Don’t you want me to talk like the bot does from now? 
I’m laughing not to cry because of what I saw…
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Do you need to manually delete the bot subs for every single segment?
That’ll take ages then…
I think they do… but corporate doesnt care. Here is a response from VIKI support that I found that covered it all… last year…
https://support.viki.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360000696327/comments/360000205428
Since I’m CM on the drama, I just had to delete subs of episodes one by one. Already done now. It’s a 24 episodes dramas and the French team subbed until episode 14.
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That company is Rakuten itself. Briefly,
- About 1-2 years ago (I’m terrible with time, somebody correct me) a bot came in as an experiment on a couple of projects in 5-6 different languages on Viki. French, Spanish, Polish, Romanian etc. I remember @deadliftdiva_548 complaining the bot overwrote translated and edited subs in Legend of the Condor Heroes. If I’m not mistaken, Viki didn’t warn anybody about it. When asked what was happening, Viki responded that they were trying to help the translating community out by bringing in the bot. When informed that ithe bot not only didn’t help, but also created a lot more work for the volunteers, Viki stopped the bot for a while.
- Nothing was heard of the bot for another 6 months to a year. Meanwhile somebody found an article about Rakuten developing a universal translator, AI which could simultaneously translate pronounced words from any language into any other language of the world. Things started to become clearer.
- Next thing is an official notice from Viki that from now on the translators of these 5-6 bot languages have a possibility of using a “suggestion box”, and encouraging the community to use it as much as possible. Needless to say, subbers found the tool to be sub par and almost never used it.
So, I’m coming again to the point I tried to make in some of my previous posts.
Because the subbing communities didn’t use the bot’s “suggestion box” and didn’t give enough feedback to bot’s manufacturer, Rakuten most likely devised a plan to pressure volunteers into giving the essential feedback. By bot-translating already started shows, which the moderators would feel obliged to edit.
Cheap move. And if the French community stays true to its word and doesn’t correct bot’s subs, it’s going to be a completely futile move.
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I have a question. Don’t you think that by deleting the bot’s subs and then writing new subs will still give Rakuten the necessary feedback? Because they probably have recorded everything the bot did, along with the segment timings. So it’s just a matter of aligning the two translations, bot’s and yours.
I’m sorry to pose such an evil, evil question at this point.
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if they wanted to compare the two they could’ve just gotten a copy of the English subs, let the bot translate them and compare the french volunteers’ subs and the bot’s (I mean from an already fully subbed drama)
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True, I thought of that, as well. Maybe they needed Viki’s platform to see if the bot will be able to simultaneously translate these many dramas without a hick-up.
No idea about that. That’s a good question. But for now, since we’re on strike we have time to think about it.
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Ah you removed the bot subs and keep it empty? Now I understand why you removed them.
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Yes, that’s what I did for now. I still prefer fans not to watch or watch it in English than watching it with incorrect subs.
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The worst outcome of this disrespectful action against volunteers is HOW TERRIBLE those translations will be from now on. First, you won’t see any grammar in the translation, so if the sentence requires question mark or a comma etc… you won’t ever see them.
The Spanish subtitles are mainly done with a bot and those are the worst translations I’ve seen in my life. I think it’s a shame they are using this method knowing this needed to be improved before starting to use it as a set translator.
I stopped working in several dramas because I know the English was done by this bot system, so the English subs were terrible, and you all know very well this is a domino effect one falls down the whole set follows and the tower gets COMPLETELY destroyed.
I couldn’t deal with that situation anymore and the fact that this Spanish Moderators don’t even to bother to edit the mess was even more upsetting for me.
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Sorry for going off-topic here but I want to know how you did that. Every time I try it tells me I can’t delete subs that aren’t mine.
as a CM you can delete all subs from an episode on the manager channel option
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I did it with the tools of CM in “manage video”. If not we can’t delete subs if we’re not CM.
I think there are important things in this case.
1. Situation:
A) Respect: it has been years for some that we are on vik (some 10 years!) and we also allowed the progression of this site. Viki site now, a recognized site. Viki imposes something on us without telling us or asking us. They impose on us and that’s all. They do not tell us, they are not honest or sincere with us. Communication is really terribly problematic. We work and spend a lot of time translating, editing, segmenting. We deserve at least a sincere recognition.
B) Robot/machine quality : Translations of this machine are incomprehensible. The quality is terrible. They want us to correct if necessary? If we did it, we should retranslate all over it, it’s terrible. It will take us even more time! Just like, we take a lot more time to correct viki segments and english subtitles. (Do you know that we can refuse viki subtitles on dramas?) I’ve learned it recently too, so we do not really tell us things sincerely.) In addition, we are active teams, French but also English. We are progressing at the pace of the English edition. So, viki does not ask the right questions. In addition, why have 100% translated when viewers will not understand? Why? And, which language is the next one?
2. Action:
We express our dissatisfaction through a strike and a petition. If you find other ideas for making things clear to viki, tell us. Some may think it does not help, but it’s still a way to express ourself!
Links:
Petition: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZzH0pF3dmQNeVWQrE-uHABb1JJariEkaHbzT6MgonN4/edit#gid=0
English message, please spead it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YTMWp5lmi0MYcMbONhS77Siq6GktBZNzyeqnjIAYlbo/edit
French message: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D1GGm5zrqIsTbO8949d2ocC0AgG0058oKa3mt8con-E/edit
Discussion forum: Machine translation from Viki
3. What do we want?
- A sincere PUBLIC apology from viki for their disrespect towards everyone. It is not ONLY the French community, their disrespect is towards all of us, contributors, segmenters, translators, editors.
- We want, the French community, that viki removes the vikibot translations from the dramas on which they added them yesterday. AND LET US FINISH IT OURSELF! We have been working hard since the beginning for them, so what right? The translations we make are those of Viki, but also ours. Do not forget it ! We also have property rights.
- For the future, we want more communication between us and the staff members (with sincerity and honesty, which we have not had for several weeks)
- Other things?
If, one of you or many, have other things to say, please complete this.
(I feel like a union representative lol I missed my vocation. I am not. But I feel it’s important to structure things)
PLUS: Thank you all for your support and help. It’s warm to see so many people united for a cause. Because ultimately, we all want the same thing: enjoy our viki hobby together by providing good translations for viki viewers. Viki is important to us, I mean affectively.
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I wonder if we should add in this cases credits that go like this : "Timing and subtitles brought you by the Vikibot (not the volunteers)@viki.com…? hahahahha
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haha Don’t know what to say about that, that’s maybe a good idea for the future if they decide not to listen to us.
Let’s change all credits of episodes by that if they don’t want to listen and continue in the future, it could be funny to see the reaction of fans who will see that.
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I think so lol it would be great to see that : (italics) timing and subtitles brought to you without our conscent by the vikibot @ viki.com (brakes) TN: we didn’t do this mess close (italics)lol
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