pay for academic transcription

[cos]

Question for those if you in the world of northeast US universities: What would you consider reasonable hourly pay for hiring someone to transcribe recorded audio interviews to text, in support of someone's research?

Comments

[melebeth]

My understanding, although I am not up on current rates, is that transcribers are usually hired by the length of the tape they are transcribing, not by the hour.

[desiringsubject.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my field doesn't do much transcriptiom

[wotw]

I hired someone to do quite a bit of this a few years back, but haven't
the foggiest recollection of what I paid. I'll try to dig my records up.

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

I've always heard of transcriptions being paid by the page or by the hour of audio, not by time spent transcribing. It's been a while since I had need of a transcriber (mid-90s), but I believe we paid $10/page for English transcription of English tapes, and $22/page for English transcription of Spanish tapes. Of course, that was in the 90s, and it was a for profit organization; I have no idea how that would translate given both inflation over the past decade and the fact that you're working for an academic institution.

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

When I last did transcription in a freelance capacity, a couple of years ago, I charged $30 per hour.

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

I have a headline rate of $20/hour for words-only transcription, price reduced if I'm also doing something else for the person. For video transcription and word-pattern transcription (i.e. i you want me to indicate minor pauses, etc.) it's more. (And that's per hour of transcription, not per hour I spend doing it, which is slightly more but not much because I type fast.)

[sykotropic.livejournal.com]

$25 an hour is what I'm about to pay someone for basic English transcription. And I'm prepared to pay $50 for Spanish/English transcription, but luckily don't think I have to :)

[mirrored-echo.livejournal.com]

I did this for $1.25/page one summer (a page being 250 words). Transcribers need to type at least 75 word per minute, preferably 100...but they're going to be spending a *lot* of time editing, so it doesn't really add up to more than minimum wage.

[athenasbanquet.livejournal.com]

I did interviewing/transcription for a project at University of Washington, and iirc (I just double-checked and this is about right) I got $25/hour, where hours = hours clocked working, not hour of tape. This was combined time of interviewing to transcription, which worked out to about 1:1.5 - 2.

[seventorches.livejournal.com]

I made $20 per hour spent transcribing on a job for a historian at (I think) NYU a couple years ago.