Exactly my point! If they build a system to test the interested volunteers skills by trusted QC before giving them project to work on we can at least grantee a decent quality!
I take a help from other translating websites, specially when I first join and I was still not that sure of my abilities! they are better than before but they need the human touch! They don’t recognize idioms, some are complected ( two words for one action! ) If they didn’t came in the same order ,Google could get it wrong! Some words have different meanings depends in the context! The gender!! Sometimes they bring up names and topics that I had to search for so that I can give the best translation and even adding a note to make the viewer understand what they mean!
So yes we need to test the skill if we want to ensure quality! I don’t think it is a hard thing to do
@guiltyo0o
So yes we need to test the skill if we want to ensure quality! I don’t think it is a hard thing to do
It’s not hard at all. The same way they designed a way to test ‘‘rookies’’ by giving ‘‘us’’ the chance to be tested with this sample videos, and I don’t understand WHY they only did it for Spanish and Portuguese language (they also only used Korean and Chinese dramas) Why not have video samples in Japanese too?
I have this information you can look into it, but it was only offered to Spanish/Portuguese rookies which I’m not a rookie since I had 172,000 CC and was a Gold QC with viki plus pass, but I wanted to start with the new dramas since the dramas/movies I worked on were no longer here so no one could see my subtitles, and the quality work I could offer to the team so I closed my account since it was the only way to eliminate that information from my profile page. I have no regrets on closing it.
So this is what you’ll see before working on the sample videos. Just click on the blur part. I don’t know if we are allowed to show it here so I used Blur spoiler mode… The Link I added there don’t work anyway, but I added just to show that they can design more videos available for everyone in General, to test their proficiency in the English language and guarantee better quality in the subtitles.
I remember that! But I think I couldn’t do it because my desire language was Arabic, I only had the chance to practice when Other mods added me to their projects!
That gives way too much power to the established volunteers who might upvote people they like or downvote people they dislike. Plus, there is no guarantee that they are actually good at the language they are working on. They just became Gold QCs because they made a lot of contributions, not because those contributions were great.
And what can the staff do? Do you really believe they speak all of our languages?
Notice how I did not say your ideas were wrong. I just said they were USELESS. You’re thinking from the perspective of the Spanish community. However, what about smaller communities? Let’s be real. No team has 100 Spanish subbers. At least not now. The biggest teams have 40-50 people and the moderator who has those big teams is a pretty good dang moderator. The rest of the teams at most have 25-30. If Viki does enforce a limit to the amount of subbers, don’t you think this will limit the amount of new people that get accepted? Most moderators will want to work with people they know, while rejecting possible new volunteers who might be better. You keep saying “back then”, but what might have worked back then might now work now. Ideas that might have seemed good back then might not be the best now. This is the present, and solutions need to be tailored to our current situation. Also, you keep mentioning the Spanish community, but what about the other communities? The needs they have are very different. What works for the Spanish community will probably not work for other communities. Again, look at the 5 moderator rule. It works for Spanish because we have a lot of people. But smaller communities are struggling with that rule. Many dramas/movies are not being subbed.
You mentioned testing the English proficiency level of moderators, and I agree. However, who will test the proficiency? Will Viki hire people for each and every language? Let’s be real they won’t. If this job gets left to other subbers, people will most likely want to pull strings. And those people checking will think they are the “it people”. I’ve been told this is what happened with the Spanish subbing academy and why it had to be closed.
Why they will like or unlike someone they don’t actually know or even contact with before! And to avoid favoritism they can do it anonymously so they will not know the person who they have to give their feedback to his work! And if they are not good in the first place that is because of the poor system of recruiting volunteers, which we want to overcome it.
About the Staff and their language! I will aware they don’t have a staff that know all the languages!! But they could figure a way to deal with the situation! Or just give them the chance to start to build their own language community! Simple
Oh dear, I’m already handful, I have 2 solo projects, one of them I am already a mod, I’m done with the practice a while a go! and I am heading my way to become a Golden QC soon
OMG, that’s huge numbers! Good for you really! I joined two projects with teams, one of them only the mod and me and another lady that really active, there were other ppl but not committed to the project, we already finished it. same goes with the second project, only me and the mod working on it, but it is on hold because we are busy with other projects!
I work ALONE in two projects! Numbers bigger than 2 digits is a something I can’t dream of in our community!
But quality must come first, there is no granted solution to it, but if they could build a system why not?
Well, Spanish teams may have many subbers in their team, but usually (based on my observations) when they assign work (give the ‘‘Go’s’’) out of the 16 in the team; they send the message to, only 6 of them keep getting assigned parts. I got a 15 minute part once, while the favorite 6 got a part in all episodes to be subbed. When a part could not be done by any of those 6 subbers, the moderator takes the part and does it herself! Although I offered myself plenty of times to be able to do any part that was assigned (but the person couldn’t do it for whatever reason) it was never offered to me. What this tells me? They don’t care to finish the episode faster with Quality work included because all they really want, is to hog it all for themselves. It’s more evident now since the 5 moderation rules limit how much ‘‘hogging’’ they can do. But I have seen plenty and saved enough evidence that proves they found a way to break rules, hog as much as they can, and get away with plenty of things. I believe the controlling groups we have here took the reigns again and we are back to square one.
I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but I mainly worry about my native language, and that’s why I speak out about things done wrong with my SPANISH language. Just like I do; every other community (OL) should speak out, and defend any wrongdoing with their language. The needs the OL may have, and what can work for their communities, don’t have to be resolved with my suggestions or ideas since I already have more than enough on my plate. Don’t generalized what I write here and my concerns and issues regarding the spanish language with other issues OL may have because then, and only then, you can say my ideas are useless. I really wish the ones in charge (owners of this site) could take their time to investigate more, and pluck out the weed we have here from the blooming flowers; so the garden can flourish in quantity and quality in equal amounts.
You are/were what I would call a persistent, motivated and resourceful new volunteer. Firstly, you did not get discouraged by first rejections. Secondly, you managed to understand or were explained the volunteering system on Viki well enough to find a work-around for your problem. Lastly, you took any chances you got for translating even though you were not interested in those projects, and reached your goal of 3000 subs.
But you are more of an exception, than a rule
We are all aware that in order to implement their rule of not discouraging any volunteer from contributing, VIki is obliged to lower or keep that initial threshold for newbie volunteers in small languages not raise it.
Any new apprising/reviewer system system on VIki has to be double-blind. Meaning anonymous from both sides. Those who grade the submitted work (reviewers) cannot know who the author of the submitted work is. Authors cannot know who the reviewers are.
Which is why their current idea of new volunteers (authors) submitting the short test video sucks!
Agreed. Which is why there are two solutions to this core issue for small languages:
Either Viki permanently hires (on hour basis) experienced professionals of each small language to review the submitted work.
Or Viki first hires these profesisonals to test the experienced volunteers. And after finding fitting individuals for each small language, they create their own permanent reviewer team on Viki made entirely of volunteers.
In any case, the ball is in Viki’s court. After all, they need to create this digital reviewing system. We can’t do anything (substantial and objective) on our own here.
@irmar, I know you’d be interested in this topic, as well
P.S. the short video can be used for other languages asides from the ones on the list. One can write Croatian translation into what is for the computer system officially Spanish.
I’m not so sure if they could find and afford staff for all those languages, but if they do, I fear the day we get to read: This drama will be presubbed in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Croatian
So it cannot be on existing channels, because there you can clearly see who wrote what. They’d have to make a special place for that purpose. And the material? It cannot be old, already translated dramas. It cannot be dramas which haven’t aired yet. If it’s compiled sentences, soon the volunteers will make a database of them and friends will inform friends of the contents so they can be prepared.
It’s tricky!
I think she didn’t mean that the paid staff will have to be full timer, it is only for a period of time untill they put the base of a good volunteer QCs. They could do it a language at time! They start with the common languages. Like every quarter of a year they choose a language and so on.
No, it can’t be. What’s done is done! Better to do the approved qualification method to newcomers After putting the base of assuring that the QCs that volunteered for testing the newcomers can be trusted.
I don’t think it has to be a clip at the first place, it could be a random text, paragraphs, liners, and they MUST be randomly assigned, and changed every once in a while.
Every thing could ppl have a work around in it no matter of what, but I think most of the ppl who joined they didn’t know anybody in the community and they build friendships over time.
I know what she meant, but that is how things go on Viki. Originally, all shows came unsubbed. Segmenters would create segments, the CS would check them, the English subbers would come in and their work would be checked by 3 editors, after with the Other Languages could start their work. Everything was done by volunteers, from scratch.
Nowadays, almost all shows come with English presubs. Part of those are subtitles from the content provider that came with the license, but nowadays, most shows that don’t come with presubs from the content provider get segmented and translated into English by the staff and all the volunteer segmenting and English teams can do is check their work (and even that is sometimes disallowed or discouraged).
More recently, we have presubss in Spanish and Portuguese as well, which is ridiculous when you look at how many Spanish and Portuguese subbers there are among the volunteers. And lately, we’ve had several movies that could only be translated (or edited in case of presubs) into a handful of languages while all other languages were blocked.
All Viki cares about are the viewers who might fill their wallets, not the blood, sweat, and tears of the volunteers who help them realize that, and they won’t hesitate to wipe us off the map.
I think it should be a designated channel, just like the NSSA has one, with:
all new contributors, who wish to be tested, added under an alias such as DutchSubber_1, DutchSubber_2, CroatianSubber_1 etc.
permanent reviewers should be added under the alias ItalianReviewer_1, GreekReviewer_1, etc.
there should be at least 100 different episodes on the channel to prevent repetitive material and misuse
they should be random from each other
preferably very old and therefore relatively obscure (for our current Viki newbie volunteers anything older than 2015 is old-old)
comprising of all 3 major origin languages for cultural context: Korean, Chinese and Japanese
and having modern, historical, legal and medical language
episodes should not be visible to those who are not added to the “team” as subbers
I think this is doable with regards to coding. Yes, Viki’s efforts would be needed. And yes, they may think it’s easier to just hire translators. It’s very tricky!
Like the Training Channels? That might work. Then maybe they can choose a channel that is about to lose its license and save it in the “review channel,” which can’t be searched for and doesn’t appear in Explore/Categories/whatever. And because the license is gone, no one can prepare in advance by watching the regular version of the show.
Would they need a separate account for that?
So those 100 episodes would be of at least 3 different shows?
They wouldn’t need a separate account if the coding is done properly. The reviews one gets should be connected to their public account in order to be useful.
Yes, bare minimum. But better at least 10 shows. Mock Translation notes for each of the different shows and each language required could also be used.
Controversial opinion:
I think the fact that some dramas don’t have a beggining of translation is good. Hear me out.
It the past a lot of dramas were started and not finished. For example the first 6 episodes are translated, next 6 have 50% completion of each episodes and the next 6 ep have nothing. And noone has been working on it for 2 years.
It makes people waiting for translation and people who started watching frustrated. The drama shows in the category of subbed things, but it’s not subbed.
Taking over such project to complete is more difficult than taking a new, untouched project.
Less projects started also makes translators “condense” in fewer projects, so in result those projects will get completed.
There are things, that I don’t like/hate with 5 slots for projects, but I think in my community it works well.
So true! I been there! And honestly this is the reason why I joined the community! A lot of shows not completed, so I had to complete\watch them in other streaming services! One of them was a 20 ep show, it got translated till ep17!
They are still working on it on snail steps, I offer to help but got no answer, and till now it’s not completed! I know now that subbing needs a lot of time! For a part of 7 to 10 min I had to work for 3 hoers sometimes! If only one subber working on it it will definitely took too much time! I could understand if the subber don’t want help after going through 17episodes, but 2 years for a project, I think it is not done!
I think the role of 5 projects is good, it will help QC to focus on what they have instead of going around 10 projects and none of them complete.
For me I prefer to work one project at a time if the show is already completed! 2 to three months is a decent period of time for a project specially if you work alone!
But they need to think about testing volunteers before giving them the freedom to work, and then they will not need a QC mod to guide the newbies so they could join projects they are interested in and work even if the project doesn’t has a language mod.
