Forum: Subtitling
Topic: Rates for subtitling work
Poster: MK2010
Post title: Great post, jbjb
You do a really good job at showing what a global marketplace we work in. I can understand those translators who insist that we are like doctors and other professionals who set our own rates, but the fact is, that analogy doesn't work at the global level. Things like medical costs DO actually change considerably depending on the location—which is why, for instance, there are many Americans who go to Canada to buy medicine (much cheaper) and Americans who fly to Thailand or Mexico or elsewhere to get surgical procedures that cost one 10th what they cost here. A doctor or a plumber or a lawyer is usually setting his prices for the local market. He is not competing with a colleague around the world whose cost of living is a fraction of his. But we are. Our marketplace IS the entire world and we ARE in fact competing with colleagues who can afford to work for less. Of course, the translator is ultimately the one who decides which rates she is willing to accept, but I think it can only help to understand some of the points jbjb made below.
[quote]jbjb wrote:
Unfortunately per minute is the standard in subtitling. This is how clients order and estimate their translation costs - e.g. Netflix decides to release the series "Full House" worldwide in their platform. That's 192 episodes, 25 minutes each - 4800 minutes. They translate into, say, 20 languages at the moment. So they can calculate - 4800x20= 96,000 minutes. This is just one series out of hundreds that they release every year, so nobody really cares about the content - if it's a sitcom where 30% of screen time is spent laughing or a political series like "West Wing" with non-stop complicated text. We are not talking about content or the nature of translation - we are talking about the number of minutes for a certain market. Launch in Turkey with 50 TV series and 150 feature films? We need 3.5 million minutes translated in few months.
Or let's say Disney is looking to translate its films for worldwide release. One film is an average of 100 minutes, they have a release schedule of 80 films a year into 65 languages. That's 100x80x65 = 520,000 minutes a year. Nobody even knows what the content will be - most of these films have not even been made yet but they want a subtitling company in place for the next 3 years to handle all of these minutes.
The next stage is subtitling companies scrambling for these minutes. Two months to translate 96,000 minutes into 20 languages. How many languages can I handle? I take one language - quote Netflix EUR 5 per minute, pay translators EUR 3, the result is 192,000 euro for project management over two months. Another company can handle 10 languages - they quote EUR 4, pay EUR 3, keep 96,000x10= 960,000 in project management.
An Indian company thinks that's big money - project management workforce is cheap, we can offer EUR 3.3 per minute for all 20 languages, pay EUR 3.
That's 0.3x20x96,000= 576,000 in project management for two months to translate one series out of hundreds released by Netflix every year. Big money for India, we can hire 20 project managers for that - let's see how those European subtitling companies can compete with that. And if we manage to pay one language EUR 2, instead of EUR 3, we make an additional profit of 96,000 per language.
For Netflix - the cost of releasing "Full House" worldwide through a company bidding EUR 5 per minute: 9.6 million euro. Through the Indian company bidding EUR 3.3 per minute - 6.3 million euro.
Anyway, these are the volumes and margins we are talking about in subtitling. Huge clients, huge volume of work, very varied content. Nobody has time to think about mundane things like if they talk 200 words or 130 words per minute. Binding contracts are made with subtitling companies on translating content that
1) has not even been made yet (Disney and other studios)
2) has not even been bought yet (TV channels that need to buy 200 feature films a year to fill air time)
3) has not even been decided yet (Netflix knows they will launch in Turkey and launch cost estimates include 3.5 million minutes of translation - that's 17.5 million euro or 11.5 million euro, depending on the subtitling company they get.)
Margins go very low and translators have a choice - accept the EUR 3 per minute or refuse and let somebody else accept that price. You cannot say - sorry, translating West Wing takes me 50% per more time than Full House. I think I want EUR 3+50%= EUR 4.50 per minute. Guess what? Nobody cares when the company they work for gets EUR 3.3 per minute from the client.
Will the Indian company go to Netflix and say - sorry, but West Wing is a very complicated series, I think we want more money to translate that series into French?
Netflix will just say: What the F? We are translating 6 million minutes into that language in 2016 and the budget was approved a year ago. We really don't give a sh*t if 20,000 minutes out of those 6 million is complicated content, there are 17 other subtitling companies scraping at our door to get those minutes from us.
And what if the translation is bad? Nobody will die from watching West Wing with a bad translation, unlike with a wrong translation in the user manual of a weed whacker that may lead to legal disputes and court cases. [/quote]
[Edited at 2016-03-21 16:26 GMT]
[Edited at 2016-03-21 16:30 GMT]
Topic: Rates for subtitling work
Poster: MK2010
Post title: Great post, jbjb
You do a really good job at showing what a global marketplace we work in. I can understand those translators who insist that we are like doctors and other professionals who set our own rates, but the fact is, that analogy doesn't work at the global level. Things like medical costs DO actually change considerably depending on the location—which is why, for instance, there are many Americans who go to Canada to buy medicine (much cheaper) and Americans who fly to Thailand or Mexico or elsewhere to get surgical procedures that cost one 10th what they cost here. A doctor or a plumber or a lawyer is usually setting his prices for the local market. He is not competing with a colleague around the world whose cost of living is a fraction of his. But we are. Our marketplace IS the entire world and we ARE in fact competing with colleagues who can afford to work for less. Of course, the translator is ultimately the one who decides which rates she is willing to accept, but I think it can only help to understand some of the points jbjb made below.
[quote]jbjb wrote:
Unfortunately per minute is the standard in subtitling. This is how clients order and estimate their translation costs - e.g. Netflix decides to release the series "Full House" worldwide in their platform. That's 192 episodes, 25 minutes each - 4800 minutes. They translate into, say, 20 languages at the moment. So they can calculate - 4800x20= 96,000 minutes. This is just one series out of hundreds that they release every year, so nobody really cares about the content - if it's a sitcom where 30% of screen time is spent laughing or a political series like "West Wing" with non-stop complicated text. We are not talking about content or the nature of translation - we are talking about the number of minutes for a certain market. Launch in Turkey with 50 TV series and 150 feature films? We need 3.5 million minutes translated in few months.
Or let's say Disney is looking to translate its films for worldwide release. One film is an average of 100 minutes, they have a release schedule of 80 films a year into 65 languages. That's 100x80x65 = 520,000 minutes a year. Nobody even knows what the content will be - most of these films have not even been made yet but they want a subtitling company in place for the next 3 years to handle all of these minutes.
The next stage is subtitling companies scrambling for these minutes. Two months to translate 96,000 minutes into 20 languages. How many languages can I handle? I take one language - quote Netflix EUR 5 per minute, pay translators EUR 3, the result is 192,000 euro for project management over two months. Another company can handle 10 languages - they quote EUR 4, pay EUR 3, keep 96,000x10= 960,000 in project management.
An Indian company thinks that's big money - project management workforce is cheap, we can offer EUR 3.3 per minute for all 20 languages, pay EUR 3.
That's 0.3x20x96,000= 576,000 in project management for two months to translate one series out of hundreds released by Netflix every year. Big money for India, we can hire 20 project managers for that - let's see how those European subtitling companies can compete with that. And if we manage to pay one language EUR 2, instead of EUR 3, we make an additional profit of 96,000 per language.
For Netflix - the cost of releasing "Full House" worldwide through a company bidding EUR 5 per minute: 9.6 million euro. Through the Indian company bidding EUR 3.3 per minute - 6.3 million euro.
Anyway, these are the volumes and margins we are talking about in subtitling. Huge clients, huge volume of work, very varied content. Nobody has time to think about mundane things like if they talk 200 words or 130 words per minute. Binding contracts are made with subtitling companies on translating content that
1) has not even been made yet (Disney and other studios)
2) has not even been bought yet (TV channels that need to buy 200 feature films a year to fill air time)
3) has not even been decided yet (Netflix knows they will launch in Turkey and launch cost estimates include 3.5 million minutes of translation - that's 17.5 million euro or 11.5 million euro, depending on the subtitling company they get.)
Margins go very low and translators have a choice - accept the EUR 3 per minute or refuse and let somebody else accept that price. You cannot say - sorry, translating West Wing takes me 50% per more time than Full House. I think I want EUR 3+50%= EUR 4.50 per minute. Guess what? Nobody cares when the company they work for gets EUR 3.3 per minute from the client.
Will the Indian company go to Netflix and say - sorry, but West Wing is a very complicated series, I think we want more money to translate that series into French?
Netflix will just say: What the F? We are translating 6 million minutes into that language in 2016 and the budget was approved a year ago. We really don't give a sh*t if 20,000 minutes out of those 6 million is complicated content, there are 17 other subtitling companies scraping at our door to get those minutes from us.
And what if the translation is bad? Nobody will die from watching West Wing with a bad translation, unlike with a wrong translation in the user manual of a weed whacker that may lead to legal disputes and court cases. [/quote]
[Edited at 2016-03-21 16:26 GMT]
[Edited at 2016-03-21 16:30 GMT]