Hello, What is this bot exactly and how does it hamper the translation process?
It’s a machine translator, a sort of a program that will translate from one language to another in this case
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/what-is-a-bot/
@adrianmorales when you have a bot translation it might not be quite accurate since the machine/program won’t always know specific idioms or expressions in one language you can not translate word by word, for example like google translator does. Also in English you have only “technically” the formal “you” for singular and plural, as you are from Europe you probably are familiar between formal and informal addressing, the bot won’t likely know which is what unless he translates from a formal and informal addressing…
Thank you for explaining it to me! Yes, here we can’t address people as “you” unless they are close friends or family. I’ve noticed it’s the same in Asia.
I’m still puzzled, though, since I don’t understand the bot’s purpose. Is Viki trying to replace the human translators with a bot? Like how the caption bot works on YouTube?
I don’t think the primary purpose of the bot is to help Viki. The money lies else where. And that money is BIG.
Viki as a site is just the playground for the bot to learn, and then it can be sold somewhere else.
Today I had my first experience of the bot. It went and not only translated what was missing, but also EDITED over somebody else’s translation. Sometimes correcting well, sometimes not.
For instance, putting the same sentence, only without a final period.
When translating on its own, the bot makes mistakes too. The main one is not putting a period at the end of the sentence.
Another one which is quite common is, after the first sub finishes with a comma, writing the with a capital letter, whereas lowercase should be used. I mean, such things should be basic, right?
In the following screenshot, we have
sub 1: A woman named Park Heyong Ja
sub 2: was here, right?
And sub 2 is translated as starting with a capital letter instead of a lowercase.
The first one is such a stupid correction.
The second one is likely because the bot is programmed to start every sub with a capital.
I truly hope there is another bot that compares and analyses the difference between human-generated and FirstBot-generated subs.
You know, I thought that the bot just filled in missing subs. Not that it corrected existing ones. This takes it to a wholly new level of frustrating. And there were many corrections like that. When the Spanish Mod will get there she will be pulling out her hair.
Machine learning is the future, after all, but why interfere with someone else’s work, though?
Skynet is REAL !!
I don’t think it’s intention is to interfere with existing subs. But that this is merely a test for the bot, but one where it in parallel also learns.
Actually, I can tell you it DID OVERWRITE EXISTING AND CORRECT SUBS in ONE drama, in ONE episode - with mostly incorrect subs. In some cases, it had the nerve to overwrite the correct sub …by a human…and use the same sub shamelessly!. However, the Moderator and I restored them, ONE SUB AT A TIME FOR HOURS… And we let the subbers know it had happened AND that we had repaired it.
Sigh. I have NO idea who resurrected this topic. The vikibot landed in exactly one major outbreak and to my knowledge, has not been returned to the site. My understanding is that after the unsuccessful use on the historical dramas and our need to remove them, that a CM would be able to say NO to such help - or YES - if they desired, in the four languages where it was used.
My objection was based on having hired the best Teams for all the languages and the fact that the Moderators said the language used was decidedly inferior to the standard for normal translation. These were all historical/costume dramas, and it was for the best interest of the drama that I asked to be able to remove it and did in all instances.
So please, unless there is a revival of this project somewhere - and we did get told by a community message it would occur or had when it did, just not where and how much of it…
Please let’s try to forget this incident and move forward, okay? Condor and the other dramas are now okay.
Oh, so it’s not active anymore. Someone should ask the admins to close this topic then.
I think there’s really no need to close this or any topic for that matter.
Also, THE BOTS MIGHT RETURN MIGHTIER THAN EVER
Oh, I wrote that because of the previous comment. Reviving certain posts might also bring back the painful memories…
Return… Then we must put on end to Skynet once and for all.
So it’s gone? I had no idea, nobody wrote to us about it. How do you know it’s gone?
I just happened to reach the end of a drama and I saw these subs. Maybe they were done some time ago.
That is a very good question
So it was gone only to come back, one year later.
And they still claim it’s only doing empty segments, when we know it’s not true.
This thread deserves to be read again, in view of the recent onslaught on French subtitles.
I do wish all these threads were unified, because they contain many concrete examples from the past.
Who would have known this issue will happen again and here we are again speechless at poor communication and also collaboration from Viki and mostly feel demotivated!
The topic “Vikibot Translation Announcement” cannot be accessed now by me as well, Sorry, you don’t have access to that topic! just why?
I hate secrecy and locked conversations so much, that I took screenshots of the entire thread. Here you go.