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How fast can you translate subtitles? Is it worth doing?
Thread poster: larsjorgen (X)
Taru Laiho
Taru Laiho
Local time: 05:03
Finnish to English
+ ...
Obviously Jan 12, 2014

José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
My intent with this experiment is to PROVE that having a pro fixing an amateur's crappy translation and subtitling is OBVIOUSLY a most stupid way of doing business.


Obviously, but clients just don't seem to understand that. I've had some success when I've explained to them in construction terms: it often makes more sense to demolish a decrepit building than trying to fix it, and the same applies to crappy translations.

And I agree totally with nrichy: if your current job isn't paying enough and it seems that you can't do anything about it, switch to another career.


 
nrichy (X)
nrichy (X)
France
Local time: 04:03
French to Dutch
+ ...
Not exactly Jan 12, 2014



You're not a beggar but an indpendent translation services provider. How much do you QUOTE? How much is it worth?


I keep hearing that, but what can you do when others are willing to work for nickels and dimes?

Waiting until someone "offers" me something is not exactly the best way to do business.

I mean, I even had employees myself for a while; I paid them next to nothing, but they got what they deserved, to put it that way.


Do you mean that out of your small turnover or gains or whatever it is, you paid other translators? *sigh*

The companies that hire amateurs must spend a lot of money on proofreaders...


Agree with that, but this is another topic.

Besides, how do you market yourself? Do you just contact a bunch of companies with your résumé and tell them your price, or how do you do it?

Yes of course, when I started as a translator it was like that. But I did not sent résumés to unknown people (I didn't want anymore an inhouse position), I just had a page with professional information. Then work came in by my two translator's associations, good translation agencies (some of them splitted up into two parts = two clients), and by word of mouth. My best direct clients came from my colleagues in other language pairs. And when I receive files to be translated, I make a quote and then we discuss. If their requirements are not reasonable. I just say that I cannot do this translation at their conditions. I also leave to my colleagues the work I am not able to do, for instance financial translations, even if I could ask (and get) €0.20/w or more for these.

I mean, I had several customers even when I almost stopped working as a translator altogether since I was running my computer company, and they all came back because they were happy with the quality. I really feel that's worth more than what I get right now, but I also think it's difficult to find my way in the jungle of competitors, information, companies etc etc.

Same answer as Sylvano.


[Edited at 2014-01-12 14:46 GMT]


 
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jbjb
jbjb  Identity Verified
Estonia
Local time: 05:03
Estonian to English
+ ...
money Jan 15, 2014

Just a few remarks about this.

When you are talking about rates, most (if not all) of the companies would have a set rate per language. Everyone working in that language pair, irrespective of quality, would get paid the same amount of money. Some local companies would have beginner rates and advanced rates but international companies have a certain fixed rate for each language and it is "take it or leave it", not "how much should I ask them?"

If you are paid USD 3.5 per
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Just a few remarks about this.

When you are talking about rates, most (if not all) of the companies would have a set rate per language. Everyone working in that language pair, irrespective of quality, would get paid the same amount of money. Some local companies would have beginner rates and advanced rates but international companies have a certain fixed rate for each language and it is "take it or leave it", not "how much should I ask them?"

If you are paid USD 3.5 per minute, the company paying you probably gets around USD 4-4.50 from the client. Subtitling business is volume-based and margins are low. That's why the whole business has been buggered up, as companies keep fighting how to go even lower with their rates. Their only option is to find translators who are ready to work for increasingly lower rates or give up the work to a rivalling company who is more efficient in finding cheap translators.
If you are a good translator, it doesn't mean you get paid more because there's really no room for more money. If there is that much air in the rates, the company is sure to lose its contract soon to a rival offering a cheaper price to the client.

This leads to bad and unprofessional translations but the mistakes are not as noticeable anymore. 10-15 years ago you typically had 3-5 major TV networks in a country and everyone watched those. DVD releases were events. Now a typical television market is distributed between at least 30-40 translated channels and each channel has a zero point something rating. DVDs come a dime a dozen and releases are in iTunes, Netflix, etc etc platforms.
A bad translation in TV or DVD once led to newspaper articles and a wave of protest letters, now it is usually seen by so few people that nobody basically cares.

As for 7-8 hours for a 45-minute show - normal for complicated shows but typical US trash should really take a few hours less. In the Scandinavian subtitling tradition a show with 8,000 words in the original would be shortened to around 3,000-4,000 words in the translation.

Subtitling is an area where work practices help you save a lot of time (e.g. do you watch the film, then translate, then watch again? Do you translate first, then watch and correct? Do you watch and translate one subtitle at a time? One scene at a time? Can you translate at least some parts while watching? etc etc)
Each translator can find a more efficient way to work - or quit subtitling. The low rates do not leave other options.
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larsjorgen (X)
larsjorgen (X)
Local time: 04:03
English to Norwegian
TOPIC STARTER
This is the title of my post Jan 15, 2014

jbjb wrote:
When you are talking about rates, most (if not all) of the companies would have a set rate per language. Everyone working in that language pair, irrespective of quality, would get paid the same amount of money. Some local companies would have beginner rates and advanced rates but international companies have a certain fixed rate for each language and it is "take it or leave it", not "how much should I ask them?"

Thank you, that's my experience too. That was some of the reason I startet asking all these questions.


As for 7-8 hours for a 45-minute show - normal for complicated shows but typical US trash should really take a few hours less. In the Scandinavian subtitling tradition a show with 8,000 words in the original would be shortened to around 3,000-4,000 words in the translation.

I do shorten the subtitles quite a bit when I can, but I translate to a language where this is hard to do most of the time. If I'm lucky I'll probably be able to go from 8K to 6K or something like that. It helps, though.


Subtitling is an area where work practices help you save a lot of time (e.g. do you watch the film, then translate, then watch again? Do you translate first, then watch and correct? Do you watch and translate one subtitle at a time? One scene at a time? Can you translate at least some parts while watching? etc etc)
Each translator can find a more efficient way to work - or quit subtitling. The low rates do not leave other options.

Right now I do it all right away. I have the video in the middle of the screen and then I have the English file on the left and the Norwegian on top of it (when translating, off course). I watch about 30 seconds of the video before I translate. After that I read it through to look for typos. Maybe I should try something else like translate everything right away and then watch the video afterwards to see if it looks ok, or something like that.

Been looking at some software to make things faster, but I get the impression that software doesn't necessarily make it faster. What do you think?


 
jbjb
jbjb  Identity Verified
Estonia
Local time: 05:03
Estonian to English
+ ...
. Jan 15, 2014

Depends on if you work with pre-timecoded files or not.

Do you just work in Word and someone else will do the timecode? (That would explain the low rate, as most of the translators nowadays also do the timecode or use timecoded files). This means you have a dialogue script or narration and will create your own subtitles, deciding on the placement and omissions by yourself?

Or do you just get a timecoded file in English and are expected to replace the English text with N
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Depends on if you work with pre-timecoded files or not.

Do you just work in Word and someone else will do the timecode? (That would explain the low rate, as most of the translators nowadays also do the timecode or use timecoded files). This means you have a dialogue script or narration and will create your own subtitles, deciding on the placement and omissions by yourself?

Or do you just get a timecoded file in English and are expected to replace the English text with Norwegian, without touching the timecodes and merging/splitting the prepared subtitles?
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larsjorgen (X)
larsjorgen (X)
Local time: 04:03
English to Norwegian
TOPIC STARTER
. Jan 15, 2014

They are pre-timecoded in English, but I have to change the timecoding depending on the length of the translation. I merge them if needed and so I have to change the timecoding as well.

I work in Word atm, but the company would like me to go over to their software and another file format. The rate stays the same though.


 
Sylvano
Sylvano
Local time: 04:03
English to French
. Jan 15, 2014

larsjorgen wrote:
Thank you, that's my experience too. That was some of the reason I startet asking all these questions.


That's not mine. I work 100% local (but have experienced too the international jungle when I started) and I still get (at least) 4 times (up to 8-9 for corporate subtitling) the rate you mention (doing my own cueing with a professional software, to be precise).
My question is : since we all know rates will likely keep on dropping, and since you seem to believe the only answer is working faster, where will you draw the (bottom) line? How many hours of work a day/a night? How many words translated per hour or per minute?


 
jbjb
jbjb  Identity Verified
Estonia
Local time: 05:03
Estonian to English
+ ...
. Jan 15, 2014

Depends on the software they offer but most probably it will make the handling of timecodes much faster, once you learn to use it. Splitting-merging will be two keystrokes in most professional software, you wouldn't have to copy/paste timecodes or invent the timecode on your own based on the burnt-in timecode in the video.
But naturally there are also horrible software options, made with the purpose of easing things for the company, not for the translator.

While working in Wor
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Depends on the software they offer but most probably it will make the handling of timecodes much faster, once you learn to use it. Splitting-merging will be two keystrokes in most professional software, you wouldn't have to copy/paste timecodes or invent the timecode on your own based on the burnt-in timecode in the video.
But naturally there are also horrible software options, made with the purpose of easing things for the company, not for the translator.

While working in Word, I would suggest not using 3 files (video, English template, Norwegian) but taking the English template and overwriting the subtitles into Norwegian, as you go along.
You could try translating the obvious things before watching the video, only leaving doubtful places untranslated - and translate them as you watch the video (works well for documentaries and some series but not very dialogue-heavy material).


There are many things you could try (and certainly transferring to subtitling software would be a big difference). Each translator has his/her own style and no two translators work completely alike.
But you will probably find you can cut back the translation time by around 25-30% if you find the right method that suits you. And the method might be different for each series, depending on its nature.
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How fast can you translate subtitles? Is it worth doing?







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