Forum: Subtitling
Topic: [Subtitling Rates] per minute rates
Poster: José Henrique Lamensdorf
Post title: An ominously giant bit
[quote]Pierre Bancov wrote:
[b]The subtitling market is a bit crazy [/b]
I can understand not getting my usual rates when working with an agency, but lately - that means the last 5 years or so - I've consistently found myself dealing with set bufgets and "accept or GTFO" mentalities.
Which is why I have been turning down every single assignment in the last 2 years.
Now, it's not only small, unheard of clients that do that. We're talking about market leaders. Giants.
I don't care who these people think they are, they need to be banned from here.
I haven't gotten in touch with a decent client through the mailing alert system here in months. Litterally the last one that actually was interested in knowing my rates was last year in June. And that's across all my languages and fields. But that's a different discussion. [/quote]
There is a huge global crowd subtitling for free. Search on Google for subtitles for any movie or TV series you like, in any language. Chances are that you'll find many.
People do them as a hobby, for no other reward than having their nickname published with them. It's some kind of "activity trap". It gives them the self-rewarding idea of being busy, working hard, and an excuse to watch closely the movies/series they like.
Maybe some expect to accrue practice, and eventually enter the subtitling market as service providers. However as nobody is giving them feedback on their output, and nobody expects their work to be any good, they are precluded from ever reaching an acceptable quality level. And yet, they keep flooding the web with their subtitle files.
A while ago I did an experiment to determine whether it was economically viable, instead of translating a video for subtitles, to "fix" those fansubber files available on the web. My final report is in Portuguese, [url= [url removed] ]here[/url], however the interesting part is a spreadsheet comparing the fansubber's file and my "fix": [url removed] . I used the movie [url= [url removed] ]Now You See Me (2013)[/url].
My general conclusions were mainly that it takes the same time to "fix" amateur subtitles as for a competent video translator to develop them from scratch, and that the "fix" is of generally lower in quality than the complete job done [i]comme il faut[/i], as leniency tends to seep in; the bar for acceptance gets lowered.
As fansubbing creates a perception of worldwide overabundance of amateur subtitling, customers are led to think that the same professional services should be extremely cheap, an almost no-brainer kind of job, and they develop their budget under this assumption. Upon imposing their budgeted figures, they hire low-bidders, which tends to draw the general quality of subtitles closer to fansubs.
Topic: [Subtitling Rates] per minute rates
Poster: José Henrique Lamensdorf
Post title: An ominously giant bit
[quote]Pierre Bancov wrote:
[b]The subtitling market is a bit crazy [/b]
I can understand not getting my usual rates when working with an agency, but lately - that means the last 5 years or so - I've consistently found myself dealing with set bufgets and "accept or GTFO" mentalities.
Which is why I have been turning down every single assignment in the last 2 years.
Now, it's not only small, unheard of clients that do that. We're talking about market leaders. Giants.
I don't care who these people think they are, they need to be banned from here.
I haven't gotten in touch with a decent client through the mailing alert system here in months. Litterally the last one that actually was interested in knowing my rates was last year in June. And that's across all my languages and fields. But that's a different discussion. [/quote]
There is a huge global crowd subtitling for free. Search on Google for subtitles for any movie or TV series you like, in any language. Chances are that you'll find many.
People do them as a hobby, for no other reward than having their nickname published with them. It's some kind of "activity trap". It gives them the self-rewarding idea of being busy, working hard, and an excuse to watch closely the movies/series they like.
Maybe some expect to accrue practice, and eventually enter the subtitling market as service providers. However as nobody is giving them feedback on their output, and nobody expects their work to be any good, they are precluded from ever reaching an acceptable quality level. And yet, they keep flooding the web with their subtitle files.
A while ago I did an experiment to determine whether it was economically viable, instead of translating a video for subtitles, to "fix" those fansubber files available on the web. My final report is in Portuguese, [url= [url removed] ]here[/url], however the interesting part is a spreadsheet comparing the fansubber's file and my "fix": [url removed] . I used the movie [url= [url removed] ]Now You See Me (2013)[/url].
My general conclusions were mainly that it takes the same time to "fix" amateur subtitles as for a competent video translator to develop them from scratch, and that the "fix" is of generally lower in quality than the complete job done [i]comme il faut[/i], as leniency tends to seep in; the bar for acceptance gets lowered.
As fansubbing creates a perception of worldwide overabundance of amateur subtitling, customers are led to think that the same professional services should be extremely cheap, an almost no-brainer kind of job, and they develop their budget under this assumption. Upon imposing their budgeted figures, they hire low-bidders, which tends to draw the general quality of subtitles closer to fansubs.