Reacting to a post on the Steam Users' Forums explaining the volunteers working on Steam Translation are not being paid for their efforts in helping translate Steam games to other languages, a post on zanfr.fr crunches some numbers to approximate how much cash Valve is saving at getting this work done for free (thanks Ant via Slashdot). By their calculations, this adds up to a tidy sum:

I did some math; the test text when you sign up for Steam Translation Server is 265 words; at the current rate of 0.09 USD per word this means 23.85 USD is how much a professional translator would charge to translate that text. Now if only storefront descriptions like this are to be translated for all games (using Steam’s claim of a catalogue of over 1100 games and growing) that would mean that Steam is saving roughly 26235 USD per language (and keep in mind thats only for short storefront descriptions of games).

Now there are 26 languages on the Translation Server at present; that means roughly 26235 x 26 = 682110 USD are being saved by Steam making the “community” work for free.

To that you have to add the costs for reviewing said translations; 0.03 USD per word, so easily enough 682110 divided by 3 = 227370 USD. (that is assuming only one version of the text has to be reviewed, which is not the case)

So, Steam has just saved 909480 USD by making the “community” work for free.

This is just for storefront descriptions again; now what would happen translating the games themselves ? well, the savings could easily turn into over 100 millions !