TextLanternAbout two to three copies of the first Harry Potter book
The comparison on our pricing table refers to the English text of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, published in the US as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. ReadingVine’s book guide puts its length at about 77,000 words.
Allow roughly six characters per word, including spaces, and that comes to about 460,000 characters. A 1.2-million-character balance is roughly 2.6 times that amount of text. Six characters per word is an estimate, not a measurement of the book; editions also vary. It gives you a sense of scale before thinking about individual messages.
What does that look like in a chat?
Letters, spaces, and punctuation all count as characters. An English word usually contains several characters, so 50 characters is much shorter than 50 words. Some emoji also use more than one character.
Suppose each message you translate averages 50 source characters, and you translate each one into one target language. Your 1.2 million characters would cover about 24,000 messages of that length.
| Messages translated each day | Characters used each day | Approximate days covered |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 5,000 | 240 |
| 400 | 20,000 | 60 |
| 1,000 | 50,000 | 24 |
These are example workloads. For instance, 20 active members each sending 20 messages that need translation would add up to 400 messages a day. At 50 characters per message and one target language, that uses 20,000 characters daily, giving you about 60 days.
Add together personal and server translations that use the same balance. Count the messages that actually need translating, rather than every post across every channel or every member on your server.
Try your own message volume
Change the figures below to fit your conversations. If you are unsure of the average length, try 50 characters, then 100 to see the difference longer messages make.
Estimate your usage
Balance used for this estimate 1,200,000
Estimated balance duration
Daily use is messages to translate × average source characters × target languages generated per message. Divide 1.2 million by that daily use to estimate how long the balance will last. The 30-day figure simply multiplies daily use by 30 for comparison.
Does a bilingual channel count twice?
An English message translated into Japanese has one target language. A Japanese reply translated into English also has one target language for that reply. Having two main languages in a channel does not mean multiplying every message by two.
Translating a 50-character Chinese message into English, Japanese, and Spanish generates three target languages and uses 150 characters. In the 400-message daily example, generating all three translations for every message would raise daily use from 20,000 to 60,000 characters, covering about 20 days.
When extra languages are generated only on request, include the requests actually made. You can choose which translations appear automatically in your channel translation settings.
What happens to the balance after buying?
TextLantern deducts the source text’s character count for each target language. A longer translation does not increase the charge. Cache hits and failed translations cost nothing, and retries are not charged again. The examples above do not assume any savings from these cases.
A translation pack is a one-time purchase of a character balance. The balance does not expire; you use it as you go. The 1.2 million characters are not a monthly allowance that resets. Purchased feature access remains unlocked; when your balance runs out, you need to add more before continuing with billable translations. There are no automatic overage charges.
Start with a week’s expected translation volume, then compare allowances and features in the pricing table. Your account’s order page shows the available offers, prices, and taxes before you buy.