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General Audio transcription/translation rates
Thread poster: GregSmith
anusha nedunuri
anusha nedunuri
India
Local time: 16:06
Telugu to English
+ ...
how much does it cost Apr 13, 2016

hai there everyone
there are many experienced transcribers inhere so i would like to know how much can i charge for a minute for the audios of prison calls (especially) some times there are low, abusive etc, so let me know the fair quote, frankly it take 3 hours for me to complete an hour audio

[Edited at 2016-04-13 11:53 GMT]


 
BRINI
BRINI
India
Local time: 16:06
English to French
+ ...
You did the right thing. That is just exploitation. They make big bucks and give you peanuts. Oct 11, 2016

MunichCat wrote:

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.


 
theseppola
theseppola
Norway
I just learned something Apr 12, 2017

This is very helpful!

I am in a debate with a client that offered a flat fee of $175 for the project. Here's the kicker. The project consists of 60 hours of camera rambling and mumbling. 60 hours. $175.. I guess I am not the only one finding this rate ridiculously low?


Elke Schwalm
 
Vividus
Vividus
Local time: 18:36
Chinese to English
+ ...
Advice needed on rate English-English transcription May 11, 2017

Hi everyone,
there is a audio transcription job offering, Singapore accent English-English, 190 minutes.
I'm asked to quote my rate in USD/hr. From the posts here, I reckoned the company is asking me to
quote according to "per hour of AUDIO" and not "per hour of work".
After some calculations, I intend to quote $60/hr of audio. Do you think it's a fair rate?
Appreciate your feedbacks.

Thanks!


 
Luximar Arenas Petty
Luximar Arenas Petty  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 06:36
English to Spanish
+ ...
No, it's not May 12, 2017

Vividus wrote:

After some calculations, I intend to quote $60/hr of audio. Do you think it's a fair rate?

Thanks!


That would leave you with only $1.00 per minute, which it's really low. You can read the whole thread and get a better idea on how to quote a fair rate. HTH.

Best


 
Husseinatproz
Husseinatproz
Egypt
Local time: 12:36
English to Arabic
+ ...
Thank you. very useful chart Jun 3, 2017

Mohd shadab wrote:

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]


I must say thank you for sharing this wonderful chart. Please allow me to download for future reference.


 
JThornton (X)
JThornton (X)
United States
Local time: 06:36
English to Russian
+ ...
Transcription and Translation Jun 9, 2017

My best experience in transcribing and translating a video so far was with a client I found on a platform. The client had about 20 minutes of an interview, and I calculated my time and quoted $250. They agreed. It took me 12 hours to do it, partly because they wanted me to break everything into 30-seconds-or-less sections and to time code it. In Word. They also wanted me to transliterate the Russian translation into English letters, which I did (using an online tool and "cleaning" it up), and it... See more
My best experience in transcribing and translating a video so far was with a client I found on a platform. The client had about 20 minutes of an interview, and I calculated my time and quoted $250. They agreed. It took me 12 hours to do it, partly because they wanted me to break everything into 30-seconds-or-less sections and to time code it. In Word. They also wanted me to transliterate the Russian translation into English letters, which I did (using an online tool and "cleaning" it up), and it took me another hour and I asked for it, and they were happy to have it, so they paid. So, for 13 hours of work I earned $275. But agencies pay much lower rates.Collapse


 
Lydia Marquardt
Lydia Marquardt  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:36
English to German
+ ...
Transcription/translations rates - reality bites Jul 6, 2017

Hi everyone,

I have been reading the messages that were posted on here over the years and I think it is very important to point out that there is, unfortunately, a big discrepancy between what you should ideally get paid for transcription/translation and reality.

It is, in my experience of many years of transcription/translation, not a successful move to quote as if you were translating text (i.e. based on word count). This will make your client laugh out loud.
... See more
Hi everyone,

I have been reading the messages that were posted on here over the years and I think it is very important to point out that there is, unfortunately, a big discrepancy between what you should ideally get paid for transcription/translation and reality.

It is, in my experience of many years of transcription/translation, not a successful move to quote as if you were translating text (i.e. based on word count). This will make your client laugh out loud.

I have found that I can get away with rates between $2.5-3.5/minute. This highly depends on speciality, of course. You will also find that audio for public services (at least in the UK) will be paying much less - so will any high-volume audio (so don't get lured into the old trap of "Hey, we have 100 hours of audio, give us your best rate!").

The question really is, how can you ensure you work efficiently? I can transcribe/translate between 10-15 minutes of good quality audio in my speciality fields per hour. I don't bother transcribing and then translating. It is spoken word, translated as spoken word. I make this clear in my client brief. I am trained as a subtitler, which helps because in that industry you'd also never get the idea to actually transcribe and then translate - the rates just aren't good enough to do that. There's also the option of using voice recognition software, which can speed up the process (and give your fingers a break after having typed 20 pages...).

I agree that there are many horrible agencies out there trying to take advantage of transcribers who are less experienced and who offer ridiculous rates. I ignore them and so should any translation professional. But I also think that it is important to stay realistic in what freelancers can achieve in terms of rates and basing a rate of 1 hour audio on 5000 words is just wishful thinking, I'm afraid.
Collapse


 
Francesca Magui
Francesca Magui
Spain
Spanish to English
Can you upload this file again? Sep 7, 2017

Hi Diego,

Would you be able to upload this chart again, please. The link seems to have expired.

Thank you in advance!

Fran

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]


I must say thank you for sharing this wonderful chart. Please allow me to download for future reference. [/quote]


sdvplatt
Josephine Cassar
 
Natalia Greenberg
Natalia Greenberg
Local time: 12:36
Russian to English
+ ...
As this is the first thread that comes up on Google for this query - how much should I charge? Apr 8, 2018

So, they want me to give them a quote for translating a 90 minutes documentary from English into Russian. Which basically means transcribing an hour and a half of thick Liverpool accents, then recreate it in my mother tongue.

How much does a girl charge for that, I wonder?


sdvplatt
 
Carol Macomber (X)
Carol Macomber (X)  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 06:36
French to English
What is the bottom line about per audio transcription/translation rates? Jun 2, 2018

So, after this discussion, are we any closer to knowing what rates we should apply to a French-into-English transcription/translation request? Should we try adding our minimum per-word translation rate to the transcription pay rate per audio minute ($1) for a 60-minute audio? If our minimum acceptable translate rate is 10 cents/word, assuming that we can translate 600/words an hour, do we simply divide the word count by 60 to get the per-minute translation rate and add $1 to the per-audio-minute... See more
So, after this discussion, are we any closer to knowing what rates we should apply to a French-into-English transcription/translation request? Should we try adding our minimum per-word translation rate to the transcription pay rate per audio minute ($1) for a 60-minute audio? If our minimum acceptable translate rate is 10 cents/word, assuming that we can translate 600/words an hour, do we simply divide the word count by 60 to get the per-minute translation rate and add $1 to the per-audio-minute transcription rate, which would then be $2? If we then offer a $2 rate to the agency and explain why it's a $1 higher than their per-minute audio transcription/translation rate, will they accept it? Or do we try to educate them as to how much more work it is than they think? Or just keep hunting until we finally find a realistic agency?

I think Kate Kaminski was right on when she suggested that the transcription agency assigning a bilingual transcription/translation should probably hire a good transcriptionist for the first part of the job, and a translator working into his/her native language for the translation part.

[Edited at 2018-06-02 17:15 GMT]
Collapse


Josephine Cassar
 
Marissa Aguayo Gavilano
Marissa Aguayo Gavilano  Identity Verified
Peru
English to Spanish
+ ...
Not quite Jun 2, 2018

It's not about how many words you can translate per hour, but how many words are there in a minute of audio. For example, one hour of audio can have 8,000 words, so I consider 130 words per minute.

Michel Virasolvy
 
BRINI
BRINI
India
Local time: 16:06
English to French
+ ...
Some Agencies send you a compressed file with increased speed. So word count should matter Jun 4, 2018

Some Agencies record a file and than compress the length of the video so they can pay less. You hear people talk faster than normal. Hence irrespective of audio length, final word count should matter. We can slow down or speed up playback at our convenience.

 
Ginna Ma
Ginna Ma  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 03:36
Spanish to English
+ ...
Transcribing directly into English. Jul 20, 2018

So, I’ve read the whole thread and all this information has been extremely helpful. Thank you all for all that feedback.
I see most of the transcription being discussed is to transcribe in the original language and then translate into second language. However, what if the transcription is done only into the second language directly. What would fair pay be in that case? I would be doing so from Sp>En for projects in the US.
Thanks


 
Oleksandr Vasyliev
Oleksandr Vasyliev  Identity Verified
Ukraine
Local time: 12:36
Member (2017)
English to Russian
+ ...
Wrong termin Jul 22, 2018

Ginna Ma wrote:
…However, what if the transcription is done only into the second language directly.

There is no such thing as "transcription into another language". This is called "translation". You should come to grips with basic terms before asking the questions. If agency tries to bundle two jobs into one to swindle you out of money it's just their trick.


Tatiana Masasina™ (X)
Josephine Cassar
 
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