If they watch the drama and understand all the nuances, I don’t see a reason why not?
I don’t think the fact that a moderator leaves the editing to someone else or shares it is necessary a bad thing? Or that it’s neglecting the duty.
If the subtitles turn out great, there are no mistakes in the translation, what is the problem? I think the main goal is to give people good subs in a timely manner, the way it’s done is less important imo.
But I’d like to note, that it’s more difficult to find a good editor in a smaller/medium languages (which I think we both are a part of) and the in reality almost all moderators there should edit, because noone else will do it.
You and I are in teams where we don’t have the choice to delegate that much. Big languages don’t have a realistic choice to work on their own or with very few people. They have lots of people begging them to be in their teams. Should they disappoint the fast majority just to do more themselves?
Exactly. Moderators have to make things happen, either by doing them themselves or making sure others do them. The end result is the responibilty of the moderators, how they get there is (as long as they don’t break any rules) their choice (or their faith, since the kind of community they’re in determines a lot).
Watching a drama and editing it is two very different things. We miss out on a lot just by watching. Especially with regards to consistency and nuance.
I think a CM must have faith in one person, the Mod, because of a very practical reason - they don’t know the language themselves. But they can’t have faith in a whole chain of people, especially if they don’t know who these people are for each language.
The Mod is the main responsible person for the quality of their language. If they don’t put their fingers in the dough, they can’t know that this is true. They can guarantee it by having full faith in their Editor, but they can’t know. And therefore that guarantee is not very meaningful.
To put it in other words, if this has become a stale practice for some languages, I think chief editors of those language should also be added as language moderators.
I’m not sure I understand this argument. Because you’re not taking anything away from a subber if you’re editing their work. Or… did I misunderstand something?
When I was working alone in a drama back in 2013? (only for a while since one of the controlling group came to take over the drama), and I really didn’t mind because the project required those extra hands since as a Moderator in the drama I was doing all the work in editing, and in some cases most of the subtitles too. Mind you, this drama was untouched for years, but the moment I started working on it, everyone criticized the work I was doing in there, and wanted to take over it for whatever reason .They also started writing bad review,s and attacking me here and there, but I dealt with it as best as I could, and the drama was finally after years of being untouched, finished completely. I have to add, I also had several wonderful supporting working staff there that I will always be so grateful of meeting them and working with them at RViki was a privilege to me.
When a situation like that arises; the work required by a Moderator changes to meet the expectations of Quality and Quantity in equal amount in the drama we are working in, and rules need to be bend/change accordingly. That is why when I said Moderators should not be writing subtitles or editing it was bc in the Spanish teams they have close to 100’s of subbers, and also many Editors to cover those parts. I never said all Moderators in all OL must not write subtitles or do editing (I have to check and edit that if that’s what I wrote), my apologies if I did so.
However, @bozoli opinion that is a must? for moderators to write subtitles, and do the editing; leaves me perplexed since in the case of teams comprise with a huge large group of editors and subbers, they will be sort of ‘‘painted in the wall?’’ and won’t have much to do if the Moderators does all the work/him or herself. In that situation then, all the contribution count will go to that Moderator?
I read somewhere that is no longer the case and Moderators don’t get contribution count when writing subtitles or editing, but I also haven’t been able to confirm that so far. In the case of OL where the teams are so small editing and writing subtitles makes all the sense in the world for the Moderator to cover all those positions, but not if the team is large enough to meet all required positions, and get their well deserved contribution count. I also don’t think that the Moderator decides the size of their team like @bozoli stated here since some most OL can’t even find editors or subbers to work in dramas/movies/shows etc. Like @mirjam_465 responded to @bozoli
mirjam_465
You and I are in teams where we don’t have the choice to delegate that much. Big languages don’t have a realistic choice to work on their own or with very few people. They have lots of people begging them to be in their teams. Should they disappoint the fast majority just to do more themselves?
In the case where I was strongly objecting with the Moderators in the Spanish team (that I was working in) for them, not to do any Editing or Subtitles; it was really because they were obviously ‘‘Hogging’’ as much as they could all the contribution count by taking away the work they had plenty of subbers and editors to do. Another thing they were doing controlling the Go’s/locking and unlocking the channel and working in them, but denying the subbers the chance to do the work they were looking forward to do (myself included). The worst part of my situation that their editing was terrible since their proficiency in the English language lacked so much, and I even told them not to dare to touch my subtitles and mess up my translations that was good enough, to be replacing it with their Google translate editing work. Although I reported them several times, I guess their supporting system managed to delete my report, and to this day they are working in so many dramas /movies/shows etc. and when I request to be added in the teams I get the ‘‘team is close’’
I wonder why…
More than misunderstanding that argument, in my personal opinion you are totally contradicting yourself since plenty is being taken away when a Moderators does the work others are assigned in that team to do. If an Editor was appointed in a drama is because they meet all the requirements to be an Editor. I have encountered Moderators that can only function with Grammatically correct, and every source of translation tool they can get their hands on, and you have to agree with me on that bc it can happen in any language; where a Moderator is assigned to work in so many dramas, and they lack so much proficiency in the English language which no one can debate is a must.
PS. Unless you are talking that as a Moderator they need to be doing the editing in their native language ( in your case;Croatian?), and not doing editing in the English subtitles like I thought you was since when it comes to English subtitles is very crucial they are as accurate as possible so all OL can have an easier task when they are translating the subs from English into their own language.
If the moderator of a (potentially) huge team is subbing and/or editing, then they are doing something many others could have done and thus taking away opportunities.
I don’t see why not? I’ll explain why.
Yes, watching and editing are two different things. However, going through each episode to make the document and watching are also two separate things, at least in my opinion. When we go through the episode, we focus on the details. Working on an episode to update the document can take 2–3 hours, and that’s just for a 30-minute drama. Your statement implies the idea that since editors are editing, they can maintain consistency and nuance. However, most editors are just assigned a part, and the majority of them just work on that part without really bothering to know what’s going on. They rely on that document to maintain consistency. I have worked in dramas as a subtitler, and let me tell you that right off the bat I can name a few moderators, dramas, and movies where even with the moderator as editor, the document is incomplete. By incomplete, I mean there is no guide for the subtitler or even editors to maintain that consistency. Meaning there is repeated vocabulary that is not included, characters and their treatments are missing, etc. So, in my opinion, the idea that if the moderator makes edits, consistency will be maintained is somewhat wrong. To me, it doesn’t matter whether the moderator is editing or subbing as long as the quality is maintained.You said the following:
A moderator “can put their hands in the dough” without necessary editing. Now, I am just talking for the people who actually check the episodes after both the subtitlers and editors work on them and actually put effort into ensuring quality. I am not speaking for the people who pick up a drama, delegate the task, and then don’t even bother to check anything and just hand the drama to the chief editor.
What Mirjam said here is very true. For each project we take on, we receive countless applications from both editors and subbers. Sometimes we have to reject people because the drama doesn’t have enough parts for everyone to work on it. Now imagine if the moderator decided to do everything themselves. @angelight313_941 Said something very true: back then, many people got rejected because the moderators were hoarding all the drama and doing everything themselves. And as they said, most of the time the quality was not the best. As a matter of fact, I am editing a drama where that’s the case, and let me tell you something. Sometimes I just want to ask the CM to delete all the Spanish subs because in a single episode, more than 80% of the existing subtitles that were done by the moderator/editor sucked and need to be replaced.
I wish they could change the rules regarding that, and let the CM delete all the badly done subtitles. I asked the same thing to a wonderful CM I worked with, but she said it was impossible to do because they would have to do the segmenting all over again since deleting the sub meant deleting the segment. I don’t know if this is also how it works here now, but they could definitely try to find a solution to such a painful situation since EDITING is triple the work, and unbearable to have to put up with, besides the unfairness to go through all that.
The worst part is that these terrible subbers most likely have all that contribution count in their profile page, of the useless subtitles they added in the dramas/movies etc. Back then and now, we still have moderators hoarding projects bc they found a way to add themselves in the team in different ‘‘positions’’ doing/adding phantom team members, and that’s something I hope they look into bc the controlling groups need to be eradicated once and for all; before they become the cause of viki’s downfall.
Thank you for explaining your experience working in a Spanish team. I now see that we are talking about two different things, calling both editing.
The final editing, one that makes sure that the overall quality is good, can only be achieved if there is one person in charge. That one person, let’s call them the Chief Spanish/Dutch/Croatian Editor, to mimic the English team, would be the best person to write up the translation notes. That one person does not need to make big changes, especially if another editor has already edited a part. Their job is to synchronise, even out the translation across all parts of an episode and across all episodes in a series. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that the Chief editor would not find a single subtitle in need of editing in an average 16-episode Korean drama. Hence, it’s normal to expect some contribution to the project from them.
For me that role naturally falls upon the Moderator as the main person responsible for subtitles in any given language.
Was that many years ago? Things may have changed over the years, but the way things are now, the CM can delete all subtitles of a certain language per episode. However, they cannot delete a single subtitle, unless it’s their own. So they can’t delete @thaly1209 's subtitles, while keeping yours in the same episode. If all subtitles need to be deleted, though, the CM can do it in a second.
If you really need specific subtitles deleted, you can ask the staff to do it (if you have a good reason).
By the way, I’ve heard of moderators who let subbers delete their own bad subtitles.
Agreed.
Only if that person is lucky enough to have found team members who not only have the skills but can also be bothered to read the team document. But I guess in the big teams, there is enough competition to ensure everyone thoroughly does their job.
Really? Where is this done?
You cannot edit if you don’t know everything about the drama, who is who, their relationships and how they change, the story, the backstory and so on. You cannot edit even ONE part if you haven’t been watching very closely the drama.
The only edits you can do are grammar, typos, formatting, this kind of thing. But we all know that editing is not only this.
Even the name sometimes it comes already wrong in English, if a subber don’t know a thing about the show he will continue on the wrong, and if he done it right and then came an editor who don’t know a thing about the show he must think that it is a wrong due to English subs and he may change it! So it is a must that a project have a mod / overall editor that watch the show after it’s done to ensure every thing is good!
Having all the roles at once is quite hard and tiring, but if the one is aiming for a perfect job to do that will be good but will need so much time depending on how fast he can do it!
I don’t mind having all the rolls really -maybe I prefer it this way actually- but still having an overall editor will help me with typos, grammar, if I missed anything! And checking if I done it right or it could be done in a better way!
Hence, till now I didn’t have time to watch anything that I have done! I will definitely have a break after finishing what in my hands, to try to catch up on what I missed! I was the person who easily watch a show in one to 2 days! And now I can’t watch a thing
I was thinking about this thread as if you are looking at the project finder you can’t choose language moderator only subtitler, segmenter or CM perhaps Viki should change that page too…
And if they are planning to allow subtitlers only on channels where there are language moderators already present, they should probably remove (hide automatically) all channels without the selected language moderator
It will make it somewhat easier for CMs to handle OL subber requests (and not reject newbies with a heavy heart).
This makes sense. It’s almost like viki staff do not plan with forethought and just wing everything. This should have been addressed before the moderated subtitling only rule’s implementation.
