English into Spanish percentage

anonymous24 November 2002 · 13:49

Hi, I need to calculate the length of an english text once it has been translated into spanish. I know there is a percentage (+10% ?), but I can't remember it. The inverse percentage (spanish into english), should also be usefull. Thanks

anonymous25 November 2002 · 03:48

Thanks a lot - muchas gracias

Hrant H Papazian24 November 2002 · 14:45

It depends on different things, like the nature of the text, and the expertise of the translator.

According to Maxim Zhukov's "Typographica Polyglotta", Spanish is about 15% longer then English, assuming a squeaky-clean translation. A very good translator recently made a Spanish version of a 2,500-word essay of mine, and he ended up with an impressive 14%.

Whether such percentages are symmetric is a question I haven't figured out yet.

hhp

Captured from web.archive.org on 19 Oct 2013. view this capture