Absolutely, I agree. When translating from English to Arabic, subtitles typically don’t require a large number of letters. And if they do, I simply remove the redundant words without impacting the storyline.
3 Likes
It’s honestly frustating (and sad) that Viki is getting more and more troublesome even though we are doing this for FREE and this is also one of many reasons why I don’t translate as much as before because it’s time consuming and I have no fun left to enjoy to translate. And if every volunteer has so many restrictions like the issue which @xylune said, even more volunteeers will give up to translate all together. IMHO this is a regression to the development of VIKI…
PS: This is also a huge disaster for every historic CM/mod in German because overall all footnotes are very long…
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We all agree that subtitles should be subtle and easy to read, enhancing the viewing experience rather than drawing unnecessary attention to themselves. Good subtitling acts as an invisible bridge between the original content and the audience, allowing viewers to stay immersed in the story without being forced to consciously “read” each line.
To achieve this, subtitles must follow a rhythm that feels natural, neither rushing the viewer nor lingering too long on the screen. Readability depends not just on the number of characters per line, but also on the speed at which they appear — the characters-per-second (CPS) rate.
It’s important to note that CPS limits cannot be universally fixed across all languages. Each language has its own average word length, reading patterns, and syntactic structures. For example, Greek often requires more characters to express the same idea compared to English, while other languages might be even more compact or expansive. Therefore, adjusting the CPS limits for each language individually is crucial to maintain both the natural reading pace and the overall comfort of the viewer. A one-size-fits-all approach would risk compromising accessibility and enjoyment, particularly for non-native or slower readers.
Given how significantly these changes impact the subtitling process and the final user experience, it was essential that volunteers — who contribute their time and expertise — were properly informed and consulted beforehand. Clear communication and timely guidance not only show respect for the community but also help ensure that changes are implemented smoothly, with everyone’s collaboration and understanding.
Subtitling is both a technical and an artistic craft — and when done thoughtfully, it becomes nearly invisible, guiding the audience effortlessly without ever pulling them away From the visual narrative.
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I found that’s not only a limitation of characters.
Only 1 line break is allowed.
Sorry guy, this won’t work.
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Sorry, i made something i don’t wanted and a flag is appear. I don’t know the signification but seems it’s like un avertissement. It was a bad click. Sorry, sorry … : )
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I don´t have an option to save. It is grey. And unless I adjust the character and br, it won´t let me save it 
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The auto-save option is still available despite the warnings. I never used the Save button, only the keyboard Tab key. So now that’s annoying for me because I must click on the next segment to move on, but it’s fine as long as the subs are saved. So don’t worry about the red, just click on the next segment because everything is saved… for now 
.
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OMG that is so silly 
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I’m sure the segmenters will take care of it in the future and don’t put a 4-people chat in 1 segment.
1 Like
I agree with you, i tried removing spaces that come after commas, not working
1 Like
Now that the new rule is in place and I’ve had a chance to test how well it works, I have to say: most of the time, it’s manageable—as long as I don’t need to use many formatting tags. That’s when it gets really difficult, even if you try to keep things short. I mean, just “< i>- < br> -< /i>” alone already takes up 15 characters.
As some of you have already mentioned, I also believe it would make sense if formatting tags didn’t count toward the character limit (at least < i>< /i> and < br>), since they don’t appear on-screen and only serve structural or stylistic purposes. Alternatively, the limit could be raised to 125–150 characters.
In addition, this rule also seems to apply to all episodes without subtitles (regardless of how old the series is) that still contain very long English texts. These would need to be revised by a CS to comply with the new character limit rule, and I doubt many CSs would be eager to revise a completed series with 15 languages (correct me if I’m wrong). On top of that, all other languages would have to revise their subtitles just because a new OL moderator was found.
I’ve also looked into some of the new series that are now being segmented differently, and personally, I find the reading flow worse. Many “short” segments for a single sentence feel really off—sorry, but they do. Segmenters are also forced to split up dialogue very tightly just to stay within the limits, and that feels unnatural in the subtitles.
I absolutely don’t want to criticize the segmenters—I truly appreciate how quickly you’re trying to adapt and find solutions. But I have to say, it’s not okay that Viki is leaving you to handle this on your own, and I’m genuinely disappointed by the lack of communication on their part.
I truly hope Viki will reconsider some aspects of this update and start involving the community more in these kinds of decisions. We all want to create the best possible experience for viewers—and that’s only possible when we’re supported and heard.
15 Likes
"That’s all well and good with the 100-character limit per segment… maybe this isn’t an issue in English. But unfortunately, there are languages where even saying ‘sorry’ requires more words and letters than in English. So this limitation isn’t very helpful for forming a proper sentence, especially in German. It’s possible to shorten it, but I had the problem today that the meaning of the sentence was completely lost in translation. Only 5 more characters would have been enough to retain the meaning of the original sentence. Now, it’s lost.
Even just 150 characters instead of 100 would help a lot.
Especially when it comes to the OST, it becomes a challenge. How can one properly formulate OST lines in their own language when there aren’t enough characters available? If you shorten them, the meaning is lost there as well."
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A request to the segmenters and to CS.
Please don’t start frantically splitting the segments where it is not necessary.
It is not necessary to split a segment of 5 seconds (or longer if spoken slowly) that contains a sentence of between 30 and 70 characters.
I see this as CS during QC and I see this during subbing, editing subtitles. Or simply when I watch an episode and read the subtitles.
It’s totally unnecessary, you can’t read the subtitle well when playing the video. It also does not comply with the rules you/we learned at the NSSA.
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There has been zero communication so far, there is zero communication now as well. However, there was never a solution provided for old dramas, it doesn’t seem like anyone cares about these dilemmas. Furthermore, they’ve been insisting on cutting names into three parts, even if it makes not much sense and is just consuming another few characters. Completely reworking old dramas with 20 languages makes about zero sense as well. Instead, we get another badge. 
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It seems that the soft limit now became a rule. I just tried to save a 101 character segment in Dutch in an older series, and guess what… it doesn’t save it anymore. That really sucks, since older series can have really long segments.
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And I just had to remove a “contextual note”: the initial version included a grammar mistake and was far too long (5 lines, even with a note, ouch), I managed to have it shorter and without mistake… still definitely over 100 characters. Would it be only because any segment including a note will often (/always?) be over 100 characters.
As a result, I removed the note: at least there is no grammar mistake on screen. But the culture aspect is lost too.
In other words, Viki is once again killing what was a most important key point for users. Even viewers here.
Bad move, Viki. Bad move.
12 Likes
As a German moderator and subber, I can only agree with what you said.
I just tried to translate a historical drama, and there were many sentences I couldn’t save and had to shorten radically. With that, they lost meaning and sounded much weirder.
And what about addresses? They’re not as short as “Sir” or “Miss” in German.
Some segments included a sign with a character’s name and a spoken sentence - how am I supposed to shorten that? Ignore the sign?
Some English segments were over 80 or 90 characters. Since the German language often needs more or longer words to make a proper sentence, how am I supposed to translate that?
I’m beyond sad and disappointed by that change. I consider it ignorant of other languages and cultures. It pains me that we must shorten sentences and take away meaning now and/or remove any beautiful choice of words.
I know that it’s not just German struggling with that restriction…
And like Maddie said: What about the OST? We often spend hours to make the translation sound beautiful and capture the original meaning - I can’t imagine how a shortened version of that will look like.
It’s a huge loss in quality. If Viki becomes like any other streaming platform, I might as well go there.
And what’s worst, like many of you already said, there was no communication. Such a big change, and nobody mentioned it to us, the subber community that spends hours of work here. This is simply disrespectful towards us.
As for German, I would consider a limit of at least 150 characters plausible. Some of my longer sentences were around 130 to 140 characters, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some more room.
13 Likes
Ah and the credits!
It was my habit to name the translators and editors at the end of an episode, as a form of minimum hats-off to them, but now there’s no space for it anymore. Even for the team credit, there’s barely any enough space (or we remove the English team name).
Viki, that rule is absolutely stupid and was not thought over!
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Just wondering, has someone any idea what happened to the older series? Are the already saved subtitles still all right or did they get cut in half?
1 Like
So, I tested something… I went on an already subbed episode and started to go through the segments with the Tab key like I do when editing… when I got to the +100 segment, the red border appeared but I could move to the next one… but… here is the big but… if I want to edit something at that +100 segment, I must leave a under 100 sub… so as long as you don’t edit anything in a +100 segment, the subs made before today (or the moment when the limit became mandatory) will remain intact…
4 Likes