PDF Annotation & Transcription Experts: Malayalam

What you'll do

Malayalam is a hard script for machines: long stacked conjuncts, a mix of traditional and reformed orthography across older and newer print, and chillu letters that are easy to encode incorrectly. That is why this project pays for careful human transcription. Malayalam is one of five Indic scripts in the dataset, with Japanese and Korean alongside.

You work page by page from PDFs Mercor supplies:

• Screen: confirm the page is Malayalam, legible, has real content and contains no personal details; flag anything unusable right away
• Annotate layout: outline every meaningful region (title, heading, paragraph, list, table, figure, diagram, caption, formula, question, answer field), label it and number it in reading order across columns
• Link: connect each caption or sub-element to its table or figure
• Transcribe: the full text of each region in Malayalam script, exactly as it appears, handwriting included; no transliteration; flag illegible parts
• Tag the page: language, document type, source, page dimensions, and whether it has tables, formulas or handwriting

It is human work throughout, with no parser output used as a starting point. Every task goes to a second Malayalam expert for a full review, and experienced annotators become reviewers.

Who fits

• Native Malayalam speaker fully at home in the script, its diacritics and conjuncts
• Document experience: annotation, transcription, translation, localization, subtitling, proofreading, journalism, or regional-language data review
• Exactness at the character level (the ad treats one wrong diacritic as a defect); if you know how easily chillu and conjunct forms get mangled in Unicode, that knowledge is directly useful here
• Consistency across hundreds of pages and comfort with difficult layouts

Nice to have: Malayalam AI data work, MTPE or OCR correction, typesetting or digitization, Unicode normalization and Malayalam input methods.

What it pays

$12.68 per hour, matching the Telugu, Gujarati and Bengali versions. Accuracy is the first measure, with handling time tracked alongside.

Payments are weekly on Stripe or Wise. Mercor cannot support H-1B or STEM OPT candidates.

Worth knowing

Good:

• Documents supplied; no sourcing
• Real Malayalam newspapers, textbooks, exams and everyday print
• Progression into review work
• The busiest of the Indic listings here: 270 hires shown this month

Less good:

• Modest pay for precise work
• Handling time is monitored
• India residents only; the large Malayali community in the Gulf is not covered by this listing
• Independent contractor; projects can be extended, shortened or ended early

About this listing

Posted by Mercor as a remote hourly contract with an India location requirement, read on 24 September 2026. The rate, workflow and requirements are the ad's own. See Mercor.