Newspaper article: " Lost in translation? The one-inch truth about Netflix’s subtitle problem" Thread poster: Caryl Swift
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Caryl Swift 
Poland
Local time: 21:25
Polish to English
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| Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
| CPS is your arch nemesis | Oct 15, 2021 |
I'd wager most of these problems can be attributed to the CPS constraints. This is especially an issue when translating subtitles from English into my native language. Indonesian is not a very efficient language, with features such as word repetitions to denote plurals, verb prefixes and suffixes, and my favorite: verb double prefixes and suffixes!
Translating into English is, in fact, somewhat easier. As much of an anarchy the English language is, you'd have to give it credit for h... See more I'd wager most of these problems can be attributed to the CPS constraints. This is especially an issue when translating subtitles from English into my native language. Indonesian is not a very efficient language, with features such as word repetitions to denote plurals, verb prefixes and suffixes, and my favorite: verb double prefixes and suffixes!
Translating into English is, in fact, somewhat easier. As much of an anarchy the English language is, you'd have to give it credit for how compact it can be. Of course, until you have to deal with slang and local languages, the dominant feature in spoken Indonesian used by the native speakers. Some phrases just don't have the western equivalent to substitute them. But then again, most of these words seem to be glossed over and converted into the standard Indonesian language anyway.
I'd imagine pro-drop languages would be easier to translate. Not to underestimate anyone who translates in these languages. But since you can omit the pronouns, complying with the CPS requirements should be less of a headache.
But what do I know? ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
[Edited at 2021-10-15 14:39 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | P.L.F. Persio
Netherlands
Local time: 21:25
Member (2010)
English to Italian
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| Thank you, Caryl! | Oct 15, 2021 |
The article also quotes our very own Max Deryagin!
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 21:25
French to English
If you look at the comments, at least half seem to be from translators saying "of course the sub-titles suck, they don't pay enough and don't leave us enough time to do a good job even if we wanted to".
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[Edited at 2021-10-15 19:20 GMT]
| | | | Binh An
Vietnam
Local time: 02:25
English to Vietnamese
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| Netflix's rate for english - vietnamese pair | Nov 22, 2021 |
Posting this here to let people roughly know why do people say Netflix doesn't pay enough.
The rate for above position is for translating machine TL'd text only, hence the 0.4$ / minute of content. Timecoding and other things related to subtitle creation are not included.
There's netflix's official rate ca... See more Posting this here to let people roughly know why do people say Netflix doesn't pay enough.
The rate for above position is for translating machine TL'd text only, hence the 0.4$ / minute of content. Timecoding and other things related to subtitle creation are not included.
There's netflix's official rate card here: https://npfp.netflixstudios.com/program-conditions
The problem is they only accept agencies, so the flow of money is siphoned out at that point.
Characters per line is pretty evil indeed. But the worst thing is you have extremely short amount of time to work before deadline.
Anyway Kay Denney's comment is pretty much spot on.
Btw there's a wage theft method that's employed by agencies working for Netflix as follows:
The agency will setup a "ghost translator" to take in the supposed money for translator.
The agency itself will put the program content through machine translation and the "ghost translator" will claim the machine TL'd product as their work.
The machine TL'd product will then be translated by someone hired for a QC position.
So to sum it up the agency gets to claim and keep the payment for translator, while the QC guy gets paid with the QC portion.
I'd love to call the agency that pulled this out here but their profile on blueboard made by username tdguy has 4.9 rating with 31 entries from past 5 years and 4.8 rating with 6 entries from past 12 months and is based in South Korea.
[Edited at 2021-11-22 16:17 GMT]
[Edited at 2021-11-22 16:22 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
@Binh An
Last time I checked, they paid $4/video minute even for MTPE jobs. I guess they've adjusted it.
But...
MTPE for subtitles is kind of silly. Since subtitles are mostly used to convey spoken languages, those need to sound as natural and contextual as possible, while adhering to the style guidelines. I'm not convinced that MTs care enough about those.
Btw there's a wage theft method that's employed by agencies working for Netflix as follows:
The agency will setup a "ghost translator" to take in the supposed money for translator.
The agency itself will put the program content through machine translation and the "ghost translator" will claim the machine TL'd product as their work.
The machine TL'd product will then be translated by someone hired for a QC position.
Maybe if we stopped accepting MTPE jobs, this nonsense would stop eventually. One can only hope.
[Edited at 2021-11-22 22:52 GMT]
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Novian Cahyadi wrote:
MTPE for subtitles is kind of silly. Since subtitles are mostly used to convey spoken languages, those need to sound as natural and contextual as possible, while adhering to the style guidelines. I'm not convinced that MTs care enough about those.
You are exactly right. The thing with MTPE is that they know it's (highly) inefficient for subtitle translation. But it's a convenient tool to lower subtitlers' rates, since you're just editing something that is "already translated". I'm not entirely against machine translation, in guide manuals for examples, with short and simple sentences. But in subtitling, you definitely need humans to understand what other humans try to convey, to understand slang, cultural references, visual context and more.
As for not accepting MTPE jobs, this might already be the case. Some days or weeks ago, there was an article where the CEO of Iyuno-SDI was lamenting about a shortage of translators and how "nobody wants to work anymore". They just don't want to admit that as they pay too little.
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