Transcription and translation - how to quote a price? Thread poster: William Pairman
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There is a possibility of some work transcribing interviews and voiceovers from video and then translatng them for subtitling purposes.
How would you put in a quote for this? All I can think of is "x per hour" for the transcribing+ "y per word" for the translating part. Theres 7 hours of tape to go through, though not all spoken, I'll still have to watch it all I guess.
One worry is that I can have no idea how much it will come to.
Any suggestions???
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Heinrich Pesch 
Finland
Local time: 17:28
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
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| one working day per hour at least | Mar 30, 2005 |
Taking down the words is the most difficult part. Take a sample and time it.
Regards
Heinrich
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Mark Oliver
Local time: 07:28
Indonesian to English
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William,
Your scheme (an hourly rate for transcription plus a per word rate for translation of said transcription) is precisely the one I have used for similar jobs. A good rule of thumb, at least in my experience, is eight hours per hour of video.
William Pairman wrote:
There is a possibility of some work transcribing interviews and voiceovers from video and then translatng them for subtitling purposes.
How would you put in a quote for this? All I can think of is "x per hour" for the transcribing+ "y per word" for the translating part. Theres 7 hours of tape to go through, though not all spoken, I'll still have to watch it all I guess.
One worry is that I can have no idea how much it will come to.
Any suggestions???
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dualvox
Local time: 07:28
English to Spanish
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| transcription and translation price quote | Mar 31, 2005 |
If the tape is easy to hear and understand, I charge 1/2 hour of work per minute of tape for the transcription plus a per word charge for the translation.
Diana
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Henry Hinds
United States
Local time: 08:28
English to Spanish
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In memoriam | Outsource transcription | Mar 31, 2005 |
In my experience it may not be difficult to find transcribers to do the transcription part of it for you for economical prices, especially because you are apparently dealing with Spanish. Transcription is time-consuming and requires special equipment and they can do it much cheaper and more efficiently than you can. It also involves good hearing I might add, something we do not all have.
Then they feed it to you and you translate it at a per-word rate. Of course, part of your job wi... See more In my experience it may not be difficult to find transcribers to do the transcription part of it for you for economical prices, especially because you are apparently dealing with Spanish. Transcription is time-consuming and requires special equipment and they can do it much cheaper and more efficiently than you can. It also involves good hearing I might add, something we do not all have.
Then they feed it to you and you translate it at a per-word rate. Of course, part of your job will also be to review the audio against their transcription and make any corrections necessary, but that is not nearly so time consuming. You could include an additional cost factor there, but it would be minor and predictable as long as you are getting fairly good transcription quality.
That's the way I always do it. Besides, I have a tin ear. ▲ Collapse
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William Pairman
Spain
Local time: 16:28
Member (2005)
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER | Unfortunately Eng > Sp :o( | Mar 31, 2005 |
[quote]Henry Hinds wrote:
In my experience it may not be difficult to find transcribers to do the transcription part of it for you for economical prices, especially because you are apparently dealing with Spanish.
Thanks Henry (and all others too obviously), unfortunately its a Eng > Sp job. I'm doing it coz (a) its in my specialist field (b) its a new client who will later have Sp > Eng and (c) I've got nothing else on at the moment. My wife will take care of the corretion stage. I know its not ideal but there you go. Therefore the outsourcing transcription idea loses appeal, I think I trust my mutilated ear drums more than a non-native transcriber.
I didnt realise transcribing was so time consuming O
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| it's very good that YOU can do transcription.. | Mar 31, 2005 |
I don't know how much it's time compsuming, but i'm SURE
that it's VERY VERY MUCH TIME COMPSUMING when u try
to translate and text has no sense, and after you compare
with original, and such an idiota wrote other word than
words in video...
so, good luck!
Daniele
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juvera
Local time: 15:28
English to Hungarian
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| The subtitling part... | Apr 3, 2005 |
Subtitling is not as easy as it sounds, if all you have is the video. Normally it is done on a special program, because the timing has to be fixed. The subtitles are created in the original language, and naturally, tied to what is being said, but edited to suit.
You have to know the rules and restrictions of subtitling to be able to make a go of it.
Some examples: do you know, what should be the minimum or maximum duration of a subtitle? How much time do you need between subtitles?... See more Subtitling is not as easy as it sounds, if all you have is the video. Normally it is done on a special program, because the timing has to be fixed. The subtitles are created in the original language, and naturally, tied to what is being said, but edited to suit.
You have to know the rules and restrictions of subtitling to be able to make a go of it.
Some examples: do you know, what should be the minimum or maximum duration of a subtitle? How much time do you need between subtitles? What is the max. number of characters you can use in one subtitle? How dou you indicate when two people exchange words? How many people can you register in one subtitle? I could carry on for several pages...
Once you have timecoded subtitles in the original language, you can start translating them. That is the easier part, if you are a competent translator, but you still have to deal with time and line restrictions, etc.
If you haven't got experience and resources for subtitling, all you can do is a transcript and translate it, but it is not the way to create subtitles.
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I have never heard of anybody charging and getting half an hour per minute for transcription. Diana must be very lucky.
An hour is about a day's work. An experienced transcriber and good typist can do it in 5-6 hrs, unless the tape is truly horrendous.
But I emphasize, the transcription of the original language should be edited into subtitles and timecoded, because it is unlikely, that the subtitles could contain the full text, and it has to be tied to the sound on screen. The translation should be based on that, unless you want a lot of headache.
[Edited at 2005-04-03 17:15] ▲ Collapse
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