Forum: Subtitling
Topic: Subtitling rate
Poster: José Henrique Lamensdorf
Post title: An interesting comparison
[quote]Woodstock wrote:
related to the ins and outs of subtitling, and I was hoping you would turn up. :) Greetings to Brazil from Germany! (PS. For the record, I'm not a big sports fan, so no ulterior message regarding football is intended!)[/quote]
I'm not a big sports fan either, however I watched the World Cup. Germany had a superb TEAM. As Franz Beckenbauer very aptly commented [url= [url removed] ,parecia-que-alemanha-jogava-contra-uma-equipe-de-criancas,1542298]yesterday on the leading Brazilian newspaper[/url], Brazil had a few stars and a bunch of other guys playing ball. Germany earned a well-deserved cup.
[url= [url removed] ]Schweinsteiger and Neuer[/url] had such a great time here outside the stadiums, that I don't think it was the last time we saw them in Brazil.
I was a small boy when Brazil won the World Cup for the first time, in 1958. I was in the crowd, and saw the whole Brazilian TEAM parading down the street, on a fire brigade truck. Pelé, then 17 years old, was sitting on the cabin rooftop, clutching the Cup, smiling to everybody. They were young, perhaps inexperienced, but definitely a TEAM.
Anyway, my point here is that I've been saying that for many years now Brazil has had much better and more excellent dubbers (voice artists) than soccer players. Unfortunately, there is no World Cup for video translation. Of course, to do the wonderful job they do, they need a good, metrics-caring translation.
[quote]Woodstock wrote:
You make an excellent point, and that is the feeling I get from a lot of the questions from people coming here with an interest in how to get started as a translator/interpreter/subtitler/whatever. Not directly related but tangentially so - I'm just proofreading a shockingly bad translation - bad in the sense that the work is extremely shoddy, even if the person has a good grasp of both languages. It makes me wonder what possesses people to enter into the profession at all if they don't care about the text they are translating or the quality of their work. Very sad, really. [/quote]
Another point is that translation on itself requires a whole array of skills, not merely "being bilingual". Many prospective beginners tend to overlook that.
And then there are supplemental, peripheral, or associated services, whatever you'd like to name them.
Some translators won't touch a PDF file. Others will get it converted to Word (definitely not a DTP app), and burn the midnight oil for free, spend hours working hard in attempts to fix complex layout issues created by text swelling/shrinkage during translation. This is not translation, it's DTP, a different line of work... though there is nothing to prevent someone from doing both.
Likewise, some people are eager to translate video, because they think this will entitle them to be the first to watch a new movie/TV series, before it is launched in their language. However before they accrue the experience to become the professional experts studios select to translate that award-winning film, they'll have to translate LOTS of disgusting junk, B-movies, etc.
Before anyone thinks I am an almighty translator, because I do DTP, video subtitling & translation for dubbing, [b]I won't touch[/b] Flash presentations, web sites, and several other things I don't know, as well as some specific translation areas like medicine, biology, accounting, finance, or sports.
As Socrates said, "We don't know what we don't know." I've already made some choices on things that I don't know, and am not willing to learn. At least I've learned that buying the 'right' software (whatever that means) and knowing how much to charge for that kind of work is definitely not a good start in any endeavor.
[Edited at 2014-08-13 12:59 GMT]
Topic: Subtitling rate
Poster: José Henrique Lamensdorf
Post title: An interesting comparison
[quote]Woodstock wrote:
related to the ins and outs of subtitling, and I was hoping you would turn up. :) Greetings to Brazil from Germany! (PS. For the record, I'm not a big sports fan, so no ulterior message regarding football is intended!)[/quote]
I'm not a big sports fan either, however I watched the World Cup. Germany had a superb TEAM. As Franz Beckenbauer very aptly commented [url= [url removed] ,parecia-que-alemanha-jogava-contra-uma-equipe-de-criancas,1542298]yesterday on the leading Brazilian newspaper[/url], Brazil had a few stars and a bunch of other guys playing ball. Germany earned a well-deserved cup.
[url= [url removed] ]Schweinsteiger and Neuer[/url] had such a great time here outside the stadiums, that I don't think it was the last time we saw them in Brazil.
I was a small boy when Brazil won the World Cup for the first time, in 1958. I was in the crowd, and saw the whole Brazilian TEAM parading down the street, on a fire brigade truck. Pelé, then 17 years old, was sitting on the cabin rooftop, clutching the Cup, smiling to everybody. They were young, perhaps inexperienced, but definitely a TEAM.
Anyway, my point here is that I've been saying that for many years now Brazil has had much better and more excellent dubbers (voice artists) than soccer players. Unfortunately, there is no World Cup for video translation. Of course, to do the wonderful job they do, they need a good, metrics-caring translation.
[quote]Woodstock wrote:
You make an excellent point, and that is the feeling I get from a lot of the questions from people coming here with an interest in how to get started as a translator/interpreter/subtitler/whatever. Not directly related but tangentially so - I'm just proofreading a shockingly bad translation - bad in the sense that the work is extremely shoddy, even if the person has a good grasp of both languages. It makes me wonder what possesses people to enter into the profession at all if they don't care about the text they are translating or the quality of their work. Very sad, really. [/quote]
Another point is that translation on itself requires a whole array of skills, not merely "being bilingual". Many prospective beginners tend to overlook that.
And then there are supplemental, peripheral, or associated services, whatever you'd like to name them.
Some translators won't touch a PDF file. Others will get it converted to Word (definitely not a DTP app), and burn the midnight oil for free, spend hours working hard in attempts to fix complex layout issues created by text swelling/shrinkage during translation. This is not translation, it's DTP, a different line of work... though there is nothing to prevent someone from doing both.
Likewise, some people are eager to translate video, because they think this will entitle them to be the first to watch a new movie/TV series, before it is launched in their language. However before they accrue the experience to become the professional experts studios select to translate that award-winning film, they'll have to translate LOTS of disgusting junk, B-movies, etc.
Before anyone thinks I am an almighty translator, because I do DTP, video subtitling & translation for dubbing, [b]I won't touch[/b] Flash presentations, web sites, and several other things I don't know, as well as some specific translation areas like medicine, biology, accounting, finance, or sports.
As Socrates said, "We don't know what we don't know." I've already made some choices on things that I don't know, and am not willing to learn. At least I've learned that buying the 'right' software (whatever that means) and knowing how much to charge for that kind of work is definitely not a good start in any endeavor.
[Edited at 2014-08-13 12:59 GMT]