Translation - art & business » Subtitling »
[Subtitling Rates] per minute rates
Track this topic

Pages in topic: < [1 2]

User

Thread poster: TransLithuanian

[Subtitling Rates] per minute rates

Eeva Lilley

United Kingdom
Local time: 09:26
English to Finnish
+ ...

UK rates

Sep 30, 2008

I work for three UK subtitling companies, they all pay between 3 and 4 pounds per pm for translation (no timecueing). The rates have been going steadily down over the last 3 or 4 years. The subtitling companies blame the studios, I personally blame some US and Asian companies that have undercut the rates in an outrageous and blatant way. Where they find subtitlers for their rates remains a mystery.

SteinarB

Norway
Local time: 10:26
English to Norwegian
+ ...

A newbie's opinion.

Nov 16, 2008

Hi there everyone.

Looking around here on the forum I couldn't avoid stumbling upon numerous topics about rates, quality of translation, agencies, freelancers and whatnot. It seems to be a big issue.

As a complete newbie in the world of translation and subtitling, I naturally hesitate to blatantly flaunt my possibly ignorant opinion on an internet forum. God knows there are enough of these people whom the internet, with its promise of anonymity and wealth of information, turns into experts in just about any field they once read something about in a magazine.

So, taking great care not to fall into the aforementioned category, I submit the following:

Talk and/or whining about rates seems useless to me. If you want to work in a pair where translators are available in 3rd world countries, your rates probably can't compete if you live in the UK, Switzerland or Scandinavia. It's a market. You can't provide services at a competitive price to quality ratio, and you won't be hired.

Another thing that seems to be hard to grasp, is that the rate an agency offers often reflects (in addition to the state of the market) what they are looking for in return. If you work for 3 USD per video minute, you should work the rate, so to speak, to arrive at what for you is an acceptable hourly wage. Likewise, if you offer a client a certain rate, this should reflect the speed at which you intend to work, and the quality you aim for.

Just my thoughts.
Feel free to put this newbie in his place, should this all be hogwash

Regards,
Steinar

[Edited at 2008-11-16 17:55 GMT]

kmtext
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:26
English
+ ...

Rates and quality

Nov 18, 2008

SteinarB wrote:

Talk and/or whining about rates seems useless to me. If you want to work in a pair where translators are available in 3rd world countries, your rates probably can't compete if you live in the UK, Switzerland or Scandinavia. It's a market. You can't provide services at a competitive price to quality ratio, and you won't be hired.

Another thing that seems to be hard to grasp, is that the rate an agency offers often reflects (in addition to the state of the market) what they are looking for in return. If you work for 3 USD per video minute, you should work the rate, so to speak, to arrive at what for you is an acceptable hourly wage. Likewise, if you offer a client a certain rate, this should reflect the speed at which you intend to work, and the quality you aim for.

Regards,
Steinar

[Edited at 2008-11-16 17:55 GMT]

You do have a point there, but from experience, some of the UK subtitling houses outsourced a lot of work to India a couple of years ago. Soon after, they stopped doing that because their clients and proofers complained about the quality of the work, mainly due to mishearings, lack of understanding of regional dialects and slang, not to mention failure to understand cultural references and jokes.

Basically, you get what you pay for. If you're happy to have low quality captions, that's what you get. If you want good quality subtitling and/or translation, you have to pay for it. Some companies are trying to drive the rates down even lower here now. I've had to decline some jobs recently because I couldn't afford to carry out the work. I'd have to do a 16-hour day working flat out to make a decent amount of money at the rate they offered and life's too short for that.

Nathalie Schon

France
Local time: 10:26
German to French
+ ...

Comparing oranges and apples

Feb 9, 2009

5US$/min is without cueing!
How can you compare with your rate???

How much are you paid without cueing?

Sylvano wrote:

Yes, those are French companies.
And those are set rates too, for all translators
(cueing + translating, indeed).

I too have worked for big bad companies
trying to pay as low as you say per minute.
They have no limits in that matter, but I do.
Subtitling's my only job, I must make a living out of it !
I insist : those are (should be) normal rates ! ! !
How do you pay the rent with 3 euros/min ?
Working day, night and week-ends ?

May I suggest you go and check this place :
http://www.traducteurs-av.org/index.html

Regards,
Sylvano

Sylvano
France
Local time: 10:26
English to French

Maybe you missed my answer

Feb 10, 2009

NathalieSchon wrote:

5US$/min is without cueing!
How can you compare with your rate???

How much are you paid without cueing?

Sorry, I already answered that 6 posts ago. Let me ask you this: if you're getting 5 US dollars for translating only, exactly how much would you charge for translating+cueing? I don't do translation only any more, but if I did, I wouldn't charge 5 US dollars. To me, cueing would be maybe 1/3 of the total rate I would quote : you do the math with, let's say 15 euros per minute... And one last thing : of course we must compare our rates. We're in a global market and competition, remember? Especially if you translate to French or even another 'not rare' language. If you don't compare our rates, be sure clients will.

[Edited at 2009-02-10 08:20 GMT]

[Edited at 2009-02-10 20:12 GMT]

Helen Farrell

Italy
Local time: 10:26

Member (2008)
Italian to English
+ ...

editing subtitles

Feb 11, 2009

I've worked as a freelance subtitle editor for 3 years and have recently been asked to drop my rates - an absurd 25% drop. I was hoping to get a feel for what subtitle editors receive (I work in British English). Up until now I've always been paid by subtitle box, but the company wants to change to payment by runtime and wants to pay 0.85 Euros/min. It just seems offensively low to me.