How Much Does Translation Cost in the UK?

Per-word pricing is the global standard for translation services. You pay based on the word count of your source document (the original), not the translation.

Why per-word? It's fair and transparent. A 100-word letter costs less than a 10,000-word manual. You only pay for what you need.

2026 Per-Word Rates by Language

Tier 1 (£0.10/word): French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Romanian, Czech, Slovak, Arabic, Greek, Bulgarian, Russian, Hungarian

Tier 2 (£0.12/word): Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Ukrainian, Turkish, Croatian, Serbian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Farsi, Chinese

Tier 3 (£0.15/word): Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Nepali

Tier 4 (£0.18/word): Pashto, Dari, Tigrinya, Amharic, Somali, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Burmese, Khmer and other rare languages

Welsh is priced at £0.14/word.

Single-page documents like birth certificates, marriage certificates, diplomas, and driving licences use fixed pricing regardless of word count:

• First certificate: £35 (includes certification)
• Additional certificates: £25 each (volume discount)

This fixed fee covers translation, certification, and digital delivery. No hidden extras.

Why fixed pricing? Certificates have relatively few words but require the same certification process. Per-word pricing would be unfair for these short documents.

Several factors influence your translation cost:

• Language: Rare languages cost more due to limited translator availability
• Urgency: Same-day (6 hours) adds 75%, 12-hour adds 50%, 24-hour adds 25%; standard delivery (48-72 hours) has no surcharge
• Specialisation: Legal, medical, and technical content adds 20-30%
• Language direction: Non-English pairs (e.g., French>Arabic) add 20%

What's included: Translation, quality assurance, certification (where applicable), and digital delivery. No hidden project management fees or handling charges.

How do our prices compare to the UK market?

Average UK market rates (2026):

• Standard translation: £0.10-£0.18/word depending on language
• Specialist content (legal/medical): +25% on the word rate
• Certificate fixed fee: £35 first document (£45 for rare languages), £25 each additional

Our rates are competitive because we use technology efficiently while maintaining quality through human expert review.

Warning signs of overpriced services:

• Project management fees added on top
• Per-page rather than per-word pricing (pages vary hugely)
• Mandatory notarisation when not required
• Hidden urgency fees not disclosed upfront

Larger projects and regular customers benefit from better rates:

• Volume discount: Projects over 10,000 words get 5-15% off (you receive the larger of the volume or repetition discount, they do not combine)
• Repetition discount: Repeated content (common in manuals) charged at 30% rate
• Agency rates: Translation agencies and resellers get preferential pricing
• Contract rates: Regular customers can lock in rates with monthly agreements

Contact us for custom pricing on ongoing or large-volume work.

Two pricing models cover everything, and you never need to guess which applies:

• Per document (£35, rare languages £45). Standard certificates: birth, marriage, divorce and death certificates, degree certificates, driving licences and similar single documents. One fixed fee, certification included.
• Per word (£0.10 to £0.18). Everything longer: contracts, court bundles, medical reports, academic transcripts with substantial text. The rate depends on the language pair, and the quote shows the exact figure before you pay.

The switch point is simple: if the document is a standard certificate, it is the fixed fee. If it is running text, it is per word. Nobody pays both for the same document.

Both models apply at the same rate in every UK city: our certified translation london page carries the same £35 certificate fee, with no London surcharge.

Certification is included in every price on this page. Two add-ons exist and most UK applications need neither:

• Notarisation adds a notary public who verifies the identity of the person signing the certification. UK guidance is explicit that notarisation is not required for standard UK use, including UKVI applications. Some foreign authorities ask for it; our notarised translation page explains when.
• Apostille authenticates a document for use abroad under the Hague Convention. It applies to the document, not the translation. If your paperwork is leaving the UK, check the order of operations in our certified, notarised or apostille guide or run the legalisation checker.

Faded stamps, handwritten registry entries and photocopies of photocopies are everyday material for certified work, and they are priced the same way as everything else. What changes is the preparation: an unclear source has to be read carefully before it can be certified as a true and accurate translation.

Two practical points keep the cost down: send the clearest capture you can of every page, corners and stamps included, and flag anything you already know is illegible. Where part of a document genuinely cannot be read, we mark it as illegible rather than guessing, which is exactly what receiving organisations expect.

The expensive translation is the cheap one that gets rejected: a refused application or an adjourned hearing costs far more than any translation. Rejections almost always trace back to missing certification elements, unverifiable translators or incomplete formats. We list the five most common causes, with fixes, on our UKVI translation requirements guide.

Before anything leaves us it is checked against that list. If you are replacing a translation that was rejected elsewhere, send the rejection letter with your documents and we will tell you which element caused it.

Wondering whether a specific organisation will accept a certified translation? Our acceptance requirements pages quote each organisation's own published wording, from the Home Office to universities and regulators.