“Chaining the gap” between subtitling and text translation rates

27 June 2024

As a translator who works on both audiovisual translation and text translation, I am often shocked (and infuriated) at how low the rates are for audiovisual translation compared to text translation. With the lack of trained subtitlers for the volume of audiovisual content being produced, we should have the power to push for higher rates. However, they only seem to be getting lower, while the budgets for audiovisual content grow.

Audiovisual translation work often comes through agencies, unless you're working directly with production companies. But the audiovisual rates deemed acceptable by agencies are, in my experience, so much lower than the rates they accept for text translation. While you may be able to translate more words per minute in subtitling, as not all words require translating (like filler words), I would argue there is a lot more involved in subtitling a multimodal product than translating a text, for example timing the subtitles and thinking of creative solutions to make the translation concise.

So why are audiovisual rates so low?

• I genuinely think there is a general lack of respect for audiovisual work as it's considered “fun”. But these days, there's a lot more "serious" video content out there, like medical and corporate videos, so this shouldn't really apply any more.

• The expectations for audiovisual rates are based on rates that were traditionally applied to entertainment videos like drama series, documentaries, films. These days and particularly since COVID when everyone turned to video format, so many more of the tasks we are working on are corporate videos, which have a much higher speech rate and word count. Even in entertainment, there's a lot more speech these days (like reality TV).

So let's do some maths:

For example in French, a corporate video like an interview might have up to 200 words per minute. A typical rate of 6 GBP/minute would be 0.03 GBP/word.

Would you accept anything close to that for a corporate text translation on the same topic, just a different medium?

If I based my subtitling rate on a rate of 0.08 GBP/word, which most agencies would accept in my experience, it would be 16 GBP/minute. Very few agencies are likely to pay that, as it sounds super expensive compared to "the norm". Yet, if I rephrased it as a per-word rate, maybe they would be more inclined to accept it, even if the total is exactly the same.

Factors that impact productivity

There are so many variables in audiovisual translation beyond the rate of speech. You must take these into account when establishing your rates, as they can impact how long one minute of audio takes you to subtitle:

• Do you have a transcript?

• Are you handling the timings from scratch?

• Do you have a subtitle template file?

• Do you have to fix the subtitle template file?

• Is the subject matter complex?

• Do they have an accent?

• Is the audio quality poor?

Here's what we can do:

• If you're starting out in subtitling, whether you're early in your career or expanding your services, try not to accept low rates. Many big subtitling agencies offer as little as 3-4 GBP. Always try to figure out what that is per word, which might put it into perspective. Would you accept that for text translation?

• Always check the file before you accept a project to gauge how many words (including on-screen text) there are. This might sound obvious but in the media industry, production is very fast paced. Often a video edit is finalised seconds before it's sent for subtitling and your client is expected to quote before seeing the video. Try not to give in to the pressure, and make it clear that you won't confirm your rate until you've seen the video. It should be no different to text translation where this is usually how it works. Then you can justify a higher rate based on how difficult the video is.

• Figure out the average speech rate (words per minute) per genre and have a rate per genre based on the average words and your per-word rate for text translation.

• Try to negotiate and explain the equivalent in a per-word rate (it might not sound as much to them if they're used to translation rates).

I still haven't been able to charge as much per word in subtitling as I do per translation for the reasons above, but I'm trying to move in that direction and be aware of the equivalent compared to text translation. I think it's the only way we can push for more respect and improve our working conditions.

*In subtitling, “chaining gaps” is when the gaps between subtitles (for example between 2 frames and half a second) are avoided to prevent a flickering effect on screen.