Malayalam PDF Annotator and Transcriptionist

Role Overview

Help create human-authored training data that improves document AI for Malayalam and other underrepresented writing systems. You will turn real, publicly available Malayalam PDF pages into complete structural maps and faithful Malayalam-script transcriptions, working with challenging material such as handwriting, multi-column layouts, tables, diagrams, and mixed-script pages. Documents may include newspapers, textbooks, examinations, flyers, forms, manuals, menus, brochures, notices, and worksheets.

Key Responsibilities

• Find publicly accessible Malayalam PDFs in assigned document types that contain at least one multimodal element, such as an image, table, diagram, or handwriting, and record the source.
• Identify, bound, and classify every meaningful page region, including titles, headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, figures, diagrams, captions, formulas, questions, and answer fields.
• Assign reading-order indexes and link related regions to their parent figure or table using component identifiers.
• Transcribe all text exactly as shown in Malayalam script, including handwritten text, and flag content that cannot be read clearly.
• Capture page metadata, including language, document type, source, page dimensions, and whether tables, formulas, or handwriting appear.
• Review colleagues'' completed tasks end to end when assigned as an experienced annotator.

Qualifications

• Native Malayalam fluency, with full command of Malayalam script, orthography, diacritics, and conjunct forms.
• Experience with document-focused work such as annotation, transcription, translation, localization, subtitling, proofreading, journalism, or regional-language data review.
• Exceptional character-level accuracy, including careful handling of diacritics.
• A systematic approach to applying a consistent taxonomy across many pages.
• Comfort working with unfamiliar and complex layouts, including multi-column newspapers, examination papers, and handwritten forms.

Preferred Experience

• Regional-language AI data work, including annotation, labeling, grading, or bilingual evaluation for training datasets.
• Transcription or localization experience, including MTPE, subtitling, bilingual QA, OCR correction, or post-editing.
• Malayalam document production experience, such as typesetting, copy-editing, proofreading, or digitization.
• Knowledge of Unicode normalization, Malayalam input methods, and accurate numeral and character forms.

Work Terms

• Remote, hourly engagement.
• Open only to contributors based in India, the United States, Canada, or Western Europe.
• All annotation and transcription work is completed in Malayalam.

Compensation

12.68 per hour.

Quality Expectations

• Capture, correctly bound, and correctly classify every meaningful region on each page.
• Reflect the actual reading order, including across columns.
• Produce character-for-character Malayalam-script transcriptions, not transliterations.
• Deliver work that passes second-expert review on the first submission.
• Contribute documents with varied layouts rather than repeatedly using similar templates.