Viki since you are not listening to the many requests by volunteers and viewers to withdraw the use of the viki bot I am cancelling the auto renewal of my subscription. Also, I was planning to upgrade, but now I have cancelled indefinitely. I don’t want to support a site that doesn’t appreciate its volunteers or viewers.
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You are apologizing for not making your unwanted, untested, ineffective sneaky move sneaky enough.
I don’t see an apology for disrespecting, disregarding and misrepresenting the French community and the rest of the volunteers.
This is the standard “non-apology” and I do not accept it as such.
I want an apology towards the volunteers, not towards your bosses.
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I am against the bots subbing in general because they cannot translate the subtleties and grammar of other languages properly. However, the way Viki approached and implemented it is more appalling–without the subbers’ consent or the viewers knowledge.
Also, Viki if you really wanted to try using bots it should have been done only as a pilot / experimental project and with complete transparency. You could have picked a channel just for this alone and recruited volunteers and viewers to give you back their input and suggestions first. Instead, you disrupted the current system by creating havoc. You ruined the hard work of many volunteers and created many unpleasant watching experiencing for viewers. I am not a subber, but I could completely understand if volunteers where the bot hasn’t been implemented yet also start to go on strike or if users start to leave Viki.
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@camiille
I have a question that bugs me …
I do understand the interest Rakuten Institute’s has about improving their language tool.
But for me I don’t understand how anyone of Rakuten and/or Viki thinks the bot in the state it is now, could be of any help for us volunteers?
I mean …
You should know, how long subbing takes?
Everyone of you ever tried to at least subtitle a 5 minutes long part?
You should know what a different time amount editing takes?
And you shouldn’t try that on a 5 minutes part with a splendid subber at work, why not try a bot translated part. Even deleting the part and writing it new …
Did one of you try it?
We already have an issue with time that volunteers waste on unfriendly comments, everywhere they shouldn’t be (review, timed comment …). Time we could use in a more productive way.
Any good suggestion from Viki, how Viki can save us time?
I am sorry, now there are more, than the one question I thought of.
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Yes!
The very first time I subbed, it literally took me 3 hours to sub 10 segments. I’m not kidding.
On my last project, we didn’t have a TE at first and I noticed our theme song translation was a mess, so I took it upon myself to fix it. Subbing it anew would have been so much faster.
A ridiculous amount of work went into it.
I found the lyrics of the song, had to find out where things went wrong (the theme song started in the middle, our translations were of its beginning) - some lines were the same though, surprisingly. I went through every single line, comparing the full lyrics to our translation to the theme song in any episode. I found a site that converted traditional to simplified Chinese and threw every line in there, then back into my translation (including the Chinese is so helpful to the subbers; this was a mainland Chinese show, simplified chars are used. The traditional ones were hard on me, and I’m positive I wasn’t the only one.).
I was exhausted but still checked everything to make sure no mistakes slipped in (two did! glad I checked ;)).
All this took what, 5h? Simply finding the actual theme song words and subbing those would have been a fraction of the work.
(But BAM this got me promoted to (co-)TE^^)
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I made this to help raise awareness and make a point about how bad machine translations can be. Feel free to share!
I also posted it here: Viki Discussion
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I am not sure about this purely because I am not so sure what Camille said was 100% truth.
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We could always add
“We got the following official response from Viki, so we’re waiting to see what will actually be done before taking any decisions”
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Dear @cgwm808
I told you before, you are a wonder in your job as an editor because the Korean order sounds so complicated. My issue was not with the English translation so much since I was breaking my head trying to make a different/simpler English subtitle from that sentence but I couldn’t. I highly respect you as a person, your dedication here is admirable and I can only say to you my criticism it’s more to my Spanish editors but I tend to generalize things and don’t specify my discontent with some spanish moderators/editors, and especially a good amount of inconsiderate to our language subbers.
My real issue was how bad the Spanish translation was, and yet, it was added in the drama. The others Spanish subs I didn’t added there were even worse (I do have them saved).
I know if I knew the Korean language I would have used/changed that subtitle to help out the other language (s) get a better translation but I know it’s a lot of work so I understand why that subtitle was good enough in this case (it was a popular on air drama too). Time I believe was also the essence.
I really felt something was off in the English sentence so I ask myself why not use that sentence better: ‘‘Watch that tree to your heart’s content and then (just) leave.’’ By the way, I also felt too many words were added in that English subtitle (minute 23:08) with the few words the actress said in Korean. When I translate, I try to pace my subs with the amount of words the actor/actress use.
I really hope you take out of your head that I’m in any way criticizing your wonderful work. For this, I do apologize, if you feel that’s what I’m doing, my most sincere apology.
I think it’s a good idea. It seems there are more viewers who signed the petition.
And what about the dead line proposed by Camille about inactive channels ?
Is somebody communicating with viki ?
I think I’m a bit tired because Anna already answered to my questions.
So, we are still waiting…
I’m still in a little shock at learning all this & I’ve been trying to figure out ways to spread the word besides the CM Notifications…not everyone favorites/follows the dramas. I spent a few hours cobbling the info from the notifications with my own feelings on this & have posted them in the comments on many of the dramas listed that are affected (I fell asleep before I got to all of them)& I’ve still got 275 dramas that are in MY “Followed/Favorites” list to visit that are on my “To Do” list. …then spent this morning going back & correcting an error in the list that was in the notifications 
My battery is at 2% as I write this.
Pardon me l think I’m suffering from a slight case of “battle fatigue” (read that as lack of sleep, horror, ExtreemeStress!) …I’m considering asking my fellow fans to send the following message through the Help Center: "HELP!! The Decepticons have entered the Subtitle Editors of Viki’s Dramas!!. Please take measures to get rid of these ROBOT TRANSLATIONS before they replicate & completely Ruin the Site!!! I want Subtitles from REAL PEOPLE. Not A.I.s!! (Sorry, I’ve been helping my Grandson transform his toys for several years, but I think the reference fits this dire situation)
Does anyone know if I put the link to MY profile Page’s “followed” section in a public’s comment Section if it would violate the TOS in any way? Because my “following” section contains (11) Viki Staff That are “live” & (3) that no longer work “#del” is in front of the IDs that no longer work. I want to know if I can direct fans that don’t get notifications to links that will allow them to complain to the Staff.
I want to help the Volunteers in whatever way I can🌺
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I will do the posting if someone is willing to translate the message for the fans who don’t get notifications. Carefully consider how you want to say it. My pass was gifted to me by the volunteers, so this CHEERLEADER will do whatever I can for YOU.
Just PM me the English with links to the Translations or the Translations themselves this ole Gandma will get it Done as long as I have a working device & internet connection/power…those are the only things that could STOP ME!!!
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Dear, dear Korky,
your dedication and love is really something else. Respect!
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My post in Help Center has been finally approved. See if you wish to upvote it.
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Hello everyone, just want to let you know, don’t know who but someone modify the access to the petition doc, it was not possible to modify anything on the document nor to add anything. I fixed that, so everyone who wanted to sign but couldn’t before can do it now.
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Your post is delet 
now i can see just this ( oops
You’re not authorized to access this page )
what happened?
I helped translate it into Arabic. My efforts were lost in vain😷
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I was able to have access to it earlier and now can’t like others said it says “You’re not authorized to access this page”…
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The Viki Chronicles
ep.16
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