I would like to note that urgent translation is a rather conditional category and is not used by all individual translators and translation agencies. Many of them work (at least with regular customers) at fixed, pre-agreed rates. And accordingly, the question is not raised about any additional premiums for urgency.
Mainly due to the fact that
on the mass market of technical translations, unfortunately, there are practically no non-urgent translations or there are very few of them. All others are urgent. To anyone, but to me, this market is well known, since I have been working in the niche of urgent and extra-urgent translations for more than one year.
On the one hand, urgent translations can undoubtedly include all those for which time is running out and the translator has to work at an accelerated pace to the detriment of the quality of the translation, to the detriment of health and vision (especially if the text is small, and it is necessary to translate until late at night, and then and capture part of the night).
Be it 20 pages in one day, 10 pages from the evening until 11:00 the next day, 2-3 pages within 1-2 hours, or even 1 page, but immediately: within 20-30 minutes. All this is an urgent translation!
Not to mention the degree of complexity of the translated text or the increased laboriousness of the translation due to the presence of complex figures or tables in it: not every translation can be performed at an urgent pace.
On the other hand, according to purely formal criteria, practically any translations are sometimes referred to as “urgent” translations, in fact, they are not even such, if we proceed from the reasonable volumes that a qualified translator is able to translate in the available time. Some agencies (I will not name them) use the following practice: they announce a low price to the customers of translations, and when it comes to terms, the price automatically doubles, even if we are talking about translating 5 pages in three days.
If you, as a customer, always want to receive a high-quality translation, then try to set reasonable terms for the translator: in a comfortable mode or for texts of increased complexity – 5-7 pages per working day (7-9 hours), and for simple standard texts – maximum 10- 15 pages a day (this is already 10-12 hours of work). And then highly qualified translators will work with you more willingly, and you will be satisfied with the results of their work.