Forum: Subtitling
Topic: [Subtitling Rates] per minute rates
Poster: jbjb
Post title: process
Unfortunately the work process has changed to accommodate the lower rates.
First - not all projects contain puns, rhymes etc. I would say around 10-25% of all projects.
For slang, jargon, dialects you use your previous experience with similar situations. If you don't have it, tough luck.
Subtitle placement? Forget it. Translators are not allowed/encouraged to change timecodes or merge anything, sometimes the technical capability has been removed. Review your translations? Once - or leave it to the proofreader and hope for the best.
The quality of cheap translations varies of course - because many translators give up and new ones cannot be trained in subtitling. The main requirement for hiring is acceptance of the low rate. Translation quality comes second.
But it is possible to achieve quality even with a fast turnaround. Very hard for beginners but possible for professionals, should they choose to continue in that line of work.
The arrival of Netflix/Hulu/Amazon and all of those providers means that translation turnaround times have become very short. 2-3 days is the usual deadline for a feature. Companies have 2-3 weeks to translate 100 episodes of a series or a batch of 20-30-50 films.
So you either have 20-30-50 translators who can take one film each or five times fewer translators who can take five films each during the period.
The market situation has changed - materials are now uploaded to consumers in huge batches. This never happened in the earlier times - even if a company bought 50 titles for release on DVD/VHS, it would take them half a year to release them week by week (or for a movie channel to have 5-7 premiers a week).
But now Netflix/Hulu signs a contract for a year and has all the materials available immediately. The only thing missing is the translation and they are not going to wait 2-3 months to get it, they want it immediately, in a few weeks, days, minutes if possible. And the subtitle translation market has had to adjust to this.
Topic: [Subtitling Rates] per minute rates
Poster: jbjb
Post title: process
Unfortunately the work process has changed to accommodate the lower rates.
First - not all projects contain puns, rhymes etc. I would say around 10-25% of all projects.
For slang, jargon, dialects you use your previous experience with similar situations. If you don't have it, tough luck.
Subtitle placement? Forget it. Translators are not allowed/encouraged to change timecodes or merge anything, sometimes the technical capability has been removed. Review your translations? Once - or leave it to the proofreader and hope for the best.
The quality of cheap translations varies of course - because many translators give up and new ones cannot be trained in subtitling. The main requirement for hiring is acceptance of the low rate. Translation quality comes second.
But it is possible to achieve quality even with a fast turnaround. Very hard for beginners but possible for professionals, should they choose to continue in that line of work.
The arrival of Netflix/Hulu/Amazon and all of those providers means that translation turnaround times have become very short. 2-3 days is the usual deadline for a feature. Companies have 2-3 weeks to translate 100 episodes of a series or a batch of 20-30-50 films.
So you either have 20-30-50 translators who can take one film each or five times fewer translators who can take five films each during the period.
The market situation has changed - materials are now uploaded to consumers in huge batches. This never happened in the earlier times - even if a company bought 50 titles for release on DVD/VHS, it would take them half a year to release them week by week (or for a movie channel to have 5-7 premiers a week).
But now Netflix/Hulu signs a contract for a year and has all the materials available immediately. The only thing missing is the translation and they are not going to wait 2-3 months to get it, they want it immediately, in a few weeks, days, minutes if possible. And the subtitle translation market has had to adjust to this.