Translations: Envoys of Language and Culture
A good translation reads like an original – at home in its new context and speaking to your new audience.
Transferring reading experiences into a new linguistic and cultural environment: English into German, for companies and agencies with a concrete project. My rates are listed below – so you know where you stand before you even ask.
The Work
Working on a translation, especially in a corporate context, is always a rewarding challenge – it means understanding both cultures and mediating between them while staying as true to the source as possible. With more than two decades of experience, I translate your English texts into German, focused squarely on your new target audience: marketing material, internal training, technical documentation, or fiction, in language that sounds natural rather than translated. My clients value not just the translation, but the editing suggestions I make along the way – which is why I work with most of them long-term.
What I Can Do for You
Translation EN>DE
Corporate and product communication, tutorials, user interfaces, manuals, and fiction.
Transcreation
Beyond translation: I analyze your source and rebuild it in German, original yet true to your messaging and product.
Editing/PMTE
The finishing touches on your translations, from structural and line editing to spelling and grammar, including the review of machine-translation output.
DTP
On request, I deliver the finished layout of the translated documents in MS Office and Adobe Creative Suite, ready to use.
What I Translate – and What I Don’t
I firmly support the native-speaker principle: a translator should render into their native language. I therefore work from English (US/UK) into German (Germany). German into English I offer only in the context of work translations or together with an English-language editor.
My focus is corporate communication – print, online, multimedia – along with user interfaces, manuals, tutorials, and help centers for software and apps. Other translations, preferably literary, on request. One important limit: I am not a sworn legal translator, so I cannot take on contracts or other legal documents.
How I Work
After reading the source carefully and clarifying any open questions, I produce a draft translation, which is refined and sharpened in the editing phase. A further editing pass plus automated and manual spelling and grammar checks round off the text. My maximum daily capacity is 3,000 words, shared across all active projects – so I always name a realistic delivery date with your quote.
Your Content Stays Yours
You receive an exclusive, temporally and spatially unrestricted right of use for the translation within the intended target medium. Use in other media or contexts – say, publishing a brochure text on a website – is agreed and remunerated separately. Adding your translations to translation memories or using them to train AI is likewise subject to a separate charge.
Do You Need a Quote?
Looking for a translator for a specific project? Send me an email – no form, no funnel.
To prepare a quote quickly, your message should include:
- the service(s) you need – translation, transcreation, editing/PMTE, or DTP
- the source text, or at least a sample of no fewer than two pages
- the volume – word and/or page count
- the subject area and text type (marketing, UI, manual, fiction …)
- your preferred deadline
- your company and billing address, for the quote itself
Without quantities or access to the source, I can’t give you a firm quote – so the more you send, the faster and more precise my offer.
Interested, but no current projects?
Just keep my in mind and in your database – with the following documents:
Your Questions, my Anwers (FAQ)
How much do I charge?
We can always talk about rates, especially for larger projects. And for long-term collaborations – from a minimum of 5,000 words per month – rates are negotiable. The figures below are guideline prices for initial offers:
|
Service |
End customers |
Agencies*** |
|
Translation, up to 1,000 words (per word) |
€0.20 / $0.20* |
€0.10 / $0.10* |
|
Translation, from the 1,001st word (per word) |
€0.15 / $0.15* |
€0.08 / $0.08* |
|
Transcreation, editing, proofreading, text extraction & processing (per hour or part hour) |
€75 / $75* |
€45 / $45* |
|
Minimum order value |
€20.00 / $20.00* |
€20.00 / $20.00* |
|
48-hour delivery (express surcharge) |
+25%** |
+25%** |
|
24-hour delivery (express surcharge) |
+50%** |
+50%** |
|
Same-day, weekends, holidays, or outside office hours (Mon–Fri, 9–18 CET/CEST) |
+100%** |
+100%** |
* All prices are net, plus statutory VAT where applicable. Dollar prices are available to customers outside the European Union.
** Subject to availability and free capacity.
*** I partner selectively with agencies and enterprises, based on fit and past experience.
Which tools do I use?
For consistent quality I use the CAT tools MemoQ and SDL Trados, with current licenses and up-to-date dictionaries. If you need me to use a different CAT tool, please provide the licensing – everyone works best with the tools they know. Where it improves or speeds up the work, and in agreement with you, I may use machine translation as a basis.
Do I use AI?
Yes – as a tool, not as a replacement. I may use machine translation as a starting point, but every text is revised, checked, and finished by hand. I don’t deliver anything I couldn’t have written without it, and I tell you in advance when a result rests substantially on AI. Your source stays yours; adding it to translation memories or using it to train AI happens only by agreement.
Which formats can I process?
I work with all common editable formats: DOC/DOCX, XLS, PPT, RTF, TXT, HTML, and XML, as well as XLIFF and project files for MemoQ and Trados, and InDesign IDML. In every case I ask for a PDF of the original so I can check context.
Non-editable files – PDFs, Illustrator files, images (JPEG, PNG, PSD, GIF …), and video – incur extra costs, because the text has to be extracted or transcribed first. From non-editable sources I deliver a bilingual document; for a ready-to-use file I need the corresponding raw data. DTP is charged separately.
Samples of my Work
You may have come across my translations without knowing it – I work under strict confidentiality for clients like ManpowerGroup and Criteo. So, to show what I do, here are a few public samples, some of them translated for the pleasure of it:
How to debug mobile apps across devices
Autor: TestMu AI
The article explains why debugging mobile apps across multiple devices is important for a stable user experience. It covers device fragmentation, operating-system variation, vendor UI changes, and hardware optimization as possible sources of bugs. It then presents debugging techniques such as trace logs, breakpoints, variable analysis, stack traces, exception handling, and external debuggers, and names tools including Android Studio, Xcode, and TestMu AI.
Built for all? Artificial intelligence and the LGBTQ+ community
Autor: Aaron Spitler
The article examines how artificial intelligence can harm LGBTQ+ people. It focuses on stereotyped training data, biased image and text outputs, and the use of AI in surveillance systems, including automatic gender recognition. The text argues that many AI systems were not designed with everyone in mind and calls for stronger safeguards, bans on abusive gender-detection systems, and closer collaboration between developers and LGBTQ+ communities.
The Open Window
Autor: Saki (H. H. Munro)
Framton Nuttel visits Mrs. Sappleton in the countryside with a letter of introduction from his sister. Her niece Vera tells him that Mrs. Sappleton’s husband and brothers died in the marsh, which is why the window remains open. When the men actually return through the window, Framton flees in terror. Vera then explains his reaction with another invented story. The final sentence dryly identifies her talent: producing made-up stories at short notice.
After Twenty Years
Autor: O. Henry
The story follows Bob, who waits in New York for his childhood friend Jimmy Wells at a meeting place agreed upon twenty years earlier. Jimmy arrives but realizes that Bob is wanted in Chicago and must be arrested. Unable to arrest his friend himself, Jimmy has a plainclothes officer carry out the arrest instead.
AI Watermarking Won't Curb Disinformation
Autor: Jacob Hoffman-Andrews
The article explains why watermarking AI-generated images and text is unlikely to effectively curb disinformation. It outlines technical approaches such as invisible image patterns, metadata, and subtle textual markers, but emphasizes their vulnerability to deliberate removal, rewording, and alternative AI systems. It also discusses content authenticity as a way to identify genuine camera images, while noting that this approach is not comprehensive either.