Average rate in Spain

According to a survey by the Spanish Association of Translators, Editors and Interpreters (ASETRAD), the average translation rate in Spain in 2008 was €0.102 per word.

The survey included 153 translators living in Spain, all members of a translators’ association, with an average professional experience of over 15 years.

This figure excludes literary translation (traditionally lower-paid) and sworn/certified translation (almost always higher-paid).

Has the situation changed since 2008?
ASETRAD has not run a new survey and even removed the old results from its website, so no precise, updated figures are available.

In my view, the landscape has changed completely due to machine translation (MT). From-scratch human translation has largely disappeared; most work today is MT post-editing.

Did that figure reflect the real average?
The translation market is highly heterogeneous. I personally know colleagues who charge €0.03/word and others who charge €0.18/word. Rates also differ between direct clients and agencies, and surcharges/discounts are common (rush jobs, tricky file formats, repetition discounts, etc.). For these reasons, a single “representative” rate is hard to pin down.

Even so, I consider ASETRAD’s average a useful indication of the going per-word price in Spain, for two reasons:

It’s the survey I know of with the largest sample and a sound methodology (clear questions and detailed statistical parameters).
It matches what I’ve observed over more than 20 years in the industry.

Where are rates heading?
In my opinion, per-word rates will continue to fall as MT improves. Hourly rates will broadly track inflation.