Forum: Money matters
Topic: Is $3 per program minute for subtitle translation a fair quote?
Poster: Thayenga
Post title: @ Samuel
[quote]Samuel Murray wrote:
[quote]Thayenga wrote:
I just received an offer to create an .srt file for $1.90 per audio minute. [/quote]
Yes, but that is (presumably) for transcription and subtitle creation, so that's even worse. It takes 8 to 10 actual minutes to transcribe 1 minute of audio, and then you still have to perform the copywriting task of turning the transcription into proper subtitles.
[/quote]
It was a transcription request. Therefore, the requester, a generally bottom-feeder agency that ignores my request to be deleted from their data base unless they offer acceptable rates, expected all this work to be done in that (relatively) short time.
[quote]
Alexandra's question was about the translation of subtitles. I'm not sure if her client also expected her to turn her translation into subtitles as well (which is also a copywriting task), or perhaps her client believes that if you translate a subtitle, the translation is automatically a subtitle as well.
[/quote]
This is where the educational process needs to set in. Many customers don't really know the difference between actually translating subtitles to be returned in an .srt file only, and the actual subtitling task.
Once I received an offer to "translate subtitles" at a decent, though not high rate. It turned out that this job included the creation of an .srt file, the translation of the subtitles in that format, as well as the actual subtitling work in the video. The provided deadline sufficed only to translate an already existing .srt file.
[Edited at 2019-06-06 08:20 GMT]