Please stop translating the lyrics in the music. Viki has some great k-dramas not found anywhere else. I’m watching the magnificent k-drama Goblin and it by far surpasses everything I’ve heard about it. What I don’t like is song lyrics constantly interrupting the dialogue and cluttering up and detracting from the outstanding cinematography. There should be an option to not have the lyrics subtitled; it’s hard to keep up with and switch back and forth rapidly from song lyric/talk/song lyric/talk/song lyric/talk. I will end my subscription to Viki for this reason after I watching the k-dramas only available there. Korean songs are beautiful without knowing the words. If you want to listen to them with subtitled lyrics there are versions available on youtube.
You are a tiny minority, my friend. There are some more who have said that, I recall, during the 9 years I’ve been on Viki, but they can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Well, that’s fine, but after I get my Viki watch list completed, I will end my subscription for that reason. Luckily I didn’t get the annual or I’d be stuck for a year. Kocowa, Disney, ■■■■■■■ and Prime do not subtitle song lyrics for a reason, probably because it detracts from the visuals by cluttering up the screen and it interrupts the flow of the dialogue. K-drama OSTs are gorgeous enough you don’t need to know what the words mean, I have many of them on a youtube playlist. Inserting song lyrics between dialogue is unnecessary, distracting, annoying at times, and detracts from the overall cinematic experience. I mean, how can you ruin the masterpiece Goblin? Even for a minority, they should have a way to opt out of the song lyric subtitles, if they want to keep the subscribers who don’t want talk lyric talk lyric talk lyric. I was surprised that they do this because it doesn’t make any sense, other than providing jobs for translators. Maybe the people who have bothered to actually comment about it are few, but maybe that’s the reason they stopped their subscription. I’m a die hard k-drama fan and it matters to me, so I’m bothering to let them know why I will be leaving.
That’s going a little far to say a drama is “ruined” by the subtitling of lyrics.
The reason that the other streaming services do not regularly subtitle lyrics is because of cost – they pay the subber either for number of words or number of lines or for amount of time worked. I understand most drama translators do “piece work” rather than are salaried. In fact, when Nfx originally started showing K drama they had instructions in their guidelines to their subbers about lyric subbing.
The kdrama and cdrama producers usually tailor the lyrics to the plot and at certain times specific lines of the song are integrated with the dialogue itself. If you see the music key you should know that the line is a lyric and skip reading it. We try to reproduce the experience of a native speaker when volunteers subtitle. A native speaker would hear and understand the content of songs played in the drama. Viki even provides a shortcut for the italics sign and music note in the subtitle editor so that the subbers can mark lyrics for anyone who wishes to skip them or to read them.
There is a definite minority of viewers who dislike or are distracted by the lyrics. Viki has millions of “hits” every day.
Goblin is a k-drama masterpiece I’ve been wanting to watch for a long time and it’s only on Viki. Inserting the song lyrics actually interfered with my enjoyment of Goblin, even though I listen to the Goblin OST on youtube often. As the series progressed, I found myself hoping the next songs would be instrumentals with lyrics. I did find a couple of other complaints about the subtitled song lyrics in a discussion 4 yrs. and it was dismissed by others (I’m guessing people who do translation work). What Viki is doing is similar to Closed Captioning for deaf people who can’t hear the words in songs, I don’t need to see the words because I can hear them. Also adding extra information in the subtitles like (word play on…) or (…synonym or homonym for…) is unnecessary to the plot and clutters it up. It’s not enjoyable and as irritating as frequent commercials. I’d planned to subscribe to Viki, but I’ll be cancelling my subscription after watching several dramas I can only find on Viki (The Red Sleeve, K2, W, Legend of the Blue Sea, Melting me Softly, Jirisan, Mouse and a few others) but I will be leaving because you can’t opt out of the distracting song lyric subtitles which junk up great films. If Viki DID have a option to opt out subtitled song lyrics, they might be surprised how many users would choose that and even have more subscribers. Kocowa is included w/ Viki, but I will going back to Kocowa after dropping Viki because I don’t want The Tale of Lady Ok or Iron Family ruined by annoying subtitled song lyrics. Here’s the discussion for a few years ago about this subject. It’s my opinion, I don’t want dialogue punctuated with song lyrics or great cinematography marred by song lyrics and I’m sure there are others who feel the same but not enough to take the time to let you know it’s detrimental to the the enjoyment of the film, or like they just quietly unsubscribe. I was excited about finding Viki because it has some hard-to-find k-dramas but thumbs down on subtitling the song lyrics, it’s not good. Thought you’d want to know from a die hard k drama addict. Why not come up with a way for folks to opt out? Problem solved.
More than 5 years ago Viki staff said they’d work on something like an additional box that could be turned on/off by viewers. This would have been also great for all these long explanation lines of Chinese fantasy and costume dramas.
As you can see, nothing improved at all.
(And at least for Chinese dramas I can say that the songs in fantasy and costume stories usually fit to the scenes and are something like the characters’ thoughts.)
LOL make it 10 years they said the same for hearing impaired…
Viki might have “millions of hits every day” but they also offer some free content. But they might have more PAID subscribers like me if there was a ‘song lyrics turned off’ option. So far I’ve watched two dramas. Goblin has a great OST and wonder cinematography, but it was ruined for me by song lyrics constantly interrupting dialogue and cluttering up the screen. I’d like to see Goblin again WITHOUT having the award-winning screenplay and intense conversations punctuated by snippets of song lyrics. The Red Sleeve only had an instrumental sound track, except song lyrics at the end of the episodes where it didn’t matter. IMO the Korean OST are beautiful and emotional enough that you don’t need to understand what the words mean. It’s very disappointing. I will re-subscribe to Kocowa and Nflx after I finish my watch list of dramas that are only available on Viki and I hope the OSTs on those are instrumentals. My advice on subtitles? Keep it clean. It’s hard enough for English speakers to keep up with the pace of dialogue subtitles sometimes without adding it it by inserting unnecessary things like song lyrics and foot notes.
You already said that… twice! I think everyone got it the first time, LOL.
Sorry. I haven’t quite figured out how to comment in the main thread vs. reply to individual. LOL I’m getting notifications in my email.
I don’t see any way to delete the post as a response to a comment. There’s no icon.
It’s the three dots. But don’t worry, no biggie.
I am sorry that you found the song lyrics in Guardian to be distracting. Personally, I noticed on several occasions just how apt the songs chosen were to a particular scene, to the point where sometimes a characters spoken dialogue was put to the lie by the song lyrics in counterpoint, revealing their true thoughts or feelings. This had obviously been a deliberate sound design choice by the show’s production team. This was a deeper layer of meaning that, as a non-Korean speaker, would have slipped past me entirely without the efforts of whomever did the translation. Since then, I’ve been taking greater note of the musical cues and lyrics in other shows, and recognised similarly clever choices in shows such as Iron Family, Reply 1997,1994, & 1988, and Youth of May. I’d like to express a special thanks to those translators who have taken time and care to do this, and for those who add additional footnotes concerning uniquely Korean idioms and cultural references.
@robertwhatman_643
Thank you so very much for your kind and thoughtful response. It is especially for viewers like you that many of us volunteers put in the extra effort. I thought the OST for Guardian was one of the best of all times for K drama and we made a very special effort to ensure the lyrics were consistent through the episodes and correctly translated.
Can you change fonts? Perhaps put the lyrics in italic, so we know that’s the song lyric and not the scene translation?
That’s how it’s always done. The OST is always in italics, and a note symbol before and after.
And when it’s live singing (one of the drama characters singing, for instance if he’s a musician in the drama, or for when they go to a karaoke place), then we put notes before and after, but non-italics.
au contraire, je trouve très bien que les paroles soient traduites, fan de musique et de guitare, j’adore comprendre le sens de ce que je chante et écoute .bien à vous