Forum: Subtitling
Topic: How many minutes per day?
Poster: Tomo Olson
Just to add to what I said in my previous post - Subtitle translations are not exactly like document translations. There are certain components that are not about translating at all. I imagine a lot of document translators struggle, or don't even enjoy subtitle translations because of some of the limitations/tediousness/challenges associated with subtitle translations.
1) People can only read so fast, so you cannot cram a lot of words in a subtitle box even if the speaker is saying a lot. It becomes challenging when the person is speaking very fast and saying so much in a short amount of time.
2) This may sound contradictory, but you want to try to roughly match the rhythm of the spoken words in the target language. You don't want the target dialogues to be too short or too long in relation to the source. This is important even if you are not doing dubbing work. I even try to match the pauses in my subtitle translations where I can.
3) You need to make appropriate line breaks. An obvious example: You don't want to put an article (the, a,) at the end of a line.
4) Your clients may require narration or background speaking to be added in different fonts. They may want captions to be typed differently. They may want you to reposition the translations in a way that they won't cover up the original captions. Moving up to the top or move up a few lines? Or not. The rules are all different depending upon the client.
5) It takes a while to get used to the software that each company provides you with. Some tools are obviously easier to use than others.
So considering you're new at subtitle translations, I would probably give a 20-minute project a few days to finish. The things I've mentioned above become second nature to you after a while, and you'll be able to handle a 20-minute project in less than a day, but I guess it may take a little time to get there. I personally don't take projects that require me to time code as well as translate. Time-coding is tedious, time-consuming, and not worth my time.
I hope this helps.
Topic: How many minutes per day?
Poster: Tomo Olson
Just to add to what I said in my previous post - Subtitle translations are not exactly like document translations. There are certain components that are not about translating at all. I imagine a lot of document translators struggle, or don't even enjoy subtitle translations because of some of the limitations/tediousness/challenges associated with subtitle translations.
1) People can only read so fast, so you cannot cram a lot of words in a subtitle box even if the speaker is saying a lot. It becomes challenging when the person is speaking very fast and saying so much in a short amount of time.
2) This may sound contradictory, but you want to try to roughly match the rhythm of the spoken words in the target language. You don't want the target dialogues to be too short or too long in relation to the source. This is important even if you are not doing dubbing work. I even try to match the pauses in my subtitle translations where I can.
3) You need to make appropriate line breaks. An obvious example: You don't want to put an article (the, a,) at the end of a line.
4) Your clients may require narration or background speaking to be added in different fonts. They may want captions to be typed differently. They may want you to reposition the translations in a way that they won't cover up the original captions. Moving up to the top or move up a few lines? Or not. The rules are all different depending upon the client.
5) It takes a while to get used to the software that each company provides you with. Some tools are obviously easier to use than others.
So considering you're new at subtitle translations, I would probably give a 20-minute project a few days to finish. The things I've mentioned above become second nature to you after a while, and you'll be able to handle a 20-minute project in less than a day, but I guess it may take a little time to get there. I personally don't take projects that require me to time code as well as translate. Time-coding is tedious, time-consuming, and not worth my time.
I hope this helps.