This entire situation is a really crappy move for Viki to pull. I translate Chinese-English when I can, but I also still feel like I can’t ignore this. If they can do it with the French translators, they can do it with anyone eventually.
I’m studying French, Portuguese, and Korean in my free time, and finishing off my Chinese studies right now. I want to be able to translate accurately so that people can get the feeling and emotion of a show, and a bot can’t do that effectively. Not even the most accurate bot.
It’s really inconsiderate of the people who put so much time and effort into their work.
As someone who both uses Viki to watch shows and to translate: If Viki wants to lose their viewers and their volunteers, they can go right ahead with this. Because I don’t think people will put up with it. It’s an extremely corporate and to be honest, greedy move.
Should we all, all languages, stop our work until Viki responds? I don’t know.
AI will never be able to truly fill the place of the hard-working volunteers of Viki.
La langue française est sans doute une des langues les plus riches au monde. Elle est reconnue pour ses nuances dans l’expression des sentiments. Laisser une machine traduire c’est enlever toutes ces nuances, sans mentionner les fautes de grammaires, les concordances de temps… tout ce qui fait que le français est une langue subtile et difficile à appréhender, même pour les natifs que nous sommes. C’est pour ça que je suivrai cette grève, même si je suis moins active ces derniers temps sur les traductions. C’est un non-sens et c’est incompréhensible !
French language is undoubtedly one of the richest in the world. It is known for its nuances in expressing feelings. To let a machine translate it’s like removing all these nuances, without mentioning grammar and all. Is it all that makes French a subtle and difficult language to learn, even for the natives. That’s why I’ll be following the strike, even if I’m less active lately. It’s a complete waste to let a robot translate our beautiful language.
You view the situation as: it’s better to have subs than not to have subs. It’s better to use the bot, than to wait for irresponsible people to translate.
However, what do you say when the quality of such a translation is so bad that the viewer doesn’t understand what the scene is about?
I have stumbled upon such “translations” before. And as a viewer, I abandoned the show.
The truth of the matter is translation which makes no sense repels viewers. It disappoints them.
Until the bot becomes massively more advanced (at least for French), it should not be used here on Viki.
Hola lyla, eso también esta pasando. Pero ese es solo 1 de los casos.
También el viki bot les está reemplazando los subs en los dramas que están con equipos activos y que tenían subs. No solo pasa con los abandonados. Por los abandonados no tenemos excusas y uno debe hacerse responsable. Pero bozoli tiene razón.
La única forma en que esto tiene sentido es que quieren coger a viki como el laboratorio para desarrollar sus software de idiomas y nosotros somos los cerditos de guinea que trabajamos gratis para perfeccionar sus bots. Y eso no es así.
Ellos esperan que editemos los subs horribles que hacen. No mas espera que español va para la misma también.
About 1% of Something, there was the issue that it was an older Kdrama and Viki was able to get the translations. We where working on it just fine and suddenly I saw my segments drop and someone elses segments where completely removed and she ended up with a -3. I PMed that segger to let her know and she was really upset. What happened was that Viki removed our segging work for some episodes in order to add the English subs they had. I guess our segs didn’t always match the sub file so it was easier for them to delete it all and autoseg/sub. After that incident happened, along with some minor issues I will not mention here as it isn’t relevant, I never worked on that channel again because why would I if they think a machine was better then the segging team?!
So with the auto french subbing I now also start to wonder: what impact will that have on the English subs or segments? We seggers sometimes have to cut sentences in more segments due limitation of characters per segment and reading. So then you have to listen to 3 segments to to go from BCA to ABC if you know what I mean. How is a machine which most likely subs per segment is able to do that?
adding to that, going against volunteers when they’re the heart of your organization is a ridiculously bad move. this won’t grow the site, it won’t bring more people in, rather it will repel them. i’m sure some people have left because of bad management, when instead they could excitedly tell others about this amazing place (that is to say, if viki worked with us, not against us or in spite of us, to make it that). but viki doesn’t make it amazing for us, it takes it from us more and more.
and I’m with you, if the subs suck and they’re one of the main reasons I’m here, I’ll stop watching and not bother anymore with a show - or a site.
Viki standards vs volunteers standards: I am afraid.
Why?
-Because they are not volunteers and they don’t segment or subtitle or didn’t follow a segmentation training.
How can they know what we know or what we consider as “quality”? They have no idea, I think.
-That is why it’s best they try to volunteer and follow nssa segmentation course to know why we do some things like that, why we need English edition, volunteers can explain them and they can understand what a minimum of quality is.
-Sometimes, I feel like we care more about the website’s quality than Viki… bot, autoseg…
Justine and I translated and edited 1% of something really quickly. Our team was little. We had 3/4 persons in the team. Persons who where there were really active
We even tells you that your first choice about the french moderation was not the best. We help you and accepted to translated and edited this drama because we care about quality and completion. Not because we wanted this drama. We are busy!
I think you can have your opinion. But please consider that this is not about number but persons. We are 3 subbers on ever night drama 60 episodes. We have many other chinese dramas like that. But we do it. Because we care. We fight for quality and comprehension.
Viki don’t speak with us. And even if they do, we are doing already our best.
Responsibility is for french moderator but also CM to check and verify the completion.
If vikibot translate there will be nobody who will understand. Rapidity but no comprehension. That’s just stupid. Don’t you think? You will have more complain and no one will correct vikibot translation. You cm will have to deal with it yourself.
We fight for translation but also quality. We need more time with humans than robots. Yes. Thats right. We have pro and family life… sorry for that.
We can give them their propper credit for their “work” not to give them credit per se, but to give ourselves credit for not creating that mess in the eyes of the viewers.
To protest and to let them know we are not agree we won’t sub. But I’m afraid that if all ON Air dramas CMs don’t join us on this one we won’t cause a huge impact. Because on air dramas is what brings more people daily so…
That could be the best choice for making viki to answer directly about this matter clearly and without double standards and without vague answers. BUT… that is a very personal choice that each one of us has to make. I’m the CM of one On Air drama and I told the team they could choose not to sub until all this is solved, but we cannot make people do to it if they are not agree.
I made a post on Instagram, I identified Viki on my post… If everyone can do the same on their social accounts it will be great !!! Fighting everybody !!!
I’d only not subbing for all languages if a drama has just few episodes done.
The reason is that if all volunteers for all languages (or just say a large amount of volunteers for actual dramas) that have been already subbed for several episodes like 50% of all or 70-80% of all suddenly stop and do not finish such a project VIKI may delete and remove the already finished subs as well. Then all the time and work the teams did is gone for nothing.
I guess there are many new and maybe hyped dramas that may have just few or little finished episodes that may be suitable for a strike. That includes also the English team with the origin => English subbers, editors and segmenters.
Although I don’t feel that striking is a bad idea but we need to first make it clear which channels are on strike so that the difference between people who are on strike and lazy people would be clear.
Or make a list of striking contributors…
Something like that. You can also make an announcement about it in channels that are on strike if you want to get the attention of viewers.
I think the CMs should organize that if they want to do a strike for certain channels plus write it in the subs as info for viewers.
Something like: Dear viewers because of being replaced by bots your volunteers won’t translate any new episodes right now…thanks for your appreciation.
Otherwise the viewers may not know what is going on. I don’t think many viewers visit the forum to check this issue.
There is another app that has boot-translations and I dropped so fast cause NOTHING makes sense! If Viki wants to do this then they would be loosing a lot of good people, myself included. Do not forget Viki that you are not the sole platform for Kdramas anymore, DF might not exist anymore, but there are others taking over.
Not only is Viki being disrespectful to those who work hard to translate, edit and PROMOTE each drama that this website has, but also to its costumers. This is not bout money, it is about respect and this app is losing mine faster this year alone.
I hope for a prompt respond from them soon, and solutions are bring to the table cause this is so ridiculous!
You also need to mention what the viewer can do to help us.
You need to invite them to help such as inviting them to read this discussion or something like that.
I am no professional so I don’t know what exactly would be effective.
But as a viewer I feel that you need to make them know that this is not the end of viki because that’s what I felt when I first read it. And that their help is necessary for us and our subtitles to be back.
