Rates per minute for short YouTube videos
Thread poster: Nahuel Luciani
Nahuel Luciani
Nahuel Luciani
Argentina
English to Spanish
+ ...
Sep 25, 2020

As some of you may know, YouTube has removed community captioning, but now, content creators have started hiring freelancers. An animator I follow recently asked for translators and I thought it was a good idea to give it a shot as it's rare to get work as a student. This would be my first job though. I've seen some people in here work for USD $3.00/4.00 per minute, and other users in the forums saying that's too little.
Considering this guy's videos range between 45 seconds or so and 5 mi
... See more
As some of you may know, YouTube has removed community captioning, but now, content creators have started hiring freelancers. An animator I follow recently asked for translators and I thought it was a good idea to give it a shot as it's rare to get work as a student. This would be my first job though. I've seen some people in here work for USD $3.00/4.00 per minute, and other users in the forums saying that's too little.
Considering this guy's videos range between 45 seconds or so and 5 minutes, what do you think is a fair price?
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Sajad Neisi
Sajad Neisi
United Arab Emirates
English to Persian (Farsi)
+ ...
Rates per minutes for short YouTube videos Sep 26, 2020

I think they should be paid 6 USD per minute. Because translation of clip take so much time and need high accuracy for translating and editing.

 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 19:28
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Don Sep 27, 2020

Don Threepwood wrote:
An animator I follow recently asked for translators and I thought it was a good idea to give it a shot as it's rare to get work as a student.


Well, I think a student should get at least minimum wage, and so my advice is to accept a few such jobs for free so that you can learn how long it takes, and then do the calculation. Or, get some similar videos on YouTube and subtitle them, to see how long it takes on average. Will you be using Amara? Generally, it takes 6-10 minutes to transcribe 1 minute of audio, and then you still have to translate it and make sure everything fits.


Philippe Locquet
 
Tomo Olson
Tomo Olson  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 14:28
Japanese to English
I would take low rates - $3 or $2.50 USD / minute or ask the youtuber how much he's willing to pay Sep 29, 2020

One outfit I've been working for pays $3.50USD/minute (Mostly TV shows broadcasted on cable) and I'm OK with that. Everything is already timecoded and their software is easy to use, so I can pretty much zip through. There are over 25 freelancers who are registered and many of them are students. I would probably work for less if I was new at subtitling and wanted to gain experience (and pad my CV for future work with other potential outfits). In your case, I wouldn't let the rate dictate your dec... See more
One outfit I've been working for pays $3.50USD/minute (Mostly TV shows broadcasted on cable) and I'm OK with that. Everything is already timecoded and their software is easy to use, so I can pretty much zip through. There are over 25 freelancers who are registered and many of them are students. I would probably work for less if I was new at subtitling and wanted to gain experience (and pad my CV for future work with other potential outfits). In your case, I wouldn't let the rate dictate your decisions as much because you don't have any experience yet, plus many of the subtitlings I've seen on youtube do not look like they're professionally done, so their base rate may be lower to start with. I know people here say they wouldn't work for less than this or that, and that's fine with them, but for my language pair, if I said $6, I'd get zero bites. Some pay $5USD/hour, and I've taken some projects from them, but the content is business-related and jam-packed with words, so it's not fun for me and it can be more time-consuming as well, so I choose to do fun TV shows (mostly fun) with a lower rate which I can zip through more quickly.

Anyway, good luck to you. I hope you get the job and gain some experience so you can find other interesting work in the future.
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Patricia Anne B. Escueta
 
julid01
julid01
Canada
Define per-minute rates for YouTube video translation Oct 5, 2023

First off, congratulations on taking the initiative! It's awesome that you're exploring opportunities like this. Pricing can be tricky, especially when you're just starting. It's crucial to strike a balance between what's fair for your effort and what the creator can afford.

A common approach is to calculate your desired hourly rate and estimate how long it would take you to translate a minute of video. If you're just starting, you might want to consider a rate that reflects your sk
... See more
First off, congratulations on taking the initiative! It's awesome that you're exploring opportunities like this. Pricing can be tricky, especially when you're just starting. It's crucial to strike a balance between what's fair for your effort and what the creator can afford.

A common approach is to calculate your desired hourly rate and estimate how long it would take you to translate a minute of video. If you're just starting, you might want to consider a rate that reflects your skill level and the time it takes you to do a quality job.

For instance, if you want to earn $10 per hour and you estimate it takes you 15 minutes to translate a 1-minute video, then $2.50 might be a reasonable starting point.

As you gain experience and build a portfolio, you can adjust your rates accordingly. It's also a good idea to communicate openly with the animator about your pricing, ensuring it's fair for both parties.

Remember, your work has value, so don't undervalue yourself, but also be mindful of the budget constraints of the content creator. Good luck, and I hope it's a rewarding experience for you!

Sure thing! You could suggest to the animator that they consider using automatic translation video for the initial draft of the subtitles. However, it's important to note that these translations may not be perfect and might require human review and editing for accuracy and fluency.

This approach can help reduce the workload and cost for the initial translation, and then you can be brought in for the crucial step of refining and polishing the subtitles to ensure they are high-quality and contextually accurate. It's a collaborative approach that combines the efficiency of technology with the precision of human expertise.
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Zea_Mays
Zea_Mays  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 19:28
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
bot or advertising or both? Oct 6, 2023

Why does the comment above look (to me) like it was written by a bot and as an advertisement for the linked website?

Barbara Carrara
Brian Joyce
Mr. Satan (X)
traduck
 
Brian Joyce
Brian Joyce  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Member (2022)
French to English
Are you kidding me!!!!!! Oct 8, 2023

Look folks, I gonna link this thread to the chat in "Subtle" subtitlers for excellence with Max Deryagin as our chief. The rates here quoted are SHOCKINGLY LOW, I don't care if you are a student making money on the side, faithful subtitling takes TIME, fact. Try reading any machine-generated subtitles for more than a minute, and your brain begins to hurt. Subtitles must be readable, only a pro can do that.

Mr. Satan (X)
Helle Kaiser-Nielsen
Maria E T Cardenal
 
Mr. Satan (X)
Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
Not a lucrative market. Oct 9, 2023

The problem is that most YouTubers are broke. They operate with small profit margin, unless if it was in the scale of MrBeast's channel. I'm not sure if OP can realistically charge a liveable rate in most cases.

 


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Rates per minute for short YouTube videos







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