You have been asked for a translation budget for a corporate document set, and you do not yet have a quotation from anyone. This is normal: the budget goes in first, the quotations follow. What you need is not an exact figure but an estimate whose method you can defend.
Step 1 — Count volume in finished pages, not sheets of paper
This is where the error usually happens. Finance counts physical sheets, then gets a shock when the invoice arrives at double. The reason is simple: one dense sheet of a notarial deed can become three finished pages, because the sworn translation page standard uses double spacing and Courier New at 12 point.
How to estimate this without special tools:
- Open the document in a word processor and read off the word count. For scanned files, count the words on one representative page manually, then multiply by the number of similar pages.
- Divide the total word count by 225. That is the midpoint of the 200 to 250 word range for a finished page.
- Add roughly 15 per cent where the target language tends to expand — Indonesian into English usually contracts, whereas German or Dutch expands.
- Round up. Pages are never billed in halves.
Step 2 — Separate what must be sworn from what need not be
The rate gap is large. Sworn translation into English starts at IDR 50,000 per page against IDR 35,000 for professional translation. For Mandarin Chinese the gap is IDR 180,000 against IDR 120,000. On a hundred-page set, classifying everything as sworn inflates the budget for no reason.
The working rule: documents going to an authority, court, bank, notary or embassy must be sworn. Documents read internally, used to understand content or to inform discussion, need not be.
Worked example: a corporate legality set
| Document | Estimated finished pages | Classification |
|---|---|---|
| Deed of establishment | 8–12 | Sworn |
| Latest articles of association | 6–10 | Sworn |
| Ministry approval decree | 1–2 | Sworn |
| Business identification number | 1 | Sworn |
| Two years of financial statements | 20–30 | Sworn if for a bank |
| Company profile | 10–15 | Professional |
| Internal meeting minutes | 5–8 | Professional |
Step 3 — Add the costs that are not translation
Translation is only one line. The items most often forgotten, which later turn into a supplementary budget request:
- Layered legalisation — ministries and the destination country's embassy are each charged per document, not per set.
- Apostille for convention states, which replaces part of that chain.
- Notarial certification where the receiving party asks for it.
- Extra wet-stamped hard copies — many authorities want more than one.
- International shipping with tracking for physical files.
- Layout rebuilding for documents with complex tables or engineering drawings.
A safe contingency rule
For document sets requiring cross-border legalisation, set aside a contingency of 20 to 30 per cent above the pure translation value. If it goes unused, returning budget is far easier than asking for more.
See the legalisation cost breakdownStep 4 — Test your estimate against one real quotation
An estimate that is never tested is just a number in your head. Send three to five documents that best represent the whole set, request a quotation, then compare it with your own arithmetic. A gap under 15 per cent means your method is good enough to reuse on similar sets.
This step also produces something useful for the budget meeting: one real quotation document you can attach as evidence, rather than an internal guess.
The mistakes that push a budget badly off
- Counting sheets of paper instead of finished pages.
- Forgetting that foreign-language documents also need translating into Indonesian for domestic use, not only the other way round.
- Budgeting one copy when the authority asks for three.
- Delaying the order until the deadline is tight, then paying for express service.
- Leaving out annexes, which frequently outnumber the main documents.