Forum: Subtitling
Topic: Subtitling rates
Poster: Robert Edison
Post title: Try to get more.
I just happen to be doing some subtitles for $4 per minute on the side. I've been doing it for a couple of months to see if it was feasible. It isn't. It's terrible. I calculated that I am making just under one cent per Japanese character (Japanese to English). It isn't worth it at all. Jose is absolutely right. There are middle men scraping off the top at every level. The show I am doing right now is going to be on Netflix, and for my language pair they pay $20 per video minute to the vendors. How can they justify only giving the translator 20% of that? Needless to say, I am not doing any more work for them after I finish this project.
Don't feed the beast. They will lure you in with interesting projects, but it gets old really fast at these rates. I tried negotiating, but they wouldn't budge. It seems pretty set in stone with the Netflix vendors. I am not sure about the company you're dealing with, but it's worth a shot to negotiate.
[Edited at 2018-04-13 02:22 GMT]
Topic: Subtitling rates
Poster: Robert Edison
Post title: Try to get more.
I just happen to be doing some subtitles for $4 per minute on the side. I've been doing it for a couple of months to see if it was feasible. It isn't. It's terrible. I calculated that I am making just under one cent per Japanese character (Japanese to English). It isn't worth it at all. Jose is absolutely right. There are middle men scraping off the top at every level. The show I am doing right now is going to be on Netflix, and for my language pair they pay $20 per video minute to the vendors. How can they justify only giving the translator 20% of that? Needless to say, I am not doing any more work for them after I finish this project.
Don't feed the beast. They will lure you in with interesting projects, but it gets old really fast at these rates. I tried negotiating, but they wouldn't budge. It seems pretty set in stone with the Netflix vendors. I am not sure about the company you're dealing with, but it's worth a shot to negotiate.
[Edited at 2018-04-13 02:22 GMT]