Translate a page of English into German and you'll probably get more than a page back. Translate it into Chinese and the character count collapses. This change in length — text expansion or contraction — matters for book page counts, printing costs, subtitles, packaging and software interfaces.
Why it happens
- Grammar. English is compact: no grammatical gender, few inflections, short function words. Romance languages add articles and prepositions; German builds long compounds; Finnish and Hungarian add suffixes.
- Explicitness. Some languages require information English leaves implicit, such as formality or gender.
- Writing systems. Chinese and Japanese characters each carry a syllable or a word, so the character count drops sharply, though reading time doesn't.
Typical ranges from English
| Language | Typical change from English |
|---|---|
| Afrikaans | +5% to +15% |
| Amharic | +5% to +20% |
| Arabic | +20% to +30% |
| Armenian | +15% to +30% |
| Bangla | +10% to +25% |
| Basque | +10% to +25% |
| Bokmål | +5% to +15% |
| Bulgarian | +10% to +25% |
| Catalan | +15% to +25% |
| Chinese | -70% to -30% |
| Croatian | +10% to +25% |
| Czech | +10% to +25% |
| Danish | +5% to +15% |
| Dutch | +15% to +35% |
| Estonian | +10% to +25% |
| Finnish | +25% to +40% |
| French | +15% to +25% |
| Georgian | +10% to +25% |
| German | +10% to +35% |
| Greek | +15% to +30% |
| Hebrew | -10% to +10% |
| Hindi | +15% to +35% |
| Hungarian | +15% to +30% |
| Icelandic | +10% to +25% |
| Indonesian | +10% to +25% |
| Irish | +20% to +35% |
| Italian | +10% to +25% |
| Japanese | -55% to -10% |
| Korean | -15% to -10% |
| Latvian | +15% to +30% |
| Lithuanian | +15% to +30% |
| Malay | +10% to +25% |
| Marathi | +15% to +30% |
| Norwegian | +5% to +15% |
| Persian | +15% to +30% |
| Polish | +15% to +30% |
| Portuguese | +15% to +30% |
| Punjabi | +15% to +30% |
| Romanian | +15% to +30% |
| Russian | +10% to +25% |
| Serbian | +10% to +25% |
| Slovak | +10% to +25% |
| Slovene | +10% to +25% |
| Spanish | +15% to +30% |
| Swahili | +15% to +30% |
| Swedish | +5% to +15% |
| Tagalog | +20% to +35% |
| Tamil | +25% to +40% |
| Telugu | +15% to +30% |
| Thai | +10% to +30% |
| Turkish | +10% to +25% |
| Ukrainian | +10% to +25% |
| Urdu | +15% to +30% |
| Vietnamese | +20% to +40% |
| Welsh | +15% to +30% |
Short strings expand the most
For software and UI text, short strings grow proportionally more than long ones. IBM's widely quoted guideline: English strings under 10 characters can grow by 200–300%, while text over 70 characters grows by around 30%.
| English length | Allow for translated length of |
|---|---|
| Up to 10 characters | 200–300% |
| 11–20 characters | 180–200% |
| 21–30 characters | 160–180% |
| 31–50 characters | 140–160% |
| 51–70 characters | 151–170% |
| Over 70 characters | 130% |
What it means for books
A 300-page English novel may need 340–380 pages in Italian or German. Publishers account for this in printing costs and pricing; translators need to account for it in deadlines (more words to write) and — when paid per target word or page — in fees.
What it means for subtitles
Subtitles have hard limits on characters per line and reading speed. When the target language is longer, subtitlers condense: they keep meaning and tone, not every word.
Related: language pages, translation cost calculator.