Are honest Contributors disappearing, benefiting the translation software?

General Discussion
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What will come after is purely my observation in the French community.

For some months already, an evil has been consuming Viki’s French community (and although my concerns are principally due to the French contributors, it may apply to others).

A numerous amount of new and old French contributors are translating dramas (both historical and modern) by simply copying full sentences from Google translation, from Deepl, etc. Sentences that have no meaning or are wrongly translated, gender being totally ignored, a wrong punctuation and a robotic language. Here’s how a lot of translations are looking like recently, and nobody seems to care.

Let’s not forget that this is supposed to be forbidden on Viki.

https://support.viki.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000238047-Viki-Volunteer-Guidelines

No inappropriate subtitling, which may include but is not limited to: Using a translator program (ex: Google translate, Deepl, Reverso.)

That’s why I’m sharing this to raise awareness to Every French contributor and Every other language. No this surely isn’t only happening with French. This is a thing, people use software to translate and I’m against it.

A few questions run wild in my mind :

  • If we let those people translate with the help of translators, then why are some of us working so hard to get the best quality possible? Hasn’t Viki been always known for its quality? Do we want this type of quality on Viki? Should we all resort to translation software?

  • Should we agree on letting those people use Google translation because they’re helping us finish a drama (that will probably never be edited anyway?) and turn a blind eye?

  • Should we try doing something against these abuses or just totally give up?

  • Why not use Viki’s bot since that would probably be the same, even better actually since viewers would be informed that subtitles were provided by a bot.

And even if Viki’s help center is trying to do its job to the best of their capacities, and to provide a solution to the problem, (Thanks @jeslynl or all our contacts), It’s not enough since it continues occuring more and more.

So let’s all be aware that this exists and is spreading.
And if you’re against it, why not try to make things right?

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Something is going on here that is so not right, but continues to happen more now than ever. As a matter of fact, is even worse now than before. It went into deaf ears before, and I doubt very much it will get any attention now. I hope you do find the support and help you need on this matter bc it seems to me they are turning a blind eye to this problem in every single language (some are worse than others though/quality work wise). The reason? I call it the million dollar question that will never get answered here. I gave up a lot time ago. It’s really not worth it. Going around in circles and getting nowhere. Wish you luck.

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This thing happens in Serbian, too. And I bet in every other language out there.

There is ZERO quality in a Google Translate “translation”. It is not even a translation in my opinion. I laugh in despair when I hear they call what they do “translating”.

Editing these false subs is a freaking nightmare.

And these cheaters are getting gifts from Viki because they just happen to be among the first 50 that month based on their “contributions”.

When these Evil Googlators are reported to Viki for it, they are not being punished in any way. So they continue.

In my book the biggest problem here is not the EGs, but Viki itself. A system to both prevent and punish this is completely lacking. We can’t do anything more. Viki has to take over now.

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So very true! Litteraly have to change every sentence.

Even if they’re not in the first 50, they get Viki pass and they get annual gifts. That’s already much.

Actually, I have reported a few, and things have been done. Though, I had to provide a detailed list of subtiles and comments. Which is really time consuming. And I’m not sure I have the strengh to do it anymore. But only some were punished. Some were not. I’m not sure of the reason. Is it related to how many subs they have, to how many info we provide… Who would have the courage to do all that just to report someone…

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How they are being punished I don’t know. Retracting their sub contribution would be a joke of a punishment. At minimum their QC status should be revoked for 6 months. And after three such strikes they should not be allowed to ever have a QC status.

But one has to report them every time they do it. As you say, reporting takes incredible amount of time because there is no standardized form for this. Time which would be much better used segmenting, translating and editing.

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Viki should definetly enforce its guidelines, that’s for sure. And creating a sanctions’order could be interesting if correctly used. As For QC, I think the first step would be to increase the number of subtitles required, which is ,for now, ridiculously low in my opinion. That would probably diminish the number of contributors who are solely interested in the Viki pass and therefore using bad means to obtain it.

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The EG in Serbian can do 20.000 false subs in one week easy. With such a high contribution number, she’s not doing it for the QC status per se. But she started to contribute on Viki because there is such a thing as a QC status, if you know what I mean.

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Yes it seems to happen more often. And I also noticed is that some languages all of a sudden got really popular to sub into. I get so many finder messages of people who want to sub in Hindi and Romanian. First there where just a few but now it’s almost like French or Spanish in a way. And I also notice an increase of finder messages to sub into languages I never heard of before. And those languages usually are just spoken in a certain city or region of a country. Yes those people can all be genuine but I find it odd. Why take all the time to sub into a language hardly anyone knows? The chances are almost zero someone sees your work unless you sub for a relative. But most never complete the project.

Some say the CM’s need to make sure everyone is following the rules but this problem has gotten too big and if Viki themselves cannot think of a solution how are we supposed to fix it?!

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Now you’ll finally understand my frustration when I saw this terrible subtitles in Spanish done solely with the use of translators by many here, and I spoke tirelessly about how unfair it was that these subbers got high contribution count when they really didn’t deserve it at all. I got flags from left to right, and unfair insults, even from ppl that had nothing to do with the language I was complaining about

Now we have every other language going through the same thing I went through, and we can’t blame the translation software/AI benefiting because in reality behind all that, we have people allowing this to happen bc they are in the game too; benefiting from high number of contributions. I’m not saying everyone here is involved on this, but a large group is, and you can see it for yourself; if you do your research.

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And yes reporting people. I once spend quite some time on collecting evidence someone was cheating. Lot’s of screencaps etc. Sometimes you hear nothing and nothing seems to happen. Yes sometimes they just remove the subs but they keep qc status and vikipass. I once even had to explain why I thought it was best to just suspend the whole account because they where so soft while that user made almost 155.000 fake contributions. This was a few years back though. Not recent.

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Was this among the Dutch subbers? I do remember that one of the subbers just disappeared a few weeks ago…

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No it wasn’t a Dutch subber but someone who abused mainly with the seg timer.

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I reported someone that said she/he knew Spanish, and was immediately put in a team making Goggle translate subtitles in Spanish, and I know those moderators knew those subs were bad translations, but it was displayed in the page, and the person got plenty of the contribution count.

Guess what happened after I did the report? The bad subs disappeared from the page, but the contribution remained the same, and this individual to this day; continues to sub in Spanish although is very obvious this person doesn’t know enough Spanish to be working as an Eng to Spanish subber.

Although I showed evidence (I copied the bad subs BEFORE they did whatever they did) NOTHING was done to this person, and I ask myself, this person can do subs in his/her native language; why sub in Spanish that supposedly they learned in 1 year of College? Another person who lacks in English was a CM for an on air drama no less. These things going on here bc the CEO in charge is not paying attention. We need to know what’s behind all this going on in here bc it makes no sense to me since is not for money (as far as I know no one gets paid here). Or maybe some do, maybe?

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In their mind, a high number of contribution means an important contributor therefore they’re less keen on putting sanctions… I know a french contributor with double that amount that should be suspended, but well…

I also find it relatively strange how a lot of languages I’ve never even heard of are added… I saw esperanto and Latin… Both strange enough…

When you see CM adding Spanish translators as French moderator, I’m thinking even CM can’t follow.

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I once had a user who asked me if she could sub and have mod positions in multiple languages. Which of course can happen if you know more languages but in this case it was odd. In her profile I saw she only subbed in X., she asked me to be a mod for language Y. when I told her there already was a mod for that language she asked for a mod position in Z. and later she contacted for yet an another language and after that she contacted me again that she could help with Korean - English subs. When I asked her if she was fluent or nearly fluent in Korean she never responded again.

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A few months ago I had a German subber in my team for a popular Chinese drama. She contacted me in summer 2020 and her message was written in correct German. When I checked her previous subs, I found out, that she mainly subbed in Italian and she told me, she would be fluent in Italian, too. So I added her and after she completed her first part, I got suspicious. She made many stupid mistakes, although her manner of expression was good. She mixed up formal and informal speech in one sentence and this is typical for online translators. And in the meanwhile she also subbed in French and Greek, too. I asked her, if she would use any online translators and if she was a native speaker. She got angry and told me, she never said, she was a native speaker, she would be learning German and those other languages for years and the quality of her subs would be great. She started a fight and the situation escalated quickly.
So I informed the moderators of the other languages and the CM and was told, that she was added as an Chinese-Korean subber and never as a Greek subber, but did Greek subs and not a single one in Korean. They didn’t know, who added her as a Greek subber. She was kicked out of the teams, after the moderators checked the quality of her subs, which was insufficient and out of my team as well and she was reported to Viki. Her account is now deleted, but I don’t know, if she was kicked out or deleted it herself.

Every time I get a request from someone, who is writing subs in 2-3 languages I get suspicious now. I didn’t heard from the German community about an increase of cheating subbers, we have many newbies, but they can learn and improve their skills.

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The Portuguese community also has its share of Google Translators, we always had. The funny thing (not that funny, tho) is that they try to disguise it so you can’t match their “subtitle” with Google Translator perfectly but after being an editor for some time one can sense when the subs are dubious. I’ve reported many Googlators until today, some were punished, others are still active. The ones who got punished also were reported by other moderators, that’s why, I think, they had their accounts deleted or suspended.

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How do we solve it for all languages (ヘ･･)ヘ┳━┳ :worried:
¯_ಠ_ಠ/¯ :pensive: ┬─┬ノ(ಠ_ಠノ) :frowning: Σ(ಠ_ಠ)
Is it correctable, or able to control by blocking with a code? This is from a clueless fan.

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Until we don’t find out the source responsible for this happening here; we’ll never know how to stop it from continuing to happen in here. I’m here since 2013, and the situation is just getting worse now more than ever.

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Hopefully from Viki’s technical team’s side, they can tweak, or revamp the setup for inputting subtitles.

I feel your pain, on this side of the finished work. Work done by all of the dedicated, and genuine volunteers.

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