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video transcription
Thread poster: Dan_Brennan
Dan_Brennan
Dan_Brennan  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:00
Russian to English
+ ...
Apr 20, 2003

Out of curiosity - how long would estimate it would take you to transcribe a 5 minute news report from a video? I\'ve got to bill for the time taken. It took me about 1.5 hours to get absolutely every word (it is in my source language rather than my native tongue - I had to transcribe it as the preamble to translating it). I don\'t know if I\'ve taken too long or whether there are standard rates per minute. Any clues would be helpful.

Ta
 
IanW (X)
IanW (X)
Local time: 13:00
German to English
+ ...
Sounds fine to me Apr 20, 2003

Hi Dan,



I\'d leave it at 1.5 hours if that\'s what it took you - we are translators, not professional typists, and time is time that could have been spent translating. And five minutes on tape is a lot of pages on paper, and it has to be checked and double-checked, so it doesn\'t sound unreasonable to me.



I do a lot of work for market research companies who occasionally want translations done from tape or video, which need to be transcribed first. When p... See more
Hi Dan,



I\'d leave it at 1.5 hours if that\'s what it took you - we are translators, not professional typists, and time is time that could have been spent translating. And five minutes on tape is a lot of pages on paper, and it has to be checked and double-checked, so it doesn\'t sound unreasonable to me.



I do a lot of work for market research companies who occasionally want translations done from tape or video, which need to be transcribed first. When pricing for this, I always give a (very cautious) estimate of how long this will take and point out that there are professional agencies who specialise in this sort of thing, and who will be able to do it in far less time, and thus more cheaply. This usually relieves you of unwanted fiddling around with tapes and suchlike or at least ensures that you are well paid for it. ▲ Collapse
 
Anne Lee
Anne Lee  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:00
Member (2003)
Dutch to English
+ ...
It always takes longer than you think... Apr 21, 2003

I could not agree more, about being cautious when estimating for transcriptions. I have been caught out by this, quoting 4 hours work for transcribing a 20 minute video on which dozens of people were talking through each other out of sight, and the sound quality was awful. It took me at least 10 hours of concentrated, repeated listening, but even then it was frustrating having to submit the translation of snippets without being able to put voices to names. I agree you should charge 1 1/2 hours.
 


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