Forum: Subtitling
Topic: Rates for subtitling work
Poster: José Henrique Lamensdorf
Post title: Time is relative
[quote]Juan Jacob wrote:
It took to all of us a long time to get where we are. [/quote]
I was certainly lucky. I was translating and DTP'ing the support materials for a video-based training programs distributor. The big boss there was the real master in translation for dubbing. One day he challenged me... Would you like to try translating a video for dubbing? He quickly showed me how he did it, I adapted his method, and took a shot.
Next news came from a girl in his dubbing studio. She told me, "You must be really good. He's been doing it himself alone since he founded the company, which has grown, and now needs him full-time at the helm. He tried some 30 translators, and had to burn the midnight oil to fix them himself. Yours was dubbed exactly the way you brought it, nothing was changed and it came out great." This was the start of a great partnership that lasted over two decades.
I didn't know I had that natural talent, but practice makes perfection. Is it a miracle?
I don't think so. Considering what I could understand from Google's translation from German, [url= [url removed] ]Claudia Hirschfeld[/url]'s grandparents gave her an organ when she was a small girl, and she learned to play it on her own. Of course, I guess she studied music later.
Anyway, that was all I could do in 1987 through 2004, translating video for dubbing. They had me try translating for subtitling (of which that client still knows nothing - I do it for him), and the result was ghastly.
In 2004, another client approached me with a large subtitling request, and explained why - on account of the subject - I had to be the one to do it.
By then, there was already enough info on the web, so I read a lot, discovered the basic difference in mindset for dubbing (priority to metrics) and subtitling (conciseness), developed it, and in a few months I was doing the entire subtitling job alone... from a VHS tape all the way to an interactive subtitled DVD.
While my very first video translation for dubbing is still running somewhere, it took me 17 years to cross the border into subtitling, and maybe I would like to redo some videos I subtitled in the first two years or so.
Is either one, dub/sub translation, more difficult than the other? I don't think so, however each one takes a completely different mindset.
I must admit that my productivity in subtitling is quite low, compared to some colleagues, however I strive to make the final quality worth the extra time and consequently cost. Been successful so far, but mostly kept out of the TV/movies circuit on account of price.
Topic: Rates for subtitling work
Poster: José Henrique Lamensdorf
Post title: Time is relative
[quote]Juan Jacob wrote:
It took to all of us a long time to get where we are. [/quote]
I was certainly lucky. I was translating and DTP'ing the support materials for a video-based training programs distributor. The big boss there was the real master in translation for dubbing. One day he challenged me... Would you like to try translating a video for dubbing? He quickly showed me how he did it, I adapted his method, and took a shot.
Next news came from a girl in his dubbing studio. She told me, "You must be really good. He's been doing it himself alone since he founded the company, which has grown, and now needs him full-time at the helm. He tried some 30 translators, and had to burn the midnight oil to fix them himself. Yours was dubbed exactly the way you brought it, nothing was changed and it came out great." This was the start of a great partnership that lasted over two decades.
I didn't know I had that natural talent, but practice makes perfection. Is it a miracle?
I don't think so. Considering what I could understand from Google's translation from German, [url= [url removed] ]Claudia Hirschfeld[/url]'s grandparents gave her an organ when she was a small girl, and she learned to play it on her own. Of course, I guess she studied music later.
Anyway, that was all I could do in 1987 through 2004, translating video for dubbing. They had me try translating for subtitling (of which that client still knows nothing - I do it for him), and the result was ghastly.
In 2004, another client approached me with a large subtitling request, and explained why - on account of the subject - I had to be the one to do it.
By then, there was already enough info on the web, so I read a lot, discovered the basic difference in mindset for dubbing (priority to metrics) and subtitling (conciseness), developed it, and in a few months I was doing the entire subtitling job alone... from a VHS tape all the way to an interactive subtitled DVD.
While my very first video translation for dubbing is still running somewhere, it took me 17 years to cross the border into subtitling, and maybe I would like to redo some videos I subtitled in the first two years or so.
Is either one, dub/sub translation, more difficult than the other? I don't think so, however each one takes a completely different mindset.
I must admit that my productivity in subtitling is quite low, compared to some colleagues, however I strive to make the final quality worth the extra time and consequently cost. Been successful so far, but mostly kept out of the TV/movies circuit on account of price.