Technical Translation Time PT to EN

PT to EN Technical Translation: Throughput Planning

When the Portuguese source carries real technical weight, expect a translator to average 250 to 350 words per day per translator heading into English. Medical, legal, engineering, software and scientific texts all fall here. The reason isn't fluency. It's the time sunk into hunting down terminology, checking parallel corpora, and re‑reading your own draft to make sure nothing drifted. The base estimate follows days = (pages × words_per_page) / daily_output, and then you tack on 15 to 25% for revision (TEP: Translation, Editing, Proofreading).

No one works without CAT (Computer‑Assisted Translation) tools anymore. SDL Trados Studio, MemoQ, Wordfast and OmegaT handle the translation memory (TM), the termbases (TB), and keep things consistent from one batch to the next. With literal technical content like manuals or datasheets, once you've done a first project for a client the TM can push effective throughput up to 500 to 700 words/day.

Applications

For technical translation into English, SINTRA (Sindicato Nacional dos Tradutores) puts reference rates at R$ 0.50 to R$ 1.00 per source word, plus surcharges when the job is sworn, rushed, or comes with heavy layout work (DTP). ABRATES (Associação Brasileira de Tradutores) certifies professionals and works to grow the market. A sworn translator (tradutor público juramentado) gets registered with the Junta Comercial in their state after passing a public exam, and only that person can issue translations that hold legal weight for official documents abroad.

FAQ

Why is PT to EN slower than EN to PT? Most Brazilian translators are native Portuguese speakers, so writing high‑register technical English takes extra drafting, idiomatic fixes and review. Marketing copy and executive summaries are the worst offenders. If the output needs to be publication‑grade, get a native English reviewer on it.

Do CAT tools replace the translator? No. CAT software keeps your past translations on hand and holds you to the terminology, but every actual linguistic call is still the translator's. Machine‑translation post‑editing (MTPE) is a separate service and it's priced lower per word.

How is a "page" counted? The usual yardstick is the lauda, somewhere between 1,000 and 2,100 characters with spaces depending on the agency, or 250 source words. Pin down which unit the quote uses before you start, or you'll argue about it later.