Subtitle Status Question and Answer

We could just make a video about it ask corporate to review and have it play when they click the make acct button. Would require minimal work on their part (more likely to be implemented) .

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Can you guys ask for a pay cut from wiki instead of volunteering i know its better to volunteer but now i feel like its just impossible to enjoy shows because i think you all need some kind of motivation? the subtitle has been extremely scarce latelyā€¦ just sad all aroundā€¦ I have been paying for wiki pass since it started and now am thinking of dropping it cos i also pay at drama fever.

itā€™s becauseā€¦ there are too many shows and not enough of us. Subbers who have the ability to churn out consistent subs are around 50 in number?
We have too many shows and many of them are hard. I am sorry that I am not a historian who knows chinese traditional characters, nor medical professional. I am only in school and child of an immigrant. I do my best. I cannot lately spend 14 hours a day on viki as I used to. So we take time.

I guess I cannot tell you what to do, but it is surprising to me when I see subtitles that I have edited or personally written hours or weeks later on other sites, almost line by line. What exactly is it youā€™re paying for then?

If someone were to be able to put the education into my brain I guess I can spend more hours here. Butā€¦ you are not going to pay my bills now are you? I need to get a job and to get a job you need training/qualifications.

In additionā€¦ Iā€™ve found some other sitesā€™ subtitles to be not good because theyā€™re not complete. Sure sometimes viki subs are ladden with errors, but the teams I work for usually catch them because we edit them very thoroughly. In a 10 minute segment today I already made 88 corrections. If we assume similar error rate for all 6 parts then that would be 528 subtitles per episodeā€¦ thatā€™s a lot of hours. So I slowly wade through the subtitles.

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Additionally, @kdramagirl002, why do you assume we would:
a) be more efficient if payed
b) even want to dedicate our entire working day translating?

My mental capacity to translate well drops after half an episode. If I translate three episodes in three days, I need a few days to ā€œrecuperateā€. My healthy balance is two segments (a third of an episode) per day after I come home from work.

I canā€™t speak for anyone else, other than myself, but I donā€™t want to turn my hobby into a chore or work.

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I feel similarly.
I spent a whole day editing Mirror of the Witch Episode 9? Too pooped to contribute to 10. Only did vocab.

Not sure about other editors but for me editing an episode thoroughly takes at least 6 hours.

I try to come sub daily because I am one of the few who can do legal, medical, and period dramas with 95+% accuracy. Iā€™m no expert but I know enough Korean to look up everything in the source Korean. In Beautiful Mind for example terms were taken off the Korean Legal Administration and the Korean Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery

I fixed Doctors yesterday in the wee hours of the morning. 193 edits for a 20 min part!

I think a healthy level of subbing is maybeā€¦ 2 10 min segments. I am not slow either. I was part of the infamous #fastestteamonviki (motherā€™s love team, record: 2hrs 45 min).

Just too many shows and need to conserve my brain power for learning for exams.

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I think people donā€™t realize how long it takes yā€™all lol. Iā€™m sitting here at The Flower in Prison page and itā€™s exploded because they havenā€™t finished the subs and itā€™s almost time for the next episodes lol. Iā€™m just like o.o people are way too impatient these days.

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Hereā€™s the breakdown. We told you main subber went on vacation. The 4 actual translation editors got eaten by school. One of them who survived? Is on a very very very lagging 50 episode modern show. Sheā€™s overwhelmed editing that. I became the main translation editor (not a position I originally signed up for). Then between last two eps and four eps ago, main subber went on vacation. Other subbers got eaten by school and then the others arenā€™t active on other projects either.

TFIP is a 4 person team (showing up every episode since ep 6: main subber + me + english editor + chief)

If I start subbing Flower in Prison (can only do like 10% a day maybe depending on how much historical references I donā€™t know so must learn), then I cannot edit doctors nor beautiful mind. Beautiful Mind is fine, because we have subbers who are excellent translation editors (over 4) and a medical professional. Doctorsā€¦ well I edited nearly 200 subtitles for a 20 minute section, so if you multiply across an episode thatā€™s upwards of 600 subtitles.

That will die. I am the only translation editor there. So, pick your poison.

We also do not have a medical professional subbing doctors. If chief and I cannot figure it out, we need to manually feed the subtitles to my personal friends in the real world, or describe the terms to the one vikian that is active that we are both friends with who is a medical professional. BTW we are recruiting translation editors on doctors.

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I didnā€™t see the message till now. I donā€™t need the breakdown. I was just saying that as an example that people are acting crazy and rude lol. I do apologize that I just now saw your other comment. I wish I could help because I work from home . Sadly though I canā€™t speak another language lol. Is it alright if I post what you said on the main comments of the page so people will stop nagging?

If you want, but in a nice way though. The team knows the situation, but iā€™m not sure the english mods do. Iā€™ll send a pm once I finish cutting subtitle boxes (segments) for the missing segments in Beautiful Mind.

Thank you for your hard work. The drama is worth the wait anyhow.

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I think the others have more or less explained why the rate of subs have slowed down recently.

But another thing youā€™ll need to consider, is that how exactly do you expect Viki to pay us for our volunteer work? Through the number of lines we sub? Thatā€™s just going to bring down the quality of subbing, because people might just type in gibberish so that they will create more subs and earn more money. Thatā€™s going to make it even more impossible for you to enjoy your shows.

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True, the quality would plummet.

Only spelling or grammar and syntax too?
If I were your potential moderator/editor, the answer would be no! Itā€™s so time consuming to edit spelling/punctuation/grammar errors, that I find it much quicker to translate the whole thing myself. I happened to edit a drama where a subtitler did not know how to write her native language correctly. She didnā€™t even know that we put a space after commas, and when told, she still didnā€™t comply. It was torture for me. Putting your cursor on the exact place to change one letter, or to correct punctuation, or change word order is time-consuming and extremely frustrating. The only way was for me to immediately delete the whole subtitle and write it from scratch. So her work was in vain, and my work was more difficult.
Thus, ā€¦ no.
OK, there is a way, though. If you have the patience, you could have a Word document open beside the browser window, write the translator into that, and have Word correct each of your subtitles before pasting them into Subtitle Editor. This is very time-consuming for you, but I think that by viewing those corrections you would be able to learn a lot and become better. Plus the editor wonā€™t curse you.
I heard there are some browsers which have spell-check feature, but Iā€™m not sure where you should write your text for it to be activated. Maybe you could look into it.

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Actually I think it depends how bad it is. If itā€™s 20-30%, I personally find it still acceptable. But if itā€™s more than that, I agree with irnar that it really would be much quicker for me to translate it on my own.

And Iā€™m not sure for other languages, but if youā€™re just talking about English spelling errors, Vikiā€™s subtitle editor underlines misspelt words (for American spelling, still underlines most of my British spelling), so you can just correct them. Otherwise, as irnar said, use Word document. And the good thing about Word document is that itā€™s able to correct your grammar and occasionally sentence structure as well. It should help you improve, and maybe you might be able to sub without typing in Word beforehand after some time. Good luck :slight_smile:

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latest angry impatient viewer on Flower in Prison basically said: my other shows are so much faster. Whatā€™s wrong with you why only at 67%

(meanwhile I subbed it up to 76%. As everyone else here knows 9% on a show is actually A LOT of subtitling). He proved he couldnā€™t read, but also proved that he didnā€™t know heā€™s comparing the same people to each other.
Now I just downvote the comments and point out why their claims are ridiculous.

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Maybe they should install some sort of system, that whenever angry mob viewers want to write a comment to urge the speed of subbing, they need to pay a dollar to comment. That should shut those comments up real fast :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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You should answer ā€œWeā€™re free to postpone subbing until daily views count for the episode goes up to 8500, meaning it has an audience. Do you mind refreshing a few times?ā€
I know itā€™s ridiculous, but angry mobs are not to be taken seriously.

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one of the viewers did bring up a good point, we can announce whatā€™s going on prior.
At the same timeā€¦ would you want to broadcast your personal life? oh i had to go to three graduations this week? for ex

Orā€¦ my sisterā€™s dying so i had to take care of her. If itā€™s things like that? iā€™m not sure how best to handle that part.

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the dilema with the whiners, who are sometimes new to viki, or donā€™t bother to inquire how subtitling volunteering work, who may not think there could be various reasons why an episode isnā€™t subbed, who are frustrated that they cannot understand when they are still watching their favorite drama, cause they are probably addicted and were sweating with the waiting time to see whatā€™s happening nextā€¦ I think it (dilema) could go both ways from the view of a spectator who sits in the seat and wants to entertain asap and from the view of a subber/segger (team) who is working like a ā€œmadmanā€ even with obstacles or a small team to satisfy timely subs cos he knows the whiners will use their keyboards if they arenā€™t satisfied, lol. - And no, they donā€™t need to know about our life struggles, the best term is: due to technical circumstances/issues (which can mean anything and nothing) :wink:

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Iā€™m sorry, but Iā€™m new to this discussions thing. I just wanted to know how I could request someone or anyone in general to sub KO One Remeber? It started airing today and my Mandarin is very limited so I have no idea where to look for or if anyone is even subbing all the episode.

Thank you.