Calculate translation costs
There's plenty to learn about how Smartcat calculates cost, so we will try to cover some core features including the weight of different TM matches, net rates, and cost calculation discrepancies. To get a wider picture, please check our article about statistics in Smartcat.
TM matches and repetitions
Translation memory match percentages represent the similarity level between a source segment in the Editor and a translation memory unit. The minimum threshold for fuzzy matches is 50%.
Here’s an example:
TM segment | Source segment | Match percentage |
Main Settings | Main Settings | 100% |
Home and office | Home & office | 70% |
Research and development | Institute for research and development | 62% |
User interface design and development | Institute for research and development | 37% (no match) |
There are different types of TM matches:
50-99% (Fuzzy match): The text of a source segment differs to some extent from the text of a TM unit.
100% (Exact text match): The text of a source segment is the same as the text of a TM unit.
101% (Context match): The text of a source segment is the same as the text of a TM unit. The text of either adjacent segment is the same as the text recorded into the TM unit property "x-context-pre" or "x-context-post"
102% (Full context match): The text of a source segment is the same as the text of a TM unit. The texts of both adjacent segments are the same as the texts recorded into the TM unit property
" x-context-pre " and " x-context-post ".
103% (ID context match): The text of a source segment is the same as the text of a TM unit, and the "x-context" property of the TM unit matches the segment context(an entry under the segment text).
Repetition: The text of a source segment appears several times throughout the document.
Cross-file repetition: Generally speaking, the same as an ordinary repetition, but it appears within multiple documents of the same project.
Types of units used in Smartcat for calculating statistics
The following units are supported for statistics:
Words
Asian characters
Pages (one page equals 250 words or Asian characters)
Characters with spaces
Characters without spaces
Please let us know if you would like the system to consider one page as 1,800 characters without spaces instead of 250 words in your account. We will customize these settings by your request.
Net rate schemes
There are two types of net rate schemes that should not be mixed up:
Client net rate schemes. They are mostly used for calculating statistics in projects to find out the number of weighted words that a particular client should pay. You can customize net rates schemes, and link them to clients. By selecting a client in your project, you can automatically assign the client’s net rate scheme to the project.
Supplier net rate schemes. Weighted words payable are calculated based on these net rates which correspond to the project stages. Supplier net rates schemes comprise rates for different translation memory matches and repetitions. They can be set in the corporate account Payments section -> Settings & balance > Payment settings
Important: matches in a scheme must be paid at full rate (100%) for any stage above the first since after translating segments at the first stage, the segments considered being recorded as 102% matches in the translation memory of the project. Weighted words — the cost of a job respectively — are calculated according to the comparison of source segments to the translation memory units.
Supplier net rates schemes are fixing at the moment of the project creation, so if you need to change the match rates, please create a new project.
Project cost calculation
The cost of work is calculated automatically by multiplying the number of weighted words (payable) of original documents to the linguist's rate per word or, for hieroglyphs, per character rate according to the net rate scheme applied.
TM matches and repetitions are calculated with discounts. Though by default, discounts do not apply for the work of editors, proofreaders, and post-editors.
Standard net rate for translators
TM matches and repetitions | Percentage of the full per-word rate |
New words | 100% (full rate) |
50–74% | 100% (full rate) |
75–84% | 70% |
85–94% | 40% |
95–99% | 10% |
100–102% | Unpaid |
Repetitions, including cross-file repetitions | Unpaid |