Commons Media Collective: External Pricing and Internal Redistribution of Credits

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Overview

IMPORTANT: This is a work in progress and we need your input. Please right click and open this entry's Discussion page to consult notes as you read.

Pricing that’s fair to everyone is highly important to us. We’ve developed the following sliding-scale pricing system to:

  1. Ensure fairness for Guerrilla Translators, including those working on Pro-bono
  2. Ensure that those clients who most need our support get cheaper rates.

To ensure that we can do both of these critical things, within our 4-step sliding scale, we assigned the same internal credit value regardless of what rate we charge to clients . For our “cheapest” outside rate, a small part of that credit value will get assigned to the pro-bono stream. When the rate we charge is more than our basic price, the surplus income goes directly toward paying the credits in the pro-bono stream. This ensures that we can always literally afford to work on pro-bono translations, because they are not only valued, but will in time be remunerated as well. The basic price we’ve settled on is 0,12 € per word to the client (0,08 € to the translator, 0,04 € to the editor). This is fair by US standards yet expensive by Spanish standards, so, obviously we’ll be looking for more work outside Spain, which as it happens is mostly how business is developing anyway.

These are the prices we’ve proposed to clients to date. We believe that even if a client were to suggest that a lower price could be found, we could successfully argue for our quality standard and ethical model for workers, and still get the job (we’ll surely have to put that to the test eventually, but so far, the few clients we’ve worked with have been overwhelmingly supportive.) There’s plenty of room for discussion and comments, but if we want to hold a more general discussion please refer to the Loomio thread related to this working document. The Trello task associated with pricing is here.

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Important: External prices DO NOT INCLUDE VAT

Literary Translation (cents of €) includes expert artisanal translation and native Editing and proofreading

1st tier: (Corporate clients)

0,16 per word to the CLIENT. Credits are assigned this way:

  • 0,08 to the translator
  • 0,04 to the Editor (includes 0,01 proofreading)
  • 0,04 to the pro-bono income stream

2nd tier (Startups, large NGOs )

0.14 per word to the CLIENT, to then assign:

  • 0,08 to the translator
  • 0,04 to the editor (includes 0,01 proofreading)
  • 0,02 to the pro-bono income stream

3rd tier (Free/OS software startups, small NGO's, regular co-ops)

0.12 per word to the CLIENT, to then assign

  • 0,08 to the translator
  • 0,04 to the editor (includes. 0,01 proofreading)
  • 0,00 to the pro-bono income stream

4th tier (Activist collectives + ethical coops) (NOT non-profits)

0.10 per word to the CLIENT, to then assign

  • 0,07 to translator
  • 0,03 to the editor
  • Translator gets 0,01 in credits assigned to his/her pro-bono “queue”
  • Editor gets 0,01 in credits assigned to his/her pro-bono “queue”

Written translation modifiers: webformatting, hyperlinks and urgent translation

Hyperlinks

  • Per article: 5 and below FREE
  • 5-10. 20 € (to customer) 20 credits (to Guerrilla Translator)
  • [1>Each additional hyperlink after + 10: 3 € (to customer) 3 credits (to Guerrilla Translator) each<1].

Web formatting

  • 0,02 per word.

Urgent!

We try to discourage "Urgent, I need it now" translations, as it may compromise quality (and stress the Guerrilla Translators involved. To encourage the culture of Slow Translation the world needs we will add the following charges for urgent deliverables.


  • 1st tier: 0.16 per word to the CLIENT, becomes 0.21
  • 2nd tier: 0.14 per word to the CLIENT, becomes 0.19
  • 3rd tier: 0.12 per word to the CLIENT, becomes 0.16
  • 4th tier: 0.10 per word to the CLIENT, becomes 0.13

Website translation

SAME PRICING AS LITERARY TRANSLATION. Need to research tools for website translation.


Film/subtitling

For simplicity, this parallels the word rates. The prices here follow the same structure as above. Rather than repeating the whole breakdown, we’ve only broken it down in our “base” pricing (3rd tier). Most jobs would include the following: Prices per minute, including:


  • Hearing
  • Translation
  • Subtitling
  • Editing
  • On screen Proofreading

[2>We could feasibly include “transcription” here, but that would be included in “hearing” <2]in a sense. [3>I don’t foresee many occasions in which a client will want a transcript<3] if we can translate direct from vid.


1st tier: (Corporate clients)

  • 16 € per minute of video to the CLIENT.

Credits are assigned as 3rd tier above, but with + 4€ per minute to the pro-bono income stream


2nd tier (Start Ups, large NGO's )

  • 14 € per minute to the CLIENT.

Credits are assigned as 3rd tier above, but with + 2€ per minute to the pro-bono income stream


3rd tier. (Free/open software startups, small NGOs, regular co-ops)

12 € per minute to the CLIENT. Credits are assigned this way


  • Translation: 8 credits (Includes “hearing” [2] + subtitling [2])
  • Editing: 4 credits (Includes final subs timing adjustment [1] and on-screen proofreading [1])

(0 € to the pro-bono income stream)

These prices equal the credit allocation for Love work. ie: 1 minute of subtitling equals 12 love credits (8 for the translator, 4 for the editor)


4]4th tier (Activist Collectives + Ethical coops) (NOT non-profits)

10 € per minute to the CLIENT. Credits are assigned this way:


    • Translation 6,50 (Includes “hearing” [1,50] + subtitling [1,50])
    • Editing 3,25 (Includes final subs timing adjustment [0,65] and on-screen proofreading [0,60])
  • Translator gets 1,50 credits per minute assigned to his/her pro-bono queue
  • Editor gets 0,75 credits per minute assigned to his/her pro-bono queue

Subtitling modifiers: Audio Quality, Density and Urgency

Audio Quality

If the audio quality is crap we will charge an aditional 25% to the initial quoted price. If it's really crap, we won't take the gig.

Density

If we have to subtitle a video with non-stop dialogue, we will renegotiate the price, or do a per line calculation.

Urgency

If something is needed very urgently/overnight, etc, we will charge an aditional 33 % to the initial quoted price.

For film/script translation Stacco will dig out his old price lists for the Studios he used to work for.

(Pending) Feel free to [6>write down prices while he gets to that


Editing (w/ no translation)

There are several open questions to take into account with direct editing work, which are listed below. For simplicity, the price should be the same as the “Editor’s cut” above, whether it involves checking against an original translation or not. Higher rates may then apply in the following cases:


  1. Are we editing a translation produced by someone outside the collective? Will we compare it to the original? What is the quality of the translation?
  2. Are we editing writing in the original language, but including content editing/critical suggestions, etc?
  3. Is it editing in the original language, but working on a sub-par text?
  4. Is it “fixing a bad haircut”? This can mean any kind of semi-nightmare that we’re contracted to help bring back to an acceptably high standard.
  5. [7>We should have a code system for sub-par text (whether translated or not). Most likely 3 levels down from “standard”.

Audio Transcription

NOTE: AM made a great template for evaluating audio/speech quality and priced accordingly. We’ve investigated some prices here but haven’t yet formalized them. As with other stuff, feel free to add your findings and thoughts to ours below:


Transcription prices are variable and will not be quoted "firm" until a review is made of the actual audio. The range of factors affecting audio quality is quite wide, and the price must reflect the time spent not only physically producing the transcript but also hearing and reviewing the material.


Here's some tentative figures:


(with "normal" audio quality)


- 3 € per minute (no polishing)


- 4,50 € per minute (with polishing)


These would also have to be broken down according to the sliding scale pricing mechanism (ie: the prices suggeste above would be the "3rd tier" prices.

Love Credit Value for Pro Bono work

(This includes all articles, videos posted on our blog. Bear in mind that for all the material we’ve published on the blog, the work put into contacting authors, formatting for Wordpress, adding images, promoting in social media, republishing is quite considerable, and should get compensated in order to encourage Guerrilla Translators to assign themselves these sorts of tasks. This is value-assigned, of course, not actual income. We’ve chosen to assign a per-word rate for these organizational tasks related to pro-bono translation, as the effort needed for the editing is usually proportional to the wordcount. Same goes for post-production (longer articles demand creating more SM posts, contacting more people to promote them, etc.). [8>The odd bird here is “pre-production”. Sometimes it takes two minutes, sometimes it isn’t needed (as when we have permission from authors to translate any of their work), and sometimes it takes weeks of follow up and coordination. What shall we do?<8]

Written Translation

0.16 credit per-word value assigned for payment as follows:

  • 0,08 to the translator
  • 0,04 to the editor (includes 0,01 proofreading)
  • 0,01 pre production
  • 0,02 formatting
  • 0,01 post production

Video and Subtitling

(These rates mirror the credit allocation for written translation Love work. ie: 1 minute of subtitling equals 12 love credits: 8 for the translator, 4 for the editor)

12 credits per minute value assigned for payment as follows:

  • 8 to the translations (Includes “hearing” [2] + subtitling [2])
  • 4 to the editor (Includes final subs timing adjustment [1] and on-screen proofreading [1])

Notes:'

  • Videos under 3 minutes will be valued as 3-minute videos.
  • Videos of 3:01 to 4:59 minutes will be valued as 5-minute videos.
  • Videos of more than 5 minutes will be rounded up by 30 sec-intervals.

IMPORTANT: As all video post are always accompanied by a blog post (often with additional text etc) Pre-production, formatting and post-production for pro-bono video blog posts are tracked according to the wordcount of the corresponding post.

Audio Transcription

With "normal" audio quality


  • 3 € per minute (no polishing)
  • 4,50 € per minute (with polishing)

If the audio quality is deficient we will charge in + 25% increments (from bad, to horrible, to practically inaudible)

Original writing and bios

We should also value the short intros and original writing we do for the web magazine. This would also include bios as well. For simplicity's sake these have been priced the same as translations.

Original Articles

0.16 credit per-word value assigned for payment as follows:

  • 0,08 to the author
  • 0,04 to the editor (includes 0,01 proofreading)
  • 0,01 pre production
  • 0,02 formatting
  • 0,01 post production

Comic Book formatting

For comics existing translation rates apply. Formatting comics, however, can take a lot longer. We are experimenting with how to track value for this. Rather than wordcount, we will use time tracking and convert it to the current standing ``https://trello.com/c/2RzBA2iM carework hourly rate]].

Original writing within an existing translation

0.12 credit per-word value assigned for payment as follows:

  • 0,08 to the author
  • 0,04 to the editor (includes 0,01 proofreading)

(Pre and post-production and formatting are tracked within the translation itself)

Author Bios

0.14 credit per-word value assigned for payment as follows:

  • 0,08 to the writer/translator
  • 0,04 to the editor (includes 0,01 proofreading)
  • 0,02 formatting

(Pre and post production are tracked in the original blog post that the bio will be tied to)

Carework Value

We currently track carework with Toggl, a timing app. All timed tasks (except for a few "general task" exceptions) are tied to concrete Trello card. Discussion is under way on how to remunerate this value.

To make a fair equivalence with how much translators, editors etc get paid we have made an hour = wordcount equivalence. The purpose is to avoid an "administrative underclass" working on behalf of the translators, etc. Care, administrative and invisible work is what makes the paid translation and pro-bono work possible, so it is value as highly.

The equivalence is:

- Translation base price: 0,08 € - Daily wordcount (8 hours) 2.500 words = 200 € - Hourly rate: 25 € (200 / 8)

Currently 1 hour of Carework is valued at 25 credits

As mentioned above, there are various options on how to used these credits, either invested or divested.

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