Where have all the translators gone?

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lowsocks
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Where have all the translators gone?

Postby lowsocks » Sun Nov 14, 2021 11:59 pm

The Guardian wrote:Where have all the translators gone?
The global audience for foreign-language streaming shows has never been larger. But subtitlers are leaving the industry in droves:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... ators-gone
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Re: Where have all the translators gone?

Postby SpanishInput » Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:34 am

Pay has been going down for years. And not just for subtitles. You should totally listen to the Radio Ambulante episode about the Simpsons dub to Mexican Spanish. If I remember correctly, when there was a strike, all voice actors were replaced with new ones. These people have to work all day long just to make ends meet.
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Re: Where have all the translators gone?

Postby iguanamon » Mon Nov 15, 2021 1:29 am

Miranda Bryant- The Guardian wrote:But despite their crucial and highly skilled role, acting as conduits between the action on screen and millions of viewers around the world, the translators who painstakingly write the streamers’ subtitles – some of whom may be paid as little as $1 (75p) per minute of programme time – do not appear to have seen the rewards filtering down to them
So bad is the status quo that after two years in the industry, freelance translator and copywriter Anne Wanders would discourage others from going into it at all.
“It’s so sad that if anyone would ask me: ‘Oh, I saw this job listing, should I try to become a subtitle translator?’ I would have to tell them: ‘No you shouldn’t. It’s not worth your time,’” said the 40-year-old from Dortmund, Germany.
Wanders, who translates English into German for streaming vendors, including one of the world’s largest subtitling companies, enjoys the job, which she finds both creative and challenging. But the pay, which she says can work out at below minimum wage, makes it unsustainable as a single source of income.
In a race to the bottom, nobody wins- not the translators; not the audience, nor the creators of the product. The only winners are the studios/streaming services who want to maximize profits.
Citing Pablo Romero-Fresco, honorary professor of translation and film-making at Roehampton University, who writes that more than 50% of revenue obtained by most films comes from translated and accessible versions, yet only 0.01-0.1% of budget is spent on them, Leonoudakis said: “Translation is a huge profit enabler for studios and streaming services.
“Knowing that these multibillion-dollar companies refuse to pay a few more dollars to an experienced professional, and instead opt for the lowest bidder with mediocre quality, only speaks to their greed and disrespect not only for the craft of translation, but the art created by the film-makers they employ.” While in many ways an invisible art form, subtitles have the power to spark intense debate when they go wrong, as demonstrated by the criticism of Squid Game.
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Re: Where have all the translators gone?

Postby Le Baron » Mon Nov 15, 2021 1:58 am

I worked at a translating company here in NL for just over a year after I left academia, so not that long ago. They did all sorts. I wrote the subtitles for some repackaged releases of TV series' (Dutch/French subs for a dvd of some old repackaged British series'), some modern TV subs and also other things like packaging, manuals... the rate per hour was a joke for some things. When I started there two of the people in charge were professional translators who had been doing it for two decades and one left a month after I joined. I was just a 'trainee' by comparison. Of the other three one was a student and the others freelancers (or 'gig' employees before that term was used). They were not very good and used dictionaries and translation programmes heavily.

I think by that time it had already been cheapened and turned into a low-end job because of machine translation which they could get students to do then the end product quickly checked over and corrected by someone actually competent which cut down the cost. Are there actually translation bureaus now? At my wife's work they had her translating stuff as a side job. My girlfriend before her worked at an advertising agency and she also had translating work foisted onto her (which she was hopeless at and I ended up doing some of it).
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Re: Where have all the translators gone?

Postby BeaP » Mon Nov 15, 2021 7:04 am

I worked in dubbing for a couple of years. It's teamwork. We got the translation, and it often didn't match with the mouth movement, was too long or too short. I had to rewrite it on the spot with the voice actor. It was rather a question of time (did we have enough for several takes) than translation quality. Good and experienced voice actors could change the script during reading it out loud. Of course they couldn't check the accuracy compared to the original, but they could make something sensible out of it. The pay was really low, but the good ones made a lot of money with commercials, and enjoyed doing everything else. But subtitles are of course a different story.
On the one hand, this process is very sad, and has been going on for ages, but on the other, it's totally understandable. You won't ask Michelangelo to paint your IKEA vase. Netflix series get the subtitles they get because the public doesn't say that it's unacceptable. It's quantity over quality. For the majority of people it's fine this way. And I got a bit angry when I read in the article that Netflix's film-makers create art. What? If we critisize the subtitles' quality, why not take a look at the films' quality as well. The best series don't even get into streaming platforms, maybe HBO is an exception. (On a side note, it would be interesting to know whether there is a difference between subtitle qualities of Netflix and HBO.) Arde Madrid for example or Deutschland 83/86/89 have a lot less visibility than a typical Netflix show.
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Re: Where have all the translators gone?

Postby Monty » Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:02 pm

Subtitling is a bottom feeder market. Most subtitling nowadays is done by bored students or people who don't mind getting paid 0.0000001 cent or pence per word.
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Re: Where have all the translators gone?

Postby Le Baron » Mon Nov 15, 2021 12:49 pm

This is why I didn't much care about making free subtitles for ripped content and uploading to subs sites. The stuff from a few years ago, they've already had hundreds of millions of dollars from these cash cows. Then there's stuff that hasn't seen the light of day for 40-odd years which turns up on youtube. Often I just make the subs for myself if it's a language I can't just listen to with ease. I've done that with some of those late Soviet-era films (70s/80s) I find online. Luckily, like older Japanese films, there is much less excess dialogue than French/Spanish films! :lol:
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