What to count for the invoice
Thread poster: MarianneS
MarianneS
MarianneS
Austria
Local time: 01:52
English to German
+ ...
Feb 12, 2013

Dear fellow-translators,

I haven an important question regarding the sign counting of the translated dialogues for English film subititles:

Do you usually take out the names of the characters (Marius: blablalba) and the scene indications (scene 1) when you count the amount of final signs for the invoice? Of course they haven't been translated, but it is a lot of work to delete them all just for the counting.

I'm very interested to hear from you,

... See more
Dear fellow-translators,

I haven an important question regarding the sign counting of the translated dialogues for English film subititles:

Do you usually take out the names of the characters (Marius: blablalba) and the scene indications (scene 1) when you count the amount of final signs for the invoice? Of course they haven't been translated, but it is a lot of work to delete them all just for the counting.

I'm very interested to hear from you,

thank you very much!
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Parrot
Parrot  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 01:52
Spanish to English
+ ...
Check the terms of your contract Feb 12, 2013

I'm a bit confused. If your deliverables are subtitles, they don't generally include names and indications when they appear, unless the names are in the dialogue.

Character count, if that's what you mean by signs, is usually given to us by way of upper-limit indication (like, how many characters the client's subtitling software can accommodate per line). In such cases, we are told to stay within those limits.

So we invoice by the taped minute in general, but check the t
... See more
I'm a bit confused. If your deliverables are subtitles, they don't generally include names and indications when they appear, unless the names are in the dialogue.

Character count, if that's what you mean by signs, is usually given to us by way of upper-limit indication (like, how many characters the client's subtitling software can accommodate per line). In such cases, we are told to stay within those limits.

So we invoice by the taped minute in general, but check the terms of your contract. You sound as though you've been working from a script (lucky you, I've only been given one once).
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MarianneS
MarianneS
Austria
Local time: 01:52
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
clarification Feb 12, 2013

Thank you for your reply parrot- I am sorry I was unclear here.
I am in the situation of only translating the text of the dialogue-script without any time-coding or software- that's why I don't know how to deal with the invoice and charcter-counting.


 
Sylvano
Sylvano
Local time: 01:52
English to French
Everything counts Feb 12, 2013

A translator usually charges for all characters in the source text. You're not taking the names and directions out of your translation, are you ? And even so, as you said yourself, even if there's no translation work as such with names, deleting (or paste and copying) them is still work you have to do... Anyway, you're not going to delete manually all names and directions from the source text, just to do your invoice... That would be absurd. And more work for you !

 
MarianneS
MarianneS
Austria
Local time: 01:52
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
thank's Feb 12, 2013

Thank you Sylvano, I wasn't aware of that. If the "non-translatable"words, such as addresses make up a big amount of characters I usually take them out before the count.
But if you say that is alright, I will leave them- you're right about the effort it takes to delete them all.


 


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What to count for the invoice







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