@damiechan
Back in 2021 you and many others wrote that a certain subber was working doing DUTCH subtitles that were really bad. Do you think is the same person that did the ‘‘wake up and smell the coffee saying?’’
here is link to that thread…
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feyfayer:
Dutch sub
Yes, they have made Dutch subs before as well
hehe thanks i practiced well. Maybe i will soon start my training.
Here are a few Dutch sayings
1.+4. same here in German, 3. turns out a bit more rabiat:
" …würde jemanden am liebsten an die Wand klatschen" (would like to smack someone against the wall… and wallpaper over it)
Wow, the 4th is almost exactly the same as the Polish one: kota nie ma, myszy harcują.
The only difference is that “harcują” is not exactly dancing on the table, but just doing weird stuff in general (which might include that activity :D)
We also have a similar saying in English: When the cat’s away, the mice will play.
I like all the different versions in these other languages.
Wie sagt man 1 + 4 auf deutsch?
Polish mice also lose their fear when the cat is not around 
One other:
Als ob ein Blinder von der Farbe spricht. (lit. A blind person talking about colours - someone without any basics gives great speeches).
In Punjabi -
(khote to giri, gussa kumhar te = fell from atop of donkey and angry at potter) - [Taking anger out third party]
(sariyan da kahan sir-mtthe, ptnala utthe da utthe = Agreeing to the order of village chief but not moving the canal) - [paying lip service to order / higherups]
*
I am curious. For 정신 차려, would “Come to your senses.” or “Get a hold of yourself.” been a bit easier for OL translation?
Yes, for sure. Those are translations that I see more often and that I’m used to seeing. I hadn’t seen the sentence with ‘smell the coffee’ before. That’s why I thought he meant it literally and didn’t understand it at first.
I think minimal use of colloquialisms and/or slangs is (should be) one of the things that differentiate Viki translation from NFLX. Since our OL subbers need to use the English subtitles as the source to translate, the less colloquialisms used would make OL translation not only easier but also more accurate. At NFLX, the English translators wouldn’t need to be as careful and would actually be praised for their knowledge of slangs and colloquialisms. I think our Viki translators are just as knowledgeable but they are also more aware of OL translations.
my_happy_place
We also have a similar saying in English: When the cat’s away, the mice will play.
You won’t believe this, but in my 60 yrs. I’ve never heard that one before, and amazingly, it has a version in many OL. I wonder why…
…Unless is because I’m more familiarize with Spanish sayings than the English one (believe it or not).
I mean, I know its real meaning now, and that explains what we’re going through here right now; these subbers doing all these things during their subbing volunteer work, and they really can’t/must not be supervised because is the only thing that makes sense about what @oriya experienced. How can a person be able to add as a subtitle a literal translation from a Language they have no knowledge of? (in this case Dutch language).
Common sense should tell us that ‘‘sayings’’ are different in every OL, and using them in a scene, needs to be carefully thought/analyzed before they are added as a subtitle. So that explains it for me: these subbers are not under any responsible supervision.
Ironically, we discovered here thanks to @oriya that maybe moderators should make some notes about subbers needing to be more careful when using a saying in any given Language, and especially in any language they have little to no knowledge at all.
This is the surprise factor feeling I get when a subtitle/ makes no sense to me as I read them, a weird feeling of wonder…what they meant by that? Or I don’t ‘‘see’’ around in the scene what they are talking; where is it? Just like @oriya went through when he was looking for the ‘‘coffee’’
Although help center is practically non-existent I hope this person gets reported so it doesn’t continue to do this things and affect the quality of the subtitles in any given OL.
@oriya @spaufler_89 @zyxw @my_happy_place @sandeepsandhu
Thank you so much for sharing your ‘‘sayings’’ here in this thread. I will keep them neatly safe in my notes. It’s always a good thing to learn more about sayings in OL so we won’t disappoint our viewers by our wrong choices of words/sayings in a sentence/subtitle.
Enjoy your weekend everyone! More packing to do, and I feel low in energy. So tired…_bed:
This is a really, really great idea. I’m more than happy to take it on board and help translators out when idioms are unavoidable in a subtitle.
To explain…
Just recently, I was GE for “One The Woman.” Throughout this show, there were many English and Korean idioms, metaphors, similes and sayings. Moreover, most of these needed to be kept because they were essential for the dialogue and important for establishing a character’s personality. As I went through my editing, I checked every idiom (and metaphor, simile, saying) that I came across by typing it into Google. I wanted to make sure that an explanation for each idiom (etc.) was easily found. I did this to double-check that OL teams could find any details they might need with the minimum hassle. If I couldn’t find an explanation of the idiom, I either added a brief explanation note or rephrased the idiom.
I’m embarrassed to say that it never occurred to me to share my research with the OL teams. After reading the above comment, I now realize that I should have copied all those explanations into a Googledoc with appropriate sub reference details (i.e. episode, time stamp) and shared that document with the OL teams. I could have potentially saved them a lot of time.
I will definitely do this in future.
Thank you so much for enlightening me.
Kind regards,
Manganese
Glad to hear from you! I was missing ‘‘hearing/reading’’ from you. I am so glad that you are so willing to work with your team members, and make the work so much easier for them because it can be nerve wrecking making decisions as to… do I add this or not? And sadly, sometimes we may ask questions, and we’ll never receive answers (this happened to me a very, very long time ago). I am so proud to have met you, and see your loyalty to the role you play as GE/Moderator/Subber etc.
I know that you and your team worked very hard in [One The Woman]. When I heard Honey Lee actually mention in Korean the Bermuda Triangle; I was taken aback, but so much more relieved to see a note in parenthesis that cleared to me why she mentioned the Bermuda triangle, and what she was really ‘‘talking’’ about.
You are a great asset to RViki for your willingness to do so much research work, and now you are conscious and willing to share in the future that information with other team members and it makes me feel so proud of you. Some people here are selfish, and won’t share those kind of things with others, and I know because when I was starting here only one person helped me through a lot of questions I had, and sadly that person left and you can imagine how ‘‘alone’’ I felt after that.
I have noticed that we have now in here (Rviki) a lot of younger volunteer workers that need a lot of guidance. They need to be supervised and guided through learning how they must respect the culture, language (way of expressing themselves), and most importantly, they need to be aware that ‘‘slangs’’ ‘‘curses’’ ‘‘sayings’’ have to be phrase properly, and in some cases never be used in a subtitle (like the word ‘‘anyways’’ that I see so much now in dramas/movies, and it honestly bothers me a lot). It makes no sense to me as to why this word is so out of control in here, and I got to the conclusion that these volunteers although proficient in English must be very young, and that is why they see nothing wrong in using slang words in the subtitles.
***I do hope you copy the explanations you might remember so far on a Googledoc soon, and save all that valuable information you acquired during your research before you forget everything, and all that precious hard work you did won’t receive the praises it rightfully deserves (besides I want to save it too for future reference with your permission of course).
Have A Blessed and wonderful weekend with your love one,
Wanda.
,
i would prefer
come to your senses
Guys @sandeepsandhu @oriya @angelight313_168 @choitrio @zyxw did you guys join the unofficial discord server yet?
I have so much respect for @choitrio that I didn’t dare to say anything, but like you, I prefer to use ‘‘come to your senses’’ because ‘‘get (a) hold of yourself’’ is more when the individual is so out of control in their emotions, and might be acting too aggressively. On the other hand, ‘‘come to your senses’’ is really telling the person ‘‘face reality and accept what you have to do so you don’t get hurt anymore.’’ Something like that.
@poeticpeep, @angelight313_168, although both “come to your senses” and “get a hold of yourself” are appropriate translation for 정신 차려 depending on the context, I also prefer “come to your senses”.