Catalan Language: Facts for Translators

Catalan (ca, cat) is a world language. Wikidata records about 4.9M speakers. It is written in Catalan alphabet. It is an official language in 1 country, including Andorra.

Catalan is co-official in Catalonia, Valencia (Valencian) and the Balearic Islands; it is not a dialect of Spanish.

Expect text translated from English into Catalan to grow by roughly 15–25%, which matters for layouts, subtitles and page counts.

4.9M

Speakers

+15…+25%

Text length vs English

$0.08–0.16

Indicative rate / word

Translation guides

Where Catalan is official

Andorra

Rates for Catalan translation

Catalan falls in our major western european band: roughly $0.08–$0.16 per word for general commercial work. These are indicative ranges, not quotes — specialised, certified and rush work costs more, and literary translation is usually priced per 1,000 words.

For context, the median salaried translator or interpreter in the US earned $60,170 in May 2025 (BLS). See salaries by state →

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From Wikipedia

Catalan is a Western Romance language that is native to the eastern Iberian Peninsula. It shares official status with Spanish in three autonomous communities in eastern Spain – Catalonia; the Balearic Islands; and the Valencian Community, where it is called Valencian – and is the sole official language of Andorra. Catalan also has semi-official status in Alghero, an Italian municipality in Sardinia, and is spoken in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of France and in two further areas in eastern Spain: the eastern strip of Aragon and the Carche area in the Region of Murcia. The Catalan-speaking regions are often called the Catalan Countries.