Spanish presubs are awful 🤦‍♂️

[valneijr]

@henrri_11

P.S @valneijr Could you help us with the Portuguese-English translation of some reviews, please

Sure

“It’s an anticipated drama, a great cast and surely it’ll be amazing. Today I was excited to watch it on viki but the subtitles are awful. It’s even awful than automated subtitles. Honestly, if you’ll do something, do it right. Please, take a better care with the subtitles, specially with cdramas. I don’t see this happening with kdramas”.

“Unfortunately I couldn’t watch it, awful subtitles. I hope the editing can make the subtitle goes from 0 to 10, I’m watching somewhere else. I won’t prejudice a cute drama because of the subtitles.”

“Guys, you can comment about the subtitles, but don’t review the drama with low ratings. Low ratings are not for the drama, but for the subtitles. So let’s say the subtitles are bad, but don’t let the drama have a low rating.”

“This drama seems to be amazing with such good actors, but the subtitle is awful. Unfortunately I can’t watch like this.”

“Can you improve the subtitles? I’m enjoying the story but the subtitles aren’t good.”

“Gosh, such a bad translation, I hope they make it better, it’s terrible for watching, I was so excited to watch but I’m in agony. Remember, we pay for this so the service should have excellency! 0 for the subtitle, 9 for the story.”

“I won’t rate it badly, but the Portuguese subtitles need to be edited immediately. They’re shameful.”

“High rating for the Cdrama because I know it worthy, but 0 for the awful subtitles. ATTENTION VIKI!”

“I want to watch it but so many people are complaining about the subtitles! They should fix it”

[alyzee_26_232]

Totally right!

[moreenke]

Well, well, well… Here we go again.
I can only agree with what’s been mainly said above. With the boom of asian content and dramas in particular, I do get the competition is more fierce and to stay neck and neck with the other platforms @vikicommunity want to put the episodes out with subtitles in many different languages like they do. But like it’s been well said before, viewers do not just want the subtitles quickly but they want good subtitles, especially when Viki has been known these past years for its relatively good quality subtitles. Proof is, they are already complaining about it like @henrri_11 and @valneijr showed us. It was already sad to see the English and Portuguese communities lose their subbers and become teams of editors, but it’s not a reality that can be applied to all communities.
I’m strongly against presubbed dramas in so many languages, especially when there are contributors doing their best, the latest expansion of the NSSA in different communities so we can have more good subbers and new contributors still coming in through the project finder. It’s such a shame to have to refuse them.
I sincerely hope @vikicommunity will listen to us, its community.

[mas4]

With the presubs, the drama is not watchable at all. Personally, I’ve already started watching dramas elsewhere because of this. I think they’ll only listen when they start losing subscribers. We, volunteers, don’t pay subscriptions, so they won’t care if we leave.

[irmar]

People are funny. I mean the viewers. Especially the Spanish and Portuguese ones. In the past they were whining no end, saying that they want the subtitles quickly, because they’re paying and bla bla bla. So Viki bent backwards to give them what they wanted, and now they are whining again because the quality is not good and they demand quality, since they are paying.
Hey, you cannot have your cake and eat it too! If it’s so quick, of course it won’t have quality. Even if the translator is reasonably good, if pressured for time, s/he cannot possibly give the best result nor edit in detail.

[mizcoffy]

It’s no need to ask Viki to improve the Spanish presubs but to take out it. As volunteer who take so much time to create subtitles of quality, it’s unbearable to see my work, the work of all the volunteers put down at machine’s level ! English don’t allow this translation for all the reasons already mentionned…
And now, the NSSA Academy is currently training new quality translators. Why ? To fix machine translation ! I don’t want take hour to fix these presubs !

[lapagemj]

And French too now

[thaly1209]

I am mainly writing to express my concerns regarding the escalating trend of pre-subtitled (pre-sub) content in the Spanish language, and its impact on our translation processes.

My main concern revolves around the quality of these pre-subs. While they may seem helpful at first, they often need substantial revisions to align with our standards, which ends up doubling the work for our team. What used to be a straightforward translation process is now becoming more of an editing-heavy task, which puts extra pressure on our resources.

At first, pre-subtitled movies were quite rare, but lately, we’ve been seeing more and more content—including series—arriving with pre-subs. This shift makes me wonder if we’re heading towards a model similar to what we’ve seen in Portuguese communities, where projects come pre-subbed from the start. If that becomes the case, it could significantly change how we work, focusing more on editing and quality control rather than translation.

And as Chloe mentioned, not everyone wants to focus on editing. What will we do with volunteers who prefer translating but find themselves without that option? Reject them? This could lead to volunteers feeling disconnected from their roles, and I’m concerned about the potential impact on our community.

[bemyself1999]

This is so sad, I wanted to contribute in this show and then I started watching it and within 10 min had to switch to watch in English I hope Viki does something about this situation and prioritizes quality over anything else.

[manganese]

@irmar

I know for certain the English are not machine-translated. (Maybe some of them?)

I’d say that some are almost certainly machine translated. Earlier this year, I worked on some Chinese dramas and the segging and English subs were woeful. These things have improved considerably in the recent shows I’ve worked on.

[lyla]

(1st paragraph only)

“NOW
I need to thank the attention given by the translating team which, after reading all of our complains, assumed their own mistake (and this is for the strong ones) and redid the subtitles. I’m going to give it one more try and start watching again. Thank you very much.”
__

“Assumed their own mistake”…
__

No comments.

[mas4]

How unfair… To avoid this, Viki should add the info on every presubbed drama: “Not by volunteers”.

[bozoli]

Actually, segmenters or the Spanish/Portuguese etc. Moderator should add “Subtitles likely machine translated and waiting for human editing” in the segment for team credits ASAP, before the release to OLs and the editing even begins

[feyfayer]

I’ve seen dramas where people in the TCs commented that the subtitles still needed to be edited by the volunteers, but not everyone reads the TCs / depends on when those were written. Your idea of having the segmenting team or moderators add a disclaimer in the team credits would be visible to all the viewers / those who pay attention to the credits .

[irmar]

So maybe the Chinese? Because they definitely weren’t in all the Korean dramas I’ve worked for in the past couple of years (I know, that’s not a lot of dramas!)

[deval_chloe]

@irmar Definitely on Chinese dramas, it is more common to have not good English presubs than on Korean ones.
It was almost 2 years ago now, but I will always remember “Women Walk the Line” presubs when I was adjusting segments there. Somes of the worst presubs I saw.

You can find many people in reviews saying English subs were a mess.

Just put a few examples here, but there are many more.

[mirjam_465]

@irmar

So maybe the Chinese?

The worst ones I ever saw were in a Thai drama. Example: a big sign with the name of the company (in English) was “translated” as Mr. Viagra.

[irmar]

That’s doubly terrible because they think it’s the volunteers.

[crimac]

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the entire team working on the drama. (BJW) CS team is releasing episodes as fast as the wind, allowing the Spanish and Portuguese moderators to step in right after the segmenters to fix the bigger mistakes. Everyone is working incredibly hard, and I also want to extend my gratitude to the English team, with amazing TEs who are both fast and efficient, helping the CE get the episodes back on track. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart!

[tetimo37_788]

Thank you Henrri !
In France too, I have applied several times for a project that interests me and they tell me that the project has arrived pre-translated and there is only editing to do, so no recruitment of subtitlers… And I’ve already participated in this kind of editing on pre-translated Japanese films. Really too bad.
Translate for me has become an outlet to get off my mentally exhausting work. I have great pleasure in doing this and also to exchange with teams that over time become a small social landmark, a nice appointment often. I really regret this cheesy tendency to use poor quality machine translations that need to be corrected anyway because nothing will replace human intuition in translations.
If Viki continues they will lose subscribers and volunteers especially.