At the moment, I’m teaching someone through the DSA and she is like that. It’s really nice.
There is a translation guide for the Dutch community (wondderfully written by three other Vikians) with explanations and examples. It shows how hard translating can be, because it has a lot of examples on good idiomatic sentences.
Becoming a good translator, in my opinion, is mainly getting a feeling for what sounds good (idiomatic) and what doesn’t. The best way to learn it is through experience and often when I have students whose translations are too literal or too weird, all I can say is ‘that’s not how we would say it in our language, here is my suggestion’.
Sometimes typo’s can become mistakes out of sloppiness, though. If there are too much of them, those can make a bad impession. There used to be a Dutch Vikian (no longer active) who subbed really fast, but she made a lot of typo’s.
I’m watching a drama that finished years ago and I actually sent a message to the mod this morning requesting her to revise the subtitles again when she had the time. Getting a drama fully subbed in your language is a great accomplishment, but if the subtitles are lacking or less than average, I’m not sure if a lot of people would want to watch the show with those subtitles.
This does depend on when you check it and when the subtitles were made. GT keeps developing so it’s possible that they used GT and when you check it (much) later GT will give a better suggestion.
It sometimes appears to me that too many subbers (who I saw with that lack of translation feeling for atmosphere) are never using English freely outside of Viki (e.g. with penpals, friends etc.) So they’re still like someone at school, without actually thinking in English because when you’re able to directly think in another language you know how it feels like.
For typos the easiest solution is using a grammar/spelling plugin that marks all wrongly written words. If RV really cared they’d already implement that into the editor tool like every writing software has a grammar/spelling check as option plus a “exchange all words” option. That would make the work for editors much faster and easier. Instead the subtitle editor has such a bad design that this is also unnecessary time consuming.
(Because of that it takes longer than editing pure text only…)
Maybe it’s worse because more skilled volunteers left (I can’t clearly say yes or no to that question. I just know that some skilled German translators and editors left/are inactive now. The (personal) reasons are different. Some don’t have enough time anymore, some would continue doing it if they got money for all the time quality needs.
A thing that’s (still) often a problem is the wrong syntax (in OL subs).
Sorry I meant to say Google Translate not pre-sub, but your answer is basically the same bc once we lose our good translators, and they start recruiting new comers that don’t have the proficiency the others had, those that stay like you have done so far, will have more work and stress to deal with. To add more stress to the package; the way I saw those pre-sub examples (imo) at this moment the situation it’s very chaotic, and maybe that explains the vast amount of what I call ‘‘annoying subtitles’’ I see in dramas/movies now. Although, I mainly feel bad that I see this going on bc the domino effect for OL team members that it adds such a huge burden in their work as volunteers here.
as far as I know, this isn’t the conventional usage of an apostrophe.
“The show’s over” = “The show is over.”
“Grandma’s crying” = “Grandma is crying”
There is no doubt about the two sentences. Apostrophes are seldom used to denote plurals with most nouns.
Minute 25:27 you will see this elegant lovely lady saying like the popular song from the 70’s: SAY WHAT?
What you just said?
What are you saying?
What I just heard?
But instead we see SAY WHAT? In modern drama a young person: ACCEPTABLE
A GOD in her throne saying SAY WHAT?: Unacceptable. In me/myself and I opinion, disrespectful.
The reason the subtitles are off ([say what] is not under with the older lady as it should be) is because the segments in this drama for some reason are really way OFF. They are not in sync with the characters. So strange to see that happening here.
I’m confused by this one. Are you saying that those two subtitles are wrong? Because “The show’s over.” and “Grandma’s crying.” are perfectly acceptable English sentences using the contraction form of ‘is’, just like in sentences such as, 'He’s going to the store" or “What’s for dinner?” Maybe I am misunderstanding your point.
If your original argument was simply that you found those subs to be displeasing, then of course it is your right to have that opinion, and I respect that. That’s where my confusion came in, though, because there was one sentence you wrote that seemed to be saying those subs were not grammatically correct, and I just wanted to make sure I understood where you were coming from. It is my misunderstanding, and I apologize.
You do have a point there; I wasn’t clear enough explaining why I felt it was incorrect. It can be written like that, but I detest to see those type of contractions here in the subtitles at Rviki, and especially if there’s enough space in, to ‘‘fit’’ the whole word. These types of contractions are unnecessary; so therefore, I consider them ‘‘unacceptable?’’ (that’s a better word) they are not necessarily incorrect. Apology accepted, and please, accept my apologies for the misunderstanding.
@my_happy_place
Well, in a way the issue here is that people ‘‘see’’ what they want to see, so they can make it an issue and entertain themselves? I went through each stuff I wrote here, and I never wrote it was ‘‘grammatically incorrect’’ just that it was wrong to see and wrong to be there because there was no lack of space or NEED to use a contraction in those sentence.
BUT is over with, and done bc my topic is about subtitles that ANNOY me/myself and I, personally. It is not about who knows more than who, when writing subtitles. I compare this with cancer (as ridiculous as it may sound to you). If this things are not stopped on time, they will grow, they will take over, and ‘‘destroy’’ everything in its path, in my opinion quality in the subtitles will no longer mean anything here. I hope you look into becoming a subber/editor here at this site.
wherever you’d like/wherever you would like(incomplete sentence)wherever you would like to. The contraction would be as follow: Wherever you’d like to.
AREN’T YOU WORRIED. WHO DOESN’T KNOW YOU DON’T START A SENTENCE WITH AREN’T. SIMPLY WRITE.
YOU ARE NOT WORRIED?
He’s trying to arrest me.
Present tense. He’s arresting me. (since she’s in handcuff (arrested) this would have been the best subtitle.
wherever you’d like/wherever you would like(incomplete sentence)wherever you would like to. The contraction would be as follow: Wherever you’d like to.
AREN’T YOU WORRIED. WHO DOESN’T KNOW YOU DON’T START A SENTENCE WITH AREN’T. SIMPLY WRITE.
YOU ARE NOT WORRIED?
He’s trying to arrest me.
Present tense. He’s arresting me. (since she’s in handcuff (arrested) this would have been the best subtitle.
The first and last should be changed, IMO.
However, the second one is correct. “You are not worried?” is not proper English. “You are not worried” is a statement, not a question. The listener knows you’re asking a question only because you change the tone of your voice for the last word.
“Aren’t you worried” = “Are you not worried?” This is a proper interrogating sentence. “Are you not” sounds weird to modern ears, so we usually say “Aren’t”.
Is, Am, Are, Was Were — When these to-be verbs are used at the beginning of a sentence, it becomes an interrogatory sentence.
“Are you worried?”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“Were you at the scene last night?”
“Weren’t you at the scene last night?”
I changed them I’m always open to suggestions. It’s totally possible that I missed something.
If you see that I’m the CE and something should be changed, don’t hesitate to send me a message! I’ll gladly go back and change anything that’s wrong.
I might see things differently in college. I definitely have lots to learn. I understand that this is a topic about subtitles you find annoying, but grammar is not based on someone’s personal opinion. As an editor myself, I would definitely feel frustrated if someone wrote that my subs annoyed them, even though the grammar is perfectly acceptable. When you post about a sub that annoys you, there are editors here who see them and evaluate their own work.
“You aren’t worried?” is way less formal than “Aren’t you worried?”. It is not an interrogatory sentence. I don’t want to be rude, but this is basic elementary grammar. If my words can’t be trusted, please trust my trainer, @worthyromance. I don’t think she’s active now, but she’s an educated adult from North America. She always told us that interrogatory sentences DO NOT start with “You”. Only if there was absolutely no way to change the sentence without changing the speaker’s intentions, we were permitted to start an interrogatory sentence with “You”.
I apologize for starting an argument. I won’t post anymore about this topic.
Many, many Chief Editors include this in their Subbing Guidelines, and specifically say that it shouldn’t be used. Gonna, gotcha, wanna, and of course “anyways”. We also include a shortened version of the guidelines on Team Notes, and this is always included. Of course subbers continue to write those things, because most of them can’t be bothered to read guidelines and Team Notes. So we keep correcting them. These here are veteran Chief Editor cgwm808’s Guidelines, which are followed by many if not most teams here. And these are mine.
Why removing because you dislike it, perhaps the subtitler thinks it’s okay because nobody said anything, if something is wrong, a mod needs to tell her/him not to make mistakes or change whatever… a volunteer can always learn… newbies just need more guidance, mistakes happen and can be corrected… it’s better to teach someone to do a better job than fire them…
Well, it’s grammatically not wrong, it’s perhaps esthetically not good looking or just a personal preference to like or dislike it…
They have them here in the subs, but you haven’t come across them YET, (lol) you will. It used to be worst years back, and I wrote so much about it, and got criticized for doing that, too. But THANK THE LORD, it ‘‘died down’’ and you won’t see it as much in here at RVIKi.
When I come across subs with those words I will post them here (under summary) to avoid hurting the subbers feeling…
I’m always open to suggestions. It’s totally possible that I missed something.
