Is @brendas still around? I mean, can someone give us answers about this new downgrade?
As it has been said, some languages cannot translate properly with 100 characters only. 125 to 150 would be more appropriate if the codes (italics, breaks…) are counted. Plus, I want to add that there are typography rules that necessitate spaces before or after some punctuation marks in some languages (like French)… and as spaces are counted as characters, we reach 115-120 quickly when English is only 80-85. I don’t think that our request to increase the limit to 150 is unreasonable considering all the reasons everyone put forward here. We understand 255 was too much, still can you listen to us a bit for once?
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Is it possible to remove this restriction for old dramas that have already been translated? I still have some dramas to check and edit.
As you can see below. It’s not only our fault.
In new dramas, if writers !! and segmenters can take care of it. Then it’s alright for me too.
I’m curious how they’re going to squeeze all the text that actors often have to speak into 100 character segments.
And what I’m missing is an explanation about why. I get lots of other announcements, rewards that I don’t need, but nobody has explained that to me. What am I to them? I do a lot of unpaid work here and I want it to be valued.
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Thank you for testing it for us! Honestly, how does Viki expect people to be willing to work on older 255-character shows? You woulnd’t be subbing anymore but making up a completely new story.
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Thanks Viki for the hatchet you imposed, or better said finalized, so after all the Badge Week subbing the Edit is impossible to do for segments longer than 100.
Please look up German language and see how long some words are…
@vikicommunity
PLEASE adjust it at least to 150, thank you 
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As per today I notice that subs over than 100 characters can’t be saved anymore. Please Viki do something about it. Indonesian language can be a bit long per segment as we use many prefixes and suffixes for verbs and also we use connecting words. 150 characters will be good still instead of 100. Thank you for putting this into attention, Viki.
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This discussion began on April 14, and today is May 7. No response from viki. We can say that they don’t care about our problems at all.
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Just give us a badge for each set of 100 subtitles with 100 or less characters we produce and remove the new default setting that doesn’t allow for exceptions. Then there is a stimulation to shorten the subs, yet we don’t have to bend over backward at all costs.
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I am currently planning to start a petition for the German Viki community ( contributors and viewers would also be involved). The point is that many languages have problems with the 100 character limit to translate the sentence reasonably and also meaningfully. It may work in English, but there are many languages that need more words to communicate something. Therefore, a character limit of 150 characters would make more sense.
Perhaps other languages could do the same, so that Viki can see that this problem doesn’t just affect one language, but affects and limits many. Sometimes shortening alone just does not help.
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Maybe it could be all languages together instead of 20-30 different petitions? Where are you going to host it? Change org? A poll here on Discussions? Or…?
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This is the petition … it is international and you can sign it if you are in favor of it.
By the way, it may take a while until you receive a verification email … Unfortunately, I can’t help it, but the signature will still be counted.
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First of all, I agree. 100 characters are a disaster, especially for historical/anime series. However, what I miss in your petition, is an idea of how long the English subtitles should be. Because if the limit will be 150 and the English subtitles will be around 150, you didn’t solve anything.
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International petition started on change .org (not by me):
As active subtitlers on Viki.com, we are currently facing the challenges and limitations caused by the existing 100-character limit per subtitle.When translating from original languages such as Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Thai into other languages, many sentences require at least 150 to 200 characters to be expressed accurately and completely. The current 100-character limit significantly restricts the faithful communication of the original meaning.This not only prevents us subtitlers—from across Europe, South America, Africa, and other regions—from delivering high-quality work, but it also negatively impacts the viewing experience for the audience. We are therefore advocating for Viki .com to increase the character limit per subtitle to at least 150 characters — to improve translation quality and enhance the overall user experience.
Please sign this petition and help us bring about this important change! Petition · Change of character limit from 100 to 150 characters for subtitles on Viki.com - Germany · Change.org
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The editing changes used to be saved even when the subtitle box turned red, but I’m editing right now and it didn’t save anything. The save button doesn’t work anymore when the character limit is exceeded. HOW ANNOYING! What to do?
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If you go and click the next segment, it does save the previous one, even if it’s red.
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It used to save but I tried multiple times just now. I subbed and the character count was 103 then I clicked the next segment and the subtitle box went blank.
Everything I wrote got deleted automatically.
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Not anymore. If you want to edit a segment with more than 100, you can save it only if you keep it under 100. Otherwise, anything you add to the segment is deleted when you move the next one and the segment will remain like it was subbed before, when the limitation was still not mandatory.
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There is no workaround for this, unfortunately. I’m sure Viki will not change anything, so we must translate/edit longer segments to keep them under 100. I mean, at least they used to send some surveys whenever they wanted to change something even though they usually didn’t applied what we wrote in those surveys 
, but this time we didn’t exist for them on this matter; so it’s very likely that this change is very important to their company strategy so there’s no room to negotiate.
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I still do not understand why this change is necessary. Why does it matter if the subtitles are over 100 characters in length? Why can’t we just continue as before?
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It depends. Honestly, I don’t know if this is the reason or one of the reasons, but if it is, I must agree that we used to have a lot of unnecessary subbing, which I bet ”most” of the viewers didn’t like. I mean, look at the bunch of Chinese streaming providers offering their dramas in an inferior (and rarely good and very good) quality, and they keep going. This means that there are consumers eagerly waiting for their dramas to be subbed, no matter what. I already posted in another topic my unpopular opinion: the majority will give the direction, and just because we tend to see Viki as our cultural playground and to put in first our contributor perspective, we tend to miss out what the current generations want, which is short content when it’s about entertainment. I mean, even my parents told me that some of the subtitles are ridiculously long, and sometimes it is even harder to distinguish between the dialogue and the displayed texts. And this is just one of the main problems of Viki subtitles in the eyes of most the viewers. I agree that there are also many who want quality, but this doesn’t mean that we didn’t exaggerate at some points, with being too rich. I’m here, contributing, knowing the insides as a contributor, and I still found it difficult sometimes to read subtitles in one go or even to translate them in a compact form, but still complete.
I may upset many, but I agree with a lower limit, but it should have been at least 150-170 characters and without counting the formatting. For example, why count the italics? They are not visible to be read, but we use them for some specific situations to differentiate between some texts and the dialogue.
At the end of the day, let’s not forget that regardless of how unprofessional or unprepared we consider Viki in this field, they are still a business, and they need at least a minimum strategy to function. So they also need a minimum data about the streaming services field and what the next move should be. And I don’t need to say more, but just tell you to look at the other streaming platforms and how good they are doing without having the highly praised quality subtitles of Viki. And if we used to see only Korean on those platforms, now we also see Chinese platforms coming strongly from behind with their subtitles in various languages. So there is for sure a demand for subtitles, and the quality or how complete they are is not really on the main list of most of the viewers.
Maybe I have this different perspective as a contributor since I never saw Viki as a cultural source but as an entertainment one. Even though I always made sure to keep everything in the subtitles (being also one of the main rules when subbing in my team), but just because I just thought it would be disrespectful towards the English team who put their hard work into offering very complete subtitles. So I had to make sure I respect their work and keep everything as much as possible and in the Romanian language rules. And I will continue to do this even though the subtitles will be shorter from now on.
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