Yeah, the project finder system does seem kinda weird…im a newbie here too, but i seriously dont get how i can apply to one by just sending like ONE message without even describing what I can do…it must be hard on you guys:( most of the mods dont reply so we’re kinda forced to apply to many at once…
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Welcome on VIKI!
If you like to join the volunteer community the best method is to:
- post in the subtitling thread, saying which languages you can translate, giving some info, e.g. already did some translating work or just want to try it or studying a foreign language etc.
or
- checking ongoing/upcoming dramas on the VIKI main page and then write a message to your language’s moderator, is there is no language moderator for your language, you could ask the channel manager if you could translate as solo subber (sometimes that is possible to)
When you want to know if there is a language moderator for your language you have to scroll down on the drama’s page and then click on the team’s name, then you see an overview for all language moderators.
If you click on your language moderator’s profile you can send an individual message via this message icon (envelope). Best would be to chose a headline like: Hello I’d like to help with subtitles for drama X (drama title) for language Y (the language you want to help with). When you write the message to your language’s moderator you can write in your own language when you ask a channel manager if you can translate as solo subber you have to write in English, adding the language you’d like to work on.
If you look at older dramas - and also some popular new ones - check the episodes too, to see if/how many episodes are already translated in your language (depending on the language you like to sub it can happen that the teams are already full and done with their translation).
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So you don’t know that you can customize the message and write whatever you like on it?
They should have made it more clear! Maybe that’s why so many people just send the standard message without even a word more.
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May I ask what other platform she uses?
It’s sad that you feel that way because there are people like me that are indeed bored because of quarantine, but just found out that Viki subtitles were run by “normal/ordinary” people. I actually found out because I was bored AND wanted to help because not everyone is lucky enough to speak multiple languages. Anyways, when people are new to Viki they don’t know or understand anything (that’s what being new means). The first time I discovered “Project Finder” I thought it was representative of how this works, because thats what Viki tells us. Being new you won’t go against what the owner of this site/app says, so you go on the site that shows episodes and again, being new you think that it works by episodes and not the whole show. Then, when you click on it there’s a message, but to be honest I didn’t realize I could modify it. I was just so excited to contribute, so I applied to like 10 shows because AGAIN, it’s by episodes so you do not think you will be working on the entire show itself. If it wasn’t for that one kind person who told be I shouldn’t use the automatic message, I wouldn’t have known. Now she answered me kindly and I understood, learned from my mistake, and moved on. However, the other 9 that had the same opinion as you decided to ignore me because of the fact that I am “uneducated” instead of actually giving me a chance to redeem myself. And that it not fair. You can complain about people who not responsible, impolite etc…but please don’t put the blame on “being new” because that just destroys the image of those who are trying hard to help others. In other words, please take the time to educate others and give them a chance to correct themselves instead of pushing them aside. (This text is for anyone with this kind of mindset)
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Usually it’s always a circle of reasons and consequences. Everyone’s patience ends at some point (same goes with the time one is able to spend for additional potential never writing again users since time is also a limited resource and those who take their responisbility for the projects seriously have to use it wisely).
The point you did not get is that those who wasted my time recklessly created this opion or maybe I should say founded this decision - before I was always replying to everybody no matter if it was written via project finder or PM.
It’s not that hard to find this forum and ask in a thread for help when you are new. Many beginners do so and mostly those who are asking for help in the forum are those who take the volunteering work more serious.
In every project I moderated my team had beginners who were completely new to subtitling but also to VIKI. I wouldn’t stop working with beginners because being new doesn’t mean being unskilled but showing no communication skills makes everything unnecessary hard and then there is less time left for other team members or other beginners who are able to communicate and doing some own ‘research’ in the way that they write a personal message or a post in the forums.
Of course it’s also up to VIKI to provide better and easier to find information for users that are interested in joining the volunteer community but since they removed the TEAM page from the start page it was a step back and some viewers seem not to know that the subtitles and segmenting work is done by volunteers and not by VIKI as a company.
The volunteers try to make suggestions and give ideas how to make the work behind the volunteering community/subtitles for world wide audience clearer for newbies, how to give the needed information at the ‘first place’ to avoid misunderstandings and frustrating situations but instead the VIKI page becomes worse in many aspects that are directly or indirectly related to the volunteers’ work.
The volunteers can’t change the layout/design/technical aspects of VIKI but your post and others show that certain problems in getting in touch with volunteers is mainly based on design aspects of VIKI so it is good that you wrote that it was not clear for you.
Hopefully VIKI changes these aspects in the future to offer a better start for other beginners and makes it easier to become a part of the volunteer community.
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First of all, thank you for your insight! For us who have been here before Project Finder existed, we find it hard to understand what first impressions it leaves on a potential new volunteer. Generally I understand that the system of volunteering on Viki needs to be learned. Step by step, procedure by procedure, page by page and site by site.
Personally, it took me four whole months of intensive volunteering on Viki to even find this Forum. No, it’s not easy to find these pages. And since the development of the Support pages which are on a completely different web address, it’s even more difficult to land here on the Forum.
Personally, I had made a mistake the first time I started volunteering. Half of the blame lied on Viki for not explaining loud and clear how teamwork functions on Viki. I learned from it and moved on.
And personally, I think it’s more than obvious that if dozens of new volunteers make the same “mistake” by applying to 10 episodes in the Project Finder (not 10 dramas, as you smartly explained), then it is not the mistake of the new volunteers, but of the system.
Don’t worry, no moderator really blames all the new volunteers. We just get these moments when the frustration gets the best of us. We try to include as many people in the volunteering process as possible, we get our hopes up, we rely on promises. Sometimes we get disappointed, sometimes by a lot of people all at once. But, also, sometimes we get new friends. It’s an up-and-down process 
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I really appreciate your kind response and completely understand that it can be frustrating, and for that I apologize. It must be hard working when some people are unreliable. I truly hope we can overcome these situations, and work together towards making this community thrive as much as possible and stay united. Please stay safe and have a good day 
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there may be various reasons why you sometimes get 4 messages in a row, for example:
- because the system doesn’t work properly
- if its on different channels maybe is because of the fact that there are to many applicants and people want to make sure to get a place on at least one project.
On the other side, it is really rude that people don’t answer you back 
You don’t want to know how much it happens that you add someone and they never start subbing.
Last week I received a request from someone who wanted to sub in a certain language on all my CM projects. I asked the person to pick one of them to start with. Didn’t get any reply.
Or the people who ask to be added, you reply you added them and then 4 weeks later you get a finder message from them again asking for the same. Hello I already added you why are you asking again?!
Or the people who ask and then delete the message 10 minutes later… ok then you don’t want it? why PM me then?
So no those finder message’s don’t have my priority at all.
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Yes it happens. Once someone wanted to sub into a language but because I thought I already had a mod for it I double checked first before adding the person. But when I wanted to reply I saw the person already deleted the PM so I deleted the person from the project again. Because to me deleting so fast means oops mistake.
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I should adopt that thought, when someone deletes or leaves the conversation. I should just use “Ablage P” which is used for Papierkorb in German - the bin, the cyber one. 
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It could also be a technical problem when people didn’t receive answers, because recruiters were not notified by the new inbox of incoming messages (happened to me while gone on holidays), but they solved it like yesterday: [Viki Community Team] August 2020 Updates.
If they’re absent:
After a week, send a request again.
If no answer, send to a moderator of your language or English mods.
If no answer again, send to Viki.
They made it so despite someone being absent, it should still be possible to be recruited or get an answer.
Recruiters said on this forum they prefered a personalized request with meaningful info about fluency in at least 2 languages over the standard message of project finder.
What I usually do:
- reply the same day, the following day or 2-3 days later
- max within a week
- 2 weeks if busy
- there are a few times where I read it on phone, but can’t answer right at the moment, then I forgot to answer when I come back home but the message is opened so I assumed I already answered lool
- 99% of the time, I reply by asking people questions, because there is not enough info provided by the sender and most of the time, the sender has used the Project Finder standard message.
- People don’t always reply, I think some use it thinking it’s to ask for subs for x episode?
From the very first message, if people gave the meaningful info recruiters would want to know before recruiting, then I think the recruitment would be faster, the answer they’d get quicker.
The first impression is really important and if it’s a Project Finder’s impression, recruiters don’t like it, so avoid using Project Finder standard message. It doesn’t make recruiters want to answer as soon as possible.
It could be penalizing compared to others who just sent a message they wrote themselves. As a recruiter, I’d reply first to someone who took the time to write me a message with her words, then the project finder’s messages at the end of the pile.
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Yes that too and when I get 5 finder messages in a row for different projects I’m like that person is looking for any project to work on and simply send the message to everyone. Some do reply when I ask them to pick one but others never will.
I don’t need a resume or a whole essay why you want to work on a project but sending all finder projects a message by just clicking some buttons is something else.
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Well, when you’re a complete beginner, you’re okay with any project, that’s how it works. You can’t afford to be picky, you just want to build some experience. When I remember the first dramas I translated, I shudder with boredom. I realized later that those moderators gave me what nobody else wanted. But it was perfectly okay, because by working on those, I slowly got to understand how everything works, and by the time they were finished, I was ready to go around and explore and choose what to ask for.
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Maybe I should have put it otherwise. I meant that people click on the buttons for like a few minutes… So you end up getting like 5 of those messages within 2 minutes. Why send messages to all the projects in one go? Then you might end up with 5 projects or something and how do you plan to complete all those within a reasonable time when you are the only subber in your language?
that’s sad. Hope this matter could be sorted out in the best way possible, so new and old volunteers don’t feel discouraged. 
Hello,
I am a beginner here and would like to expand myself in drama translation world. You mentioned here non-on-air projects, which I find quite interesting to start with. Could you please kindly advise, where I can find these projects or whom to contact? Fyi, my preference is to translate from Chinese to English. However, I am fluent in other languages as well, e.g. Indonesian and German.
Looking forward to hear your feedback.
Many thanks in advance
Regards,
boppytolly_520
Well, there are supposedly four ways to find projects. Unfortunately only two of them work.
1. The project finder method.
As you may already have gathered from the previous discussions, it’s completely useless.
I searched for Chinese to English translation, and there were zero results (I tried with both styles of Chinese). I added that I want the show to be from China and again zero results.. When I know for sure that there are Chinese projects in desperate need of subbers
It’s a total disgrace which puts Viki into ridicule, I don’t know they haven’t given priority to fixing it, before putting so much effort into other stuff. Anyway.
2. The Explore method.
A bit long, but it might yield results. Of course, if you don’t have Viki pass yet, there is no option to filter only those you CAN watch. The only options are “All shows” and “Viki pass”. Yeah, I know, this sucks. One would think that Viki would make the new volunteers’s lives easier, but no, they couldn’t care less. Aaaaanyway.
I also chose TV and that left us with “only” 461 shows. Let’s sort by “New” (menu on the right), so that we quickly go past the first ones which are Fan Channels (not yet licensed), Coming Soon and On-Air. This brings us to the next page. Okay, from here one, you’re stuck. There’s no way of knowing whether those hundreds of shows have already been completed in English or not. No percentage shown on the thumbnails or info. You will have to click on each and every one of them to check.
Fortunately if you hover your mouse on the thumbnail it will tell you how many languages it’s translated into. If there is more than one (English), it probably means that English is 100% complete, right? Wrong! It may be that English, and the other languages with it, are all stuck somewhere in the middle. To be absolutely certain, you have to go to the show, click on the “episodes” tab, choose the last episodes, and see whether those are more than 96% in English. Be careful to have English as your subtitle language before doing that. (It’s done by clicking on any episode of any show, choosing English as subtitle language. Then you will see info about the English anywhere you look)
So that method is also pretty useless, it will take you ages to find something.
3. Writing here on Discussions
There’s the thread “Do you want to subtitle? Let people know”. Moderators have a look when they need subbers, so do leave a post there.
4. Asking the moderators.
I think the quickest method is to go to recent channels (no matter whether they are on-air or recently finished) and mark down names of English moderators who work or have worked for Chinese shows. Go to the show, choose the Team tab and choose English moderator. Better still, scroll down to the so-called “Cover page”, where the roles are detailed. You don’t want an English moderator who is just a General Editor or a Translation Editor, you need the name of the Chief Editor. That’s the one who chooses the subbers. Collect a good bunch of names and keep them on a document, they will come handy in the future as well. You may even keep notes on how they responded to you. Then send a message to each of them, in English, telling them that you are available for in translating a Chinese show if they need help in one of their projects. Include some other info about you, whether Chinese is your mothertongue or how long you studied it or any diplomas you may have or whether you lived in China etc. And be sure to mention whether you have Viki pass or not. The region you are living in is also helpful. Americas (North and South), Asia, Europe, Middle East? Because not all shows are licensed in all regions.
Tip: Don’t write to too many people at once, not more than 3-4 at a time, I would say. What if ALL of them write back offering you a place in a project? How will you handle so many? And it’s a bit rude to decline after you were the one to ask.
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