I guess in a way I cheated myself in. I hope that this tip may help some of the newbies in the smaller language communities. I dodged the Viki Pass issue irmar talked about and the 0 experience issue mirjam_465 told us in this manner:
I found an older Korean drama for which only the first couple of episodes were translated in my language and apparently was abandoned. It was also free to watch for anyone at the time. I liked the drama so I wanted to finish it and applied. My luck was that my language moderator, who was also the only translator for my language, became inactive. I couldn’t reach her by message so I went straight to the Channel Manager and asked her by message to add me to the team. Which was no problem bc there was already a moderator in my language. Even though the mod was inactive, the channel manager gave me a chance! (Just like mirjam_465 said: I can’t be added to a team when there is no mod bc of my 0 exp.) I translated the remaining 14 or so episodes. Because the drama wasn’t airing then, there was no pressure and I could take my time to get acquainted with the translation tool and slowly gather 3000 translations to became a QC.
I’m not sure if there is still no need for a Viki Pass for this particular drama. But it was the case then and so I bypassed the issue irmar talked about. That was 2 years ago.
Little disclaimer: I do think that being under supervision when you start out is the best way. A moderator in your language who can be like a mentor and tell you the common mistakes in working as a subtitler. Also an experienced editor is important. But I found out a lot myself so I corrected some of my former mistakes and I got better at it. Now I can use the Project Finder to apply to become a moderator myself and I can pick projects that I really like. But let me remind you, my language community is rather small (and ‘gezellig’) so this will probably not apply to the Spanish, Portugese etc. communities I suppose.
Hope this helps and good luck!