Subtitle translation - 60 min talk video/12,000 words - expected time? Thread poster: Zea_Mays
|
|---|
Zea_Mays 
Italy
Local time: 22:59
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
Hi folks,
I need your help with assessing how long the translation of subs for a 60 min _talk_ video/ 12,000 words would take.
There is an .srt file with the _transcription_ of the entire talk (up to 4 persons) with time stamps.
As it is a transcription (for now) it amounts to around 12,000 words including all "uhs" and "ahs" and the like, which IMO is way over standard copy length for a 60 min video.
The first thing I told the client was to shorten the cop... See more Hi folks,
I need your help with assessing how long the translation of subs for a 60 min _talk_ video/ 12,000 words would take.
There is an .srt file with the _transcription_ of the entire talk (up to 4 persons) with time stamps.
As it is a transcription (for now) it amounts to around 12,000 words including all "uhs" and "ahs" and the like, which IMO is way over standard copy length for a 60 min video.
The first thing I told the client was to shorten the copy to the relevant parts and omit all other things.
They will look into this but in the meantime they want to know
- how long it would take to translate a subtitle file of 12,000 words (what would be a fair minute rate in this case for EN>main EU languages such as ES, DE, FR? My question)
- how long it takes to translate subtitles for a standard 60 min _talk_ vid.
TIA for any advice!
🍀 ▲ Collapse
| | | | Thayenga
Germany
Local time: 22:59
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
The rate for subtitles per minute mainly depends on your customer's location, on how much they are willing to pay. Surely you have your standard per-audio-minute rate.
As you mentioned, you can shorten the time it will take you to translate the subtitles by keeping in mind that they only reflect the quintessence of the dialogue. All unnecessary words and/or "sounds" should/must be omitted. Your client will agree that lines of uh's and ah's serve only to distract the reader from what... See more The rate for subtitles per minute mainly depends on your customer's location, on how much they are willing to pay. Surely you have your standard per-audio-minute rate.
As you mentioned, you can shorten the time it will take you to translate the subtitles by keeping in mind that they only reflect the quintessence of the dialogue. All unnecessary words and/or "sounds" should/must be omitted. Your client will agree that lines of uh's and ah's serve only to distract the reader from what is important... aside from looking unprofessional.
Surely you know from experience how long it will take you to translate the subtitles of a 60 minutes' video, or 12,000 words respectively. Look at the transcript and give your customer an estimate.
[Edited at 2023-05-10 07:28 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 22:59
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Time is the main concern | May 10, 2023 |
Thayenga wrote:
The rate for subtitles per minute mainly depends on your customer's location, on how much they are willing to pay. Surely you have your standard per-audio-minute rate.
As you mentioned, you can shorten the time it will take you to translate the subtitles by keeping in mind that they only reflect the quintessence of the dialogue. All unnecessary words and/or "sounds" should/must be omitted. Your client will agree that lines of uh's and ah's serve only to distract the reader from what is important... aside from looking unprofessional.
Surely you know from experience how long it will take you to translate the subtitles of a 60 minutes' video, or 12,000 words respectively. Look at the transcript and give your customer an estimate.
[Edited at 2023-05-10 07:28 GMT]
Hi Thayenga,
The client pays fair rates so this is not the main concern.
From my experience translating plain text is not the same as translating subs.
So what when dealing with such long copy, assuming they will not condense it significantly? How long would it take, taking into account that a lot of shortening work would be involved too?
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 22:59
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
If it's just the text/script, why not estimating it on 12k words it normally takes you to translate it in other fields? And add some time for watching the video (at least partially) to get the tone right.
| | |
|
|
|
Kay Denney
France
Local time: 22:59
French to English
Condensing while translating might be kinda tricky I think. If they don't want to condense it themselves, I would tell them that I would charge my hourly rate to first condense it, then submit the condensed text for their approval, then translate it. And I would want clear instructions as to what should be left out. Hesitations, sure that's easy, needless repetitions probably, but supposing someone actually contradicts themselves?
Some time last century, I remember transcribing an ... See more Condensing while translating might be kinda tricky I think. If they don't want to condense it themselves, I would tell them that I would charge my hourly rate to first condense it, then submit the condensed text for their approval, then translate it. And I would want clear instructions as to what should be left out. Hesitations, sure that's easy, needless repetitions probably, but supposing someone actually contradicts themselves?
Some time last century, I remember transcribing an hour-long interview with Bruce Springsteen. I cut out a LOT of stuff, but I left the many contradictions in because I didn't know what to do about them. The client sent it back saying "what's this rubbish?" and I had to break it to her that her idol was not the most articulate of rock stars. It did not go well. IIRC we didn't do any more transcriptions for that client. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 22:59
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Text vs. Subs | May 10, 2023 |
Lingua 5B wrote:
If it's just the text/script, why not estimating it on 12k words it normally takes you to translate it in other fields? And add some time for watching the video (at least partially) to get the tone right.
Translating subtitles takes longer than doing the same with text, and here shortening work beyond the regular adaptation for proper subtitle length may be involved as well.
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 22:59
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| What's the difference then? | May 10, 2023 |
Kay Denney wrote:
Condensing while translating might be kinda tricky I think. If they don't want to condense it themselves, I would tell them that I would charge my hourly rate to first condense it, then submit the condensed text for their approval, then translate it. And I would want clear instructions as to what should be left out. Hesitations, sure that's easy, needless repetitions probably, but supposing someone actually contradicts themselves?
How is this different to translating in a subtitling software? Why sending the script then if condensing needs to be done? Then it should be considered a subtitling job not script translation.
In this case, we can answer to the thread like this:
In professional captioning studios, captioners who do this every day generally average between five and ten minutes of work for every minute of video. A one-hour video is generally a full day's work.
https://mn.gov/mnit-accessibility/captioningessentials/intro_howlong.html
But this is only monolingual captioning I believe, the translation should take longer.
| | | | Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
| Subtitling Time | May 10, 2023 |
In general, professional subtitlers would require four to six days to translate a 90-minute feature film containing around 8,000 words, with a master template provided by the client/agency. What you’re describing, however, seems to fall under the territory of corporate videos, which is typically more verbose and may be more anarchistic. What do I mean by “anarchistic”? Well, commercial films always follow movie-making conventions. But when we’re talking about corporate videos, the team b... See more In general, professional subtitlers would require four to six days to translate a 90-minute feature film containing around 8,000 words, with a master template provided by the client/agency. What you’re describing, however, seems to fall under the territory of corporate videos, which is typically more verbose and may be more anarchistic. What do I mean by “anarchistic”? Well, commercial films always follow movie-making conventions. But when we’re talking about corporate videos, the team behind their creation isn’t* always savvy about these guidelines. The cinematic quality varies wildly between audiovisual productions, so it’s hard to implement the same rule that fits all scenarios. It sounds like the timecodes from your client are raw data as well, without any subtitle boxes assigned to them. Just to be safe, I usually try to ask for one to three extra days to finish such projects. It’s also worth noting, that many subtitlers charge higher rates for translating corporate videos. Up to 150% or even 200% more than their rates for working on entertainment contents.
To put these into application, let’s say you can make 30 minutes of progress from the total video duration in a standard eight-hour working day. Divide 30 minutes by eight, and you’ll get three minutes of progress per hour (I’m leaning towards the slower side here). I don’t know how much your hourly rate is. But for the sake of giving an example, I’ll simply set it as EUR 45. Divide 45 by three, and you shall get EUR 15 per runtime minute rate to offer.
Zea_Mays wrote:
The first thing I told the client was to shorten the copy to the relevant parts and omit all other things.
It’s the responsibility of the subtitler to distill dialogues and omit hesitations, false starts, and any other rhetoric features that don’t add any new information to the meaning of the texts, or even polluting them with irrelevant details. In fact, this very practice is why subtitling is considered as a multisemiotic and multimodal translation, with one profound case being the translation from oral and visual formats into timed texts on top of interlingual and intercultural transfer. SDH/CC has different yet self-contradicting approaches. But this is a controversial subject to be discussed for another day. 7:^)
HTH, FWIW.
*Now, before a certain Briton criticizes my English, I speak the American variant. The noun “team” agrees with the singular verb in this part of the world. Deal with it.
https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2022/03/23/my-team-is-winning-or-are-they/
https://editorsmanual.com/articles/collective-nouns-singular-or-plural/
EDIT:
Whoops, spotted some errors there. Sorry for editing the post again, mods. You know how it is on these forums.
[Edited at 2023-05-10 15:49 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | |
|
|
|
Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 22:59
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Mr. Satan wrote:
In general, professional subtitlers would require four to six days to translate a 90-minute feature film containing roughly around 8,000 words, with a master template provided by the client/agency. What you’re describing, however, seems to fall under the territory of corporate videos, which is typically more verbose and may be more anarchistic. What do I mean by “anarchistic”? Well, commercial films always follow movie-making conventions. But when we’re talking about corporate videos, the team behind their creation isn’t* always savvy about these guidelines. The cinematic quality varies wildly between audiovisual productions, so it’s hard to implement the same rule that fits all scenarios. It sounds like the timecodes from your client are raw data as well, without any subtitle boxes assigned to them. Just to be safe, I usually try to ask for one to three extra days to finish such projects. It’s also worth noting, that many subtitlers charge higher rates for translating corporate videos, up to 150% or even 200% more than their rates for working on entertainment contents.
To put these into application, let’s say you can make 30 minutes of progress from the total video duration in a standard eight-hour working day. Divide 30 minutes by eight, and you’ll get three minutes of progress per hour (I’m leaning towards the slower side here). I don’t know how much your hourly rate is. But for the sake of giving an example, I’ll simply set it as EUR 45. Divide 45 by three, and you shall get EUR 15 per runtime minute rate to offer.
Thanks, this is very helpful.
Yes, we are talking about corporate videos of panel discussions around specific topics.
The .srt file looks like this :-/ :
[00:00:20] 32 words/ 191 signs with spaces [00:00:30] 37 words / 201 signs [00:00:40]
33 words / 181 signs [00:00:50] 42 words / 218 signs [00:01:00] and so on ...
Zea_Mays wrote:
The first thing I told the client was to shorten the copy to the relevant parts and omit all other things. It’s the responsibility of the subtitler ....
I forgot to mention that this is a direct client with internal production teams. They are new to subtitling their vids so I believe it is preferable they understand what to provide us translators to get the work done well and without superfluous extra work. I will definitely chasing to have this copy shortened.
| | | | Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
Zea_Mays wrote:
The .srt file looks like this :-/ :
[00:00:20] 32 words/ 191 signs with spaces [00:00:30] 37 words / 201 signs [00:00:40]
33 words / 181 signs [00:00:50] 42 words / 218 signs [00:01:00] and so on ...
I knew it. That is raw data. The timecodes only include in-time without out-time.
I forgot to mention that this is a direct client with internal production teams. They are new to subtitling their vids so I believe it is preferable they understand what to provide us translators to get the work done well and without superfluous extra work. I will definitely chasing to have this copy shortened.
I actually like these superfluous extra works, since they give me an excuse to charge higher rates. But to each their own, I suppose.
[Edited at 2023-05-10 13:19 GMT]
| | | | Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 22:59
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Mr. Satan wrote: Zea_Mays wrote:
I forgot to mention that this is a direct client with internal production teams. They are new to subtitling their vids so I believe it is preferable they understand what to provide us translators to get the work done well and without superfluous extra work. I will definitely chasing to have this copy shortened. I actually like these superfluous extra works, since they give me an excuse to charge higher rates. But to each their own, I suppose. [Edited at 2023-05-10 13:19 GMT]
Well, there are various aspects involved regarding my approach.
- First of all, client retention. Clients reciprocate transparency and advice on how they can improve things, saving money included, with loyalty.
- Efficiency: if I'd love work like this probably I would have offered to do this for them. But this is not work I'm happy to do, so I avoid it if possible as it would not be efficient (you know, motivation). I prefer instructing a client on what kind of files/material to provide in order to have max possible efficiency.
- The tricky thing Kay Denney mentioned: what should be left out. This would require very clear instructions, but still...
- I am not a native EN speaker.
Thanks again for your help! I think a realistic output is an average of 1300 words/working day with such a copy per minute ratio and time-coding/spotting requirement.
| | | | Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
If that suits your business model and professional practice, then sure, you do you. My rationale is that direct clients hire me because they don’t know how to subtitle their corporate videos. If they are willing to pay the price, all they’ve got to do is to just send me the video file, and I’ll deliver a finished product. Clean transcripts are always appreciated, of course. But in the case where they don’t have them, I know how to proceed. Hey, at least it would give me a slightly better... See more If that suits your business model and professional practice, then sure, you do you. My rationale is that direct clients hire me because they don’t know how to subtitle their corporate videos. If they are willing to pay the price, all they’ve got to do is to just send me the video file, and I’ll deliver a finished product. Clean transcripts are always appreciated, of course. But in the case where they don’t have them, I know how to proceed. Hey, at least it would give me a slightly better chance to survive the AI takeover that everyone is so afraid of. I see this as an absolute win! ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
[Edited at 2023-05-12 15:17 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | |
|
|
|
Jidar Kay (X)
United States
| Subtitle translation - 60 min talk video/12,000 words - expected time? | Jun 8, 2023 |
Translating subtitles for a 60 minute video or a 12,000 word subtitle file can take time depending on several factors. Here are some things to consider when evaluating translation time:
1. Speed of translation: The speed of translation varies from translator to translator depending on their experience, their proficiency in the languages involved and their familiarity with the specific content. Some translators can translate faster than others.
2. Content Complexity: If ... See more Translating subtitles for a 60 minute video or a 12,000 word subtitle file can take time depending on several factors. Here are some things to consider when evaluating translation time:
1. Speed of translation: The speed of translation varies from translator to translator depending on their experience, their proficiency in the languages involved and their familiarity with the specific content. Some translators can translate faster than others.
2. Content Complexity: If the video contains technical language, specialized terms, or complex topics, it may take more time to research and accurately translate these elements.
3. Review and Editing: After the translation is completed, it is recommended to perform a review and edit to ensure the quality and accuracy of the translated subtitles. It may also take additional time.
4. Collaboration with the client: Communication with the client, coordination of details and possible change requests can also influence the total duration of the translation process.
As for the price, it is common to charge subtitle translation services per minute of translated video. Rates may vary depending on the language pair (for example, English to Spanish, German or French), the complexity of the content and the translation speed of the translator. It is recommended that you contact professional translators or translation agencies for accurate and personalized quotes based on your specific needs.
As for the estimated time to translate subtitles for a 60-minute video, it will depend on the factors mentioned above. The length can vary greatly, but in general, translating subtitles can take several hours or even days for a video of this length.
When it comes to translating video subtitles, there are also online video translation platforms that can be used to speed up the process. These platforms usually use artificial intelligence technologies to automatically translate subtitles.
Using an online video translation platform can significantly reduce the time needed to translate subtitles. Instead of manually translating each line, these platforms can automate much of the process by providing instant translations. However, it is important to note that the quality of machine translations may vary and manual editing may be required to correct errors and ensure the accuracy of subtitles. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 22:59
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | hello machine | Jun 8, 2023 |
Jidar Kay wrote: Translating subtitles for a 60 minute video or a 12,000 word subtitle file can take time depending on several factors. Here are some things to consider when evaluating translation time: 1. Speed of translation: The speed of translation varies from translator to translator depending on their experience, their proficiency in the languages involved and their familiarity with the specific content. Some translators can translate faster than others. 2. Content Complexity: If the video contains technical language, specialized terms, or complex topics, it may take more time to research and accurately translate these elements. 3. Review and Editing: After the translation is completed, it is recommended to perform a review and edit to ensure the quality and accuracy of the translated subtitles. It may also take additional time. 4. Collaboration with the client: Communication with the client, coordination of details and possible change requests can also influence the total duration of the translation process. As for the price, it is common to charge subtitle translation services per minute of translated video. Rates may vary depending on the language pair (for example, English to Spanish, German or French), the complexity of the content and the translation speed of the translator. It is recommended that you contact professional translators or translation agencies for accurate and personalized quotes based on your specific needs. As for the estimated time to translate subtitles for a 60-minute video, it will depend on the factors mentioned above. The length can vary greatly, but in general, translating subtitles can take several hours or even days for a video of this length. When it comes to translating video subtitles, there are also deleted ADVERTISEMENT platforms that can be used to speed up the process. These platforms usually use artificial intelligence technologies to automatically translate subtitles. Using an online video translation platform can significantly reduce the time needed to translate subtitles. Instead of manually translating each line, these platforms can automate much of the process by providing instant translations. However, it is important to note that the quality of machine translations may vary and manual editing may be required to correct errors and ensure the accuracy of subtitles.
Looks like GPT's "opinion".
Edit: and advertisement.
[Bearbeitet am 2023-06-08 21:14 GMT]
[Bearbeitet am 2023-06-09 13:04 GMT]
| | | | jyuan_us
United States
Local time: 16:59
Member (2005)
English to Chinese
+ ...
| Yep, a machine output | Jun 9, 2023 |
Zea_Mays wrote: Jidar Kay wrote:
Translating subtitles for a 60 minute video or a 12,000 word subtitle file can take time depending on several factors. Here are some things to consider when evaluating translation time:
1. Speed of translation: The speed of translation varies from translator to translator depending on their experience, their proficiency in the languages involved and their familiarity with the specific content. Some translators can translate faster than others.
2. Content Complexity: If the video contains technical language, specialized terms, or complex topics, it may take more time to research and accurately translate these elements.
3. Review and Editing: After the translation is completed, it is recommended to perform a review and edit to ensure the quality and accuracy of the translated subtitles. It may also take additional time.
......
Looks like GPT's "opinion". Edit: and advertisement. [Bearbeitet am 2023-06-08 21:14 GMT]
I was at first pondering why he spent the time telling us all these things that everybody already knows.
| | | | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » Subtitle translation - 60 min talk video/12,000 words - expected time? | TM-Town | Manage your TMs and Terms ... and boost your translation business
Are you ready for something fresh in the industry? TM-Town is a unique new site for you -- the freelance translator -- to store, manage and share translation memories (TMs) and glossaries...and potentially meet new clients on the basis of your prior work.
More info » |
| | Wordfast Pro | Translation Memory Software for Any Platform
Exclusive discount for ProZ.com users!
Save over 13% when purchasing Wordfast Pro through ProZ.com. Wordfast is the world's #1 provider of platform-independent Translation Memory software. Consistently ranked the most user-friendly and highest value
Buy now! » |
|
| | | | X Sign in to your ProZ.com account... | | | | | |
Login to reply/comment 
Translation news
