It’s such a shame that one of the largest language communities is being thrown away like that, every new channel is coming with pre-subs in Portuguese, and it’s not like we are short on translators, every day new people reach out to the moderators because they want to start to volunteering.
Usually, the only reason for us (Portuguese moderators) to turn any volunteer down was the lack of Viki pass or a team way too big for the project, however, lately we have to turn everyone down, not just newbies, but years long contributors, because it comes pre-subbed! We’re left now with variety shows, BL’s and projects with 50+ episodes that clearly ate not the selling point on Viki. Not everyone likes those and I wonder how long we can still translate it ourselves.
Soon there will only be left a bunch of Portuguese volunteers around Viki to be editors. I hope I’m completely wrong, but only Viki itself knows the answer for this. Could you give an explanation of what is happening to us, the Portuguese community? And don’t you think the segmenters also need a clarification? It’s been a long time they’re surviving from the subtitles resulting from combining and adjusting segments, and now they can’t even do that!
The future ahead of us, poor volunteers (seggers and Portuguese subbers), seems grim and uncertain, who knows if we’ll be here next year, or even if we’ll still be needed for anything else besides old shows that only a hand full is actually interested in.
Agree with everything you said. But the worse part is not knowing what the heck is going on. Every channel I was editing those pre-subs, specially the historical ones, made me laugh of the many, many mistakes on translation and the slang they used. I don’t know if this is man or machine, but is way off. Portuguese is not as easy as English. We are not even the original Portuguese, we are Brazilian Portuguese. So we have all these influence of other languages we need to consider before translating. I understand the need to have fast subs, our viewers are very vocal about that. But this could be solved simply by letting the volunteers translate before the episode/movie drops to the viewers. I see a future where we, Portuguese volunteers, will be used as cleaners after the show lost the hype and people that saw it after will benefit from the polished and better translation. We all kind of knew that this day would come. I just want an explanation and a heads up to what is going on so I can prepare myself for the future. I spend a lot of my time here. I don’t want it to be wasted.
Yes!!! It’s terrible!
2 or more segments with the same english line. We need to correct the translation and “copy and past” every time.
It’s harder than just translate. Portuguese team is in the dark about this.
Similar to Portuguese, in the Spanish community, we have had many shows come with presubs. The most recent one that I know of is “Lost You Forever.” The subtitles there are ridiculous. My editors are basically changing every other segment. It’s sad that this is even happening. Portuguese and Spanish are large communities that always have an overwhelming amount of subbers so shows, for the most part, get translated very quickly. So I am also curious as to why shows are coming with presubs.
I, as a Portuguese subber and a segger, feel so uncertain about what I’ll be doing on Viki soon. First I don’t like being an editor, and being a Portuguese subber will not be needed very soon. Second, as a segger, we have just too much work with no contribution points at all. When we used to combine subtitles we could earn some points, now we can’t do this anymore. So how will I be able to get 500 points demanded by Viki to renew my QC?
At the time I thought “What? Next episode? Ok, let´s watch the next episode to know the story.”
It is true that not all pre-sub is bad, but all need to pass through editon, historical even more because the formal and informal words. Edition takes time and in some cases is more easy erase everything and start from zero.
Day by day I feel more discourage by Viki. The number of projects to translate are very limit and if I have difficult to find new projects, what to say about the newbies? Why put a page calling people to be volunteers if there is no space for that? Why study hard to be a segmenter if you can´t do it?
The problem is serious and Viki needs to find a way to balance better things.
Isn’t it kinda funny that we are mostly portuguese speakers here but we’re talking to each other in english? kkkkkkk
Anyways I’m honestly still a subtitler(?) because of the benefits cause, you know, paying another streaming service in this economy is hard, and now what do I do? Besides, it’s hard work but it’s fun. Don’t like losing this thing.
I’m shocked you don’t mention English as we were the first language to take the biggest hit. We understand more than any other language what frustration you are going through. Then the segmenting community got hit. Spanish sometimes gets hit, which is shocking because it’s a HUGE community, as well… but their time is coming. I feel it.
NOW, the Editing community is being hit. Some channels are being blocked from editing of the presubs…
I can’t reiterate this enough… Viki will eventually NOT be a volunteer site anymore. The originality of what Viki (viikii.com) used to be is long gone.
I’m not a member of the mentioned language communities, but I’d like to share my thoughts with you. This is just where the industry is headed, MT translation. Let me give you an insight on audiovisual translation trends lately, and I refer to big subtitling companies. They are all testing MT. Some of them have already started to use it, not as something compulsory yet. Subtitlers are slowly pushed to editing only. And almost every MT subtitle needs editing. So, this is what might be happening here as well. I don’t know about segmenting, but in subtitling it’s definitely happening. There is an uproar in subtitling community in general. In my opinion, MT will need many more years to replace translation by humans, but it’s getting more and more present.
About the situation here, as we all know, it’s a matter of complaining viewers for faster subtitles, since the episode has aired and it’s there. I mean, in other platforms, the episode never airs raw. It always comes with subtitles in the selected languages. That happens either because it’s airing later than it airs in the country of origin or because it has been translated beforehand. This requires an NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) (you can imagine why!) and on the basis of “contributing” here, it’s nearly impossible.
So, I understand the need for English pre-subs. That way, you keep your viewers away from all those “sites”, which only have English subs anyway. If the English pre-subs are not good enough, they must be subject to editing. That would be wise, in terms of quality. Or, if you want to invest in your community, find the best of English contributors, sign an NDA with them and let them subtitle the episodes before releasing them.
But, I don’t understand the need for other languages pre-subs, which seem much more like MT, as I saw in the example here. The complaining viewers usually come from large communities, like Spanish and Portuguese, and those communitites have many volunteers and have always been very fast. Since they’re releasing the episode with English pre-subs right away and all the impatient viewers can at least watch it with them, I honestly don’t see the need for OL pre-subs, that have such a low quality. The subs by the contributors will be delivered very quickly anyway and they’ll be better (than MT).
In viki’s shoes, with so many volunteers doing the job for free, really fast, I would only invest in quality assurance. If you’re gonna spend money, spend it on a few people to do quality check in all languages. That way, you have it all: quantity, speed and quality. Happy viewers and happy community.
This isn’t a new thing, though. I can give you many examples of shows which were translated and edited by paid subbers. However, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think not having any volunteer editors involved is good, I think there are quite some mistakes in these I do hope Viki will keep these no-edit channels limited to a few shows because I can’t imagine people having to deal with machine translations with no edits.
I also agree that both the English and Portuguese communities have taken some hits. After nearly every show came with English subtitles, we’ve lost a lot of subbers. And having pre-subbed shows also hugely affects the segmenters because there are nearly no pure-segmenting shows anymore.
Is the main reason Viki’s “subtitle community” is really no more. Viki is lowering themselves to the demands of the viewers. I get that this is money powered engine… But if there is NO real banner on the main page that states we are a community of volunteers subbing this site, the viewer squawking just gets louder.
I really hope they have something going on that corrects their behaviour. There are so many people all over the world that spends god knows how many hours trying to bring great subtitles in many different languages (and they get it for free).
You’re not the only one feeling it. It’s just a matter of when. If Portuguese, a big community, is being affected, it’s only reasonable to think that the next big community will be hit. It’s interesting that this is not happening to smaller communities that, in a way, struggle to keep up with the high demand. This makes me think, as someone mentioned, that this is powered by money. I think Spanish—I can’t speak much for Portuguese—counts for the highest number of viewers that watch in that language.
People, do just as I did: throw everything away and only enjoy watching… in English!!
By going away I gained zero stress, zero overworking, zero arguments, zero dealing with haters and the lifestyle that really suits me better… it’s a real bless.
its funny i saw a mistake as well on VIP Thailand where she dropped something in to the floor and said * eu farei* – it doesn’t make sense to the segment of it .
I do hope Viki will keep these no-edit channels limited to a few shows because I can’t imagine people having to deal with machine translations with no edits.
strategy to turn “Global TV Powered by Fans” into a money bag, aka: paid subscribers. 
Ouch! 
I’m in that handful. 
