Four Top Reasons to Become a Freelance Subtitle Translator

With 2019 well underway, we’re on the lookout to take on new, talented freelance subtitle translators to support our foreign transcription, subtitling and translation services. At Capital Captions, we work with highly experienced, qualified linguists for our video services and are always happy to help support and develop the skills of our translation workers. In this blog, we’ll look at the four top ways in which it’s great to be a freelance subtitle translator.

1: Flexible Working Hours 

The first major benefit of taking the plunge to self-employment is flexible working hours. Translation and transcription work usually comes in under 24 hour or 48 hour turnaround requirements. While deadlines can be tight, there is usually the flexibility to take on that work at whatever hour you feel works best for you. Just make sure you don’t badly organise your time, gorging on daytime TV and shopping, and winding up working through the night.

2: Be Your Own Boss 

It’s important to keep your clients and agencies happy, working as a self employed translator or subtitler, but nothing beats the feeling that your work life is your own to manage, and you get to be your own boss. The expectations can actually be higher on a freelance worker to provide quality translations within tight deadlines. You can lose money on handing in late, poor quality work so the incentive for going the extra mile is there without you having to have a manager breathing down your throat to get things done.

3: Learning Opportunities 

When it comes to translation services, especially where subtitling and closed captioning are involved, there is a lot of scope to learn. A lot of video content in the subtitling world comes from documentaries, e-learning or news features which means writing work isn’t only fun, but it’s also interesting. Most translation companies will ask translators their specialist areas before allocating work which means you should also be able to (to an extent) choose which subject areas you would most like to subtitle or translate in.

4: Autonomy 

The autonomy involved in online translation and subtitling work is huge. Translation services cover an incredibly broad area and in addition, there are many different document, subtitling and transcript formats out there. Both fresh and archive video content can be challenging to work with and with voice recognition, automation and online subtitle requirements always changing, it’s enough to always keep freelance subtitle translators or caption writer on their toes.

So that’s its, four reasons why choosing to become freelance subtitle translators can benefit your career and earning stakes. If you are interested in applying to work for us as a freelance subtitle translator, why not head over to our information page and follow the link to apply for a position with us.