ABSTRACT
of expert human translation quality
FRENCH, CHINESE, HINDI, INDONESIAN · FIRST PASS FOR EXPERT PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATORScheaper than professional human translation
$2.49/MIN ALL-IN VS $22–45 · SAME QUALITY (FIRST PASS)per finished minute: voice, face, and scene audio included
TRANSLATION ALONE IS WHAT THE PROFESSIONAL RATE BUYS01.The test
The same test set, translated once by our production pipeline and once by professional translators; both scored blind against expert reference edits. "First pass" means the professional's first deliverable, before a second linguist's revision round; it is what published per-word rates buy. The professional translations and expert reference edits come from WMT24++ (paper).
02.The results
03.The price
Published professional rates run $0.15 to $0.30 per word; at about 150 spoken words a minute, that is $22 to $45 per spoken minute, text only. Familiar's $2.49 is all-in. The 10× is computed at the cheap end of the professional range.
04.Where humans still win
A professional brings things no metric captures: transcreation of wordplay, legal and brand review, accountability for a single high-stakes document. For spoken video at catalogue scale, the equation flips. A Do Not Translate list keeps names and catchphrases exactly as you say them, and every video pauses at a review screen where any line can be edited before render.
REFERENCES
Dubbing is finally good. See the measurements, then try it on your own video.