Case study: translation of a software and its user manual

This comparison being dependent on the context of your business, we will place ourselves in our real context of software creator over 2 periods spaced 10 years apart.

2010 September

The Intuisphere company has created a software called WebAcappella.
This software, accessible to the general public, allows to create a Web site without HTML or CSS skills.

It is developed in French language with a documentation of about 23500 words

The company is conducting a call for tenders for an English translation of the software and its user manual.
This call for tenders involves agencies and freelancers dedicated to the translation.

Result of the call for tenders

The cost per word is between 5 cents and 10 cents or more depending on the provider.
Note also that translation for languages other than English is more expensive (up to more than 50%)
Translators still work for some of them with only Excel spreadsheets for the software

Choice of service provider and quotation

The choice turns to a freelancer who offers us a flat rate of 800 EUR for English documentation of 20500 words. (which gives 3.5 cents per word = 800/ 20500 )

For the software comprising 3500 words, it is necessary to extract the messages in an Excel format and reintroduce them, which requires additional development.
The cost is about 5 cents per word or 200 EUR in total.

The results are as follows

It takes 3 weeks to obtain a very satisfactory documentation in English
The work is more laborious for the software.
Indeed, some "typos" on variables embedded in the messages can alter the final display.

Conclusion
A budget of almost 1000 EUR for an English translation of a software that is finally quite simple

This process is cumbersome and not very agile in the face of the frequent changes made to the software each month
Intuisphere has not been updating its documentation very regularly due to this laborious process.


2020 January

Intuisphere has created the 6th version of its software called WebAcappella Fx with its online user manual.

New localization help solutions are available.

Some of them allow easy extraction and back and forth with the translators, but the cost per word remains the same.
Collaborative systems involving users are not always very responsive (which editor wants a doc that is half translated).

Intuisphere chooses to develop its own product Linguist4App involving the leader in instantaneous translation: Deepl.

From now on, the translation into 4 European languages + Brazilian Portuguese of his user manual (23500 words) will only cost him about 1.5 EUR.
The software will be translated into 10 languages for a cost of about 5 EUR.

The reduction in cost is spectacular, but the fact that he can update his translations with each modification is probably the most appreciable aspect.
It is a virtuous circle for the users who always have a manual as close as possible to the software and for the creator who has to do a minimum amount of work to put his documentation online.

The revolution of instantaneous translation brings a saving in a ratio of 300 in the software field and this in about ten languages.

For 10,000 Words :
1.5 EUR with instantaneous translation.
500 Eur with human translation (low average)

What was once a tedious process becomes a routine at a small business cost.