Rene K]

Everybody charges per source, German to foreign may be charged per target. I've heard this. Since they put a whole sentence in one word, they'd better charge per target.

[Mirjam K]

I would imagine the German-to-X-thing to be a joke

Otherwise you could do that with English-to-German for example as well because the "leaning forward" in "Leaning forward he...." can be quite a long sentence in German if you want to sound more or less natural ("Als/Während er sich vorbeugte," or "Er beugte sich vor, um...")

[Benny B]

Normally I charge per source word, although there are cases (handwritten or medical documents for example) where I do charge for target word (it's easier that way).

[Jennifer D]

From the client's perspective, when I'm setting up a fixed-price contract to translate a fixed number of words, I set the budget based on the source word count. It's a bit hard to set a price for something that doesn't exist yet... I've only ever had one freelancer even give me a target word count when they submitted something. It seems most people in most languages work off source word count. I suppose that you could negotiate the contract to be an estimate based on the source word count with a final milestone or bonus to be paid based on the target word count? Now I'm curious how you would go about setting up a contract based on target word count, Natasha. How would you do it?

[Natacha R]

Now I'm curious how you would go about setting up a contract based on target word count, Natasha. How would you do it?

I would not

I actually googled about this after creating this topic. In general, people charge per source word. I found out some even charge per line, but this is not common.

[Rene K]

I've seen people charging per line, but yes, it's rare. And if someone wants to sell you per target, I would refuse if I were you.