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General Audio transcription/translation rates
Thread poster: GregSmith
Michelle Kusuda
Michelle Kusuda  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 03:48
English to Spanish
+ ...
More on rates Mar 14, 2014

In the US, most transcriptionists charge an "appearance fee" of $150.00 for a period of up to 3 hours or "project preparation fee" when CD is submitted by client, then $4.00 per page of transcription in English only. One hour easily becomes 40-50 pages. So monolingual is 150 + 160/200 = $310-$350

It is not as easy as it seems, in today's technological environment, clients clean up almost all silence in tapes and it sounds like a meeting with nothing but a bunch of "Speedy Gonzal
... See more
In the US, most transcriptionists charge an "appearance fee" of $150.00 for a period of up to 3 hours or "project preparation fee" when CD is submitted by client, then $4.00 per page of transcription in English only. One hour easily becomes 40-50 pages. So monolingual is 150 + 160/200 = $310-$350

It is not as easy as it seems, in today's technological environment, clients clean up almost all silence in tapes and it sounds like a meeting with nothing but a bunch of "Speedy Gonzalez" characters in attendance.

I hope the above helps!
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Alexandre Chetrite
Alexandre Chetrite
France
Local time: 08:48
English to French
Average revenue for a beginner in transcription + translating Mar 14, 2014

Hello,

I am a newbie in transcription + translation of audio. I read in this thread that usually freelancers charge $1/min of audio transcripted + another charge for translating. An hour of audio is roughly 5000 words in English I read.What about one hour of audio in French?

Could somebody give us an estimate of how much a newbie in transcription + translation could earn in average for 1 hour of audio?

Regards,


 
Bernhard Sulzer
Bernhard Sulzer  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 03:48
English to German
+ ...
Hilarious but sad Mar 15, 2014

Alexandre Chetrite wrote:

Hello,

I am a newbie in transcription + translation of audio. I read in this thread that usually freelancers charge $1/min of audio transcripted + another charge for translating. An hour of audio is roughly 5000 words in English I read.What about one hour of audio in French?

Could somebody give us an estimate of how much a newbie in transcription + translation could earn in average for 1 hour of audio?

Regards,




You projected 5000 words for one hour: $1 per minute >> 60 X 1 = $60

60/5000 = $0.012/word

Hilarious but sad if anyone thinks this is acceptable. And 5000 per hour is way too low if it is continuous speech. Multiply that by 2 for starters. And please, the "newbie" shouldn't be willing to be exploited. He/she should be ready to do a job, accurately, or not work in this profession at all.

B

[Edited at 2014-03-15 15:32 GMT]


ZanCai
 
nrichy (X)
nrichy (X)
France
Local time: 08:48
French to Dutch
+ ...
In French Mar 15, 2014

Alexandre Chetrite wrote:

Hello,

I am a newbie in transcription + translation of audio. I read in this thread that usually freelancers charge $1/min of audio transcripted + another charge for translating. An hour of audio is roughly 5000 words in English I read.What about one hour of audio in French?

Could somebody give us an estimate of how much a newbie in transcription + translation could earn in average for 1 hour of audio?


1 hr of audio is about 5-6 hrs of transcription work for documentaries and 7-9 hrs of work for meetings (meetings of shareholders, medical meetings). If you charge € 45 per hour of work, this means that 1 hr of audio will cost between € 225 and € 400. I do less and less of this work, because specialized transcription studios in Madagascar do it for half the price (and they achieve rather good quality).
By the way, 1 hr of audio is about 5000-8000 words (it depends of the intensity).


 
Christian Esquivel
Christian Esquivel  Identity Verified
Colombia
Local time: 02:48
English to Spanish
+ ...
Material MUST be assessed first Apr 18, 2014

First, I must say that rates such as $1.50 USD or $2.00 USD for 1 minute of transcription, work for you only if you transcribe in your native language and are comfortable with the field and quality of the audio.

If you are going to do transcription work, I highly recommend that you do it for your native language and not for your second language as the latter might become much more time consuming and difficult.

If you are going to do just the transcription I recommend no
... See more
First, I must say that rates such as $1.50 USD or $2.00 USD for 1 minute of transcription, work for you only if you transcribe in your native language and are comfortable with the field and quality of the audio.

If you are going to do transcription work, I highly recommend that you do it for your native language and not for your second language as the latter might become much more time consuming and difficult.

If you are going to do just the transcription I recommend not offering rates without a sample of let's say at least 5 minutes of audio/video, this allows you to find out many things:

- Quality of the audio.
- Type of register (general, low, high)
- Field (general, medical, legal, etc.)
- Difficulty
- Time to invest

After you determine this, you will be able to make a more informed decision on the rate you offer. Let's say that you assess that you will be able to transcribe 1 minute of audio in 3 minutes, then if the video is 1 hour in length I suggest you charge for 3 hours of work at least, in my case that would be $30 USD an hour for a total of $90 USD at least, or more conveniently $2.00 USD per minute for $120 USD.

Now for the translation part, that is an entirely different rate, let's say you translate at a rate of $0.09 USD per word, then see how many words you would get in the entire audio or video. You can assess this with a 5 minute sample by counting the number of words in 5 minutes which are usually about 400 words in 5 minutes. i.e. 80 words a minute.

Thus, the transcription + translation per minute in the above example would be of a rate of $9.20 USD per minute.

Of course it is up to you to determine whether you want to give a discount to the client based on your own criteria and overall benefit.

As an example, I had this customer who wanted me to transcribe and translate 30 hours of video which resulted in 140K words. I told the client that the translation alone would be $12,600 USD and that if they hired my services I wouldn't charge for the transcription.

We closed the deal at $12,000 USD and it took me 26 business days to complete it plus I paid someone $2,000 USD to complete the transcription task. That left me with $10,000 USD.

It was a big discount and a lot of work but there was decent money in it and I also gained a new customer who has continued to provide work whenever they need translation, interpretation or transcription tasks.

So I guess it is each one's decision how much to charge but please don't undervalue your own work and make sure to assess the material beforehand so you don't end up ripping yourself off.
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Marie Madeleine Glück
Dalia Nour
 
Julia Mojik
Julia Mojik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 08:48
Member (2007)
English to German
+ ...
Very useful chart May 14, 2014

Diego Achío wrote:

Hello all,

I am new in the transcription world! I've been looking for information regarding how much should I charge per minute and after reading your post I worked on a price chart.

But first of all, I'd like to ask you all something... For what I've read it is very common to charge 2 rates. The first is a per minute rate for the transcription, and after having the audio down on paper, you charge a second per word rate for the translation of it. Is that right?

At first I came up with the following prices to start offering transcription services. But it is a 1 rate service, so for the translation+trascription it would be a per minute rate for delivering a translated transcription. Please let me know your opinion!

Oh and by the way, it's in Spanish, not hard to understand for non-Spanish speakers but anyway...

 photo PriceChart_zpsff50d230.jpg

[Editado a las 2013-05-21 22:53 GMT]



Hi Diego,

Thank you very much for sharing this chart. I've been working in this area for quite some time now but I was recently asked to differentiate all different kinds of services and prices for a new agency I applied for. I didn't know how to start since I only worked on two different formats of transcripts (standard formats). I searched the forum and found this chart. It will save me a lot of time. Thanks again!

Julia


 
Michelle Kusuda
Michelle Kusuda  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 03:48
English to Spanish
+ ...
Chart is unrealistic. Maybe applicable to 1960 prices. Jul 4, 2014

Good read:


http://www.najit.org/publications/Transcript%20Translation.pdf


great article.


 
Sp-EnTranslator
Sp-EnTranslator
United States
Local time: 03:48
Spanish to English
+ ...
Great & informative read indeed! Jul 25, 2014

Michelle Kusuda wrote:

Good read:


http://www.najit.org/publications/Transcript%20Translation.pdf


great article.


Thanks for sharing!


 
Bernhard Sulzer
Bernhard Sulzer  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 03:48
English to German
+ ...
One USD ($1) per audio minute for transcription is still utterly ridiculous, and still,... Jul 19, 2015

... people are applying. Go to .... "Real professional!"

[Edited at 2015-07-19 16:19 GMT]

[Edited at 2015-07-20 03:12 GMT]


 
HBB99 (X)
HBB99 (X)

Local time: 08:48
English to German
+ ...
helpful information Sep 19, 2015

This thread is very enlightening. I have considered transcription work, and this has been a big help. Thank you all.

 
sailingshoes
sailingshoes
Local time: 08:48
Spanish to English
Bernard seems 100% right Oct 9, 2015

Applying the top-end rates mentioned here to a job I was recently offered yielded less than 4 US cents a word for transcription and translation. I asked a rate closer to 15 and was obviously turned down.

This means quite simply that a professional translator who doesn't have time to take on badly paid work because it seems 'interesting' (so let's just say a professional translator, period!) can't generally touch this segment.


 
sam@fr-uk
sam@fr-uk
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:48
French to English
200+ words per minute is not unusual Oct 9, 2015

I worked on a large transcription project involving one-to-one telephone discussions in English. The overall average worked out at just over 200 words per audio minute, i.e. 12,000 words per hour! Something to bear in mind when quoting, if you don't have access to audio samples.




[Edited at 2015-10-09 14:57 GMT]


 
Andriy Bublikov
Andriy Bublikov  Identity Verified
Ukraine
Local time: 09:48
French to Russian
+ ...

Moderator of this forum
Here is an interesting link Oct 9, 2015

Here is an interesting link: http://www.snac.fr/actus.htm

 
Elizabeth Kulikov
Elizabeth Kulikov  Identity Verified
Local time: 10:48
Russian to English
+ ...
charge a lot Feb 9, 2016

Hello,
this is my first transcription job. Its from Russian to Russian, writing out the Russian I hear, then translation into English as well. The sound quality is very poor and it takes me a long time. It took me 1 hour to do one minute of audio. No joke. The transcription took 55 minutes, and then translating it 5. However, they won't pay me by the hour, on their end, I can understand that. So I am going to offer the client a rate of $50/audio minute. I think that's fair. I'll let you kn
... See more
Hello,
this is my first transcription job. Its from Russian to Russian, writing out the Russian I hear, then translation into English as well. The sound quality is very poor and it takes me a long time. It took me 1 hour to do one minute of audio. No joke. The transcription took 55 minutes, and then translating it 5. However, they won't pay me by the hour, on their end, I can understand that. So I am going to offer the client a rate of $50/audio minute. I think that's fair. I'll let you know if they accept, or what the final rate is, if we can come to an agreement.
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Musterman (X)
Musterman (X)
Germany
Local time: 08:48
transcription and translation rate proposed by Medicys Feb 13, 2016

Hello there!
For info on this topic: Last week I was approached by Medicys (a UK company based in Kent) who are looking for transcription and translation of French / German audio tapes directly into English. After reading this forum and estimating that I might be working anything up to 8 hours on a 60 minute tape, I gave them a quote for transcription and translation of 3,50 EUR per minute. They came back to me with an offer at 1.30 EUR per minute of recorded audio. This is nearly the g
... See more
Hello there!
For info on this topic: Last week I was approached by Medicys (a UK company based in Kent) who are looking for transcription and translation of French / German audio tapes directly into English. After reading this forum and estimating that I might be working anything up to 8 hours on a 60 minute tape, I gave them a quote for transcription and translation of 3,50 EUR per minute. They came back to me with an offer at 1.30 EUR per minute of recorded audio. This is nearly the going rate for transcription without translation so I declined.
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General Audio transcription/translation rates







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