Communities are already disappearing. English TEs, GEs, and subbers are almost completely gone. Only a few are left. So if we do get an empty slated drama, there is nobody left to sub it (except for the “volunteer” Viki staff). Portuguese and the segmenting teams are falling in line on the path of English’s destruction: not enough subbers and segmenters left in the community to fill slots IF an empty-slated drama were to appear.
Again, I re-iterate… Viki is on the path of removing the “volunteer” community tag it’s always had. English community was the first sign, then the segmenters, then Portuguese… Soon Spanish will get hit and maybe even another European language like German or French. It’s a slow downfall in the making.
Why do you think the Viki “staff” ignore us? They know!
They don’t even know any basic matters concerning our work in the first place, as they don’t bother coming to know about it (as we can determine from the FE/CE debate). However, if they want to replace everyone soon there’d no point to bother about events or optimizations, so it is likely that they don’t plan to substitute everyone fast. In the end, languages have different grades of difficulty, too. However, regarding Spanish/French they first added presubs and now continued with Portuguese only. So they took a step back basically. Why’s that? Is it too expensive? Are there not enough people or enough volunteers? Do the results not meet the standards? Are there too few viewers from these respective countries?
I don’t really agree for segmenters, if there are dramas coming not presubbed, more seggers are around. I saw it many times on the few projects which weren’t coming presubbed this year. Still, indeed for A&C and A&P projects, there’s way less segmenters. Myself, I don’t want to work on adjust only or adjust and past subs projects. I would prefer working on A&C than working on A&P which doesn’t allow segmenters to do their best since some segments will be way too short and we’ll not be allowed to combine them.
For “Life”, for example, there were so many segmenters that we segmented the 16 episodes in less than 48 hours.
There’s a very big amount of segmenters still around but who only accept to work on projects not presubbed. I have a long list of segmenters like that myself on a spreadsheets. Thing is indeed if it keeps going, these segmenters who are still around even if not working on projects, will end up just leaving Viki.
Life was like a gift we where 18 that worked on segments (counted before posting), I remember how happy I was doing what I love doing… If we get a project that is segging from scratch we all know that everyone will apply for it, I don’t mind A&C I remember how happy I was when I started doing it. I know that it’s like many have said… my time as a segger is counted for if I don’t start working on multiple languages and do more A-only then there’s no need for me, it makes me sad as a prefer being a segger more than I like being a Swedish moderator.
I so hope that Viki does something, we really need them to turn things around.
The fact that unsubbed shows have become so rare has also turned them into a battlefield for segmenters. Most of us usually don’t even know about it until the team is “full” and if you’re lucky enough to be in the team, you still have to fight to get your share. For A&C and its hybrids, we get lots of invitations, but unsubbed shows, if they are there at all, are a well-kept secret. It’s a rarity to get invited for them and you can only apply if you know about it in time. This would of course all be different if unsubbed was the norm instead of the exception.
I think by now, we can at least get rid of A-only and A&P. We have ways to preserve the precious OL subs while A&C-ing so there is no use for those other methods that don’t even provide a satisfying result. But that still leaves the segmenters with extra work (and time is oh so precious to Viki…) and the Portuguese subbers with nothing to do.
So… the best Viki could do would be getting rid of all presubs and if that’s too much to ask, at least stick to one language. Unless we want all Portuguese subbers to become segmenters so that we’ll have enough people for all the A&C (E+P)…
for life i wasn´t even able to semgent a part, because many volunteers took more parts or were there when i slept. so i asked the cs to take me out of the drama after the first 8 episode were done and two more episodes were started. we need more more dramas like that, but we know we won´t get them… sadly…
You say it the best way as always, it’s a bit sad that good things like doing real segments has become something you have to be on your toes if you want a chance to do.
If Viki knew how their “solutions” to instantly uploaded segments and subs…
(1. no A&C, 2. no TE for English, 3. use of machine translation to create English subs, 4. then use of MT to create Portuguese subs from those same English subs)
…severely damage the productivity of this community, I wonder if they would have made the same decisions when they started all this. Or would they have opted for other solutions? And there indeed ARE other solutions out there.
Viki doesn’t want uploaded episodes without subs?
No problem! Make the episodes available to team members only, give a deadline of one week for segmenting, translating to English and then to Portuguese, release the episode subbed, and see the magic happen!
I agree with what was said. The Brazilian team of volunteers is very sad because we love the shows, we want to continue to contribute, but the dramas are all coming with portuguese subtitles. That is very discouraging. Can’t anything be done about this? If viki has the portuguese speaking volunteers, why would you guys choose to pre-sub the dramas?
We wanted to take a moment to thank @sheli for starting this topic and all of you for sharing your thoughts and heartfelt comments. It’s amazing to see the love and the pride you bring to contributing.
We wanted to let you know that the Portuguese community can expect to see nine (9) titles that they’ll be able to contribute to in the coming weeks, starting with The Furthest Distance which launched on Wednesday, Oct 25th.
Thank you for lending your time and talents so that Asian dramas can be enjoyed around the world. Thank you for being a part of our Viki Contributor Community.
@brendas What about the segmenters? Do they also get the possibility to combine the segments properly? I don’t think they get the possibility to create the segments completely, do they?
Hello @brendas! Nice of you to stop by and answer the portuguese translators but if you have time could you answer us seggers. For me, segmenting is among the best things I know. It’s hard to explain why I jump at almost every opportunity I get to do it, I even work on Adjust only (I don’t see it as segmenting as it´s just adjusting) which doesn’t give any points if I don’t gett " lucky" and discovers that whoever made the segments missed making a segment where there should be one. Recently, I have been sitting and fixing micro gaps (some hasn´t t even been invisible). When I started, one of the first things I learned was that gaps and micro gaps were something you had to watch carefully for (it can ruin the viewer’s experience). I dream of doing real segments something I think I’ve only had the opportunity to do a couple of times after graduation. Does Viki have plans for us, are we ever going to get the chanse to do real segments? Has Viki forgotten about us? I´m lucky to be a Swedish moderator when I´m not a segger but, in this thread there are people that are portuguese moderators/subbers and seggers… Don’t just answer one group, answer all of us!
Also, @brendas , for the shows that do come with OL presubs, could the staff change their message to the new CM and instead of telling them that combining is prohibited, maybe say something along the lines of,
“This show has English and Portuguese subtitles. Please inform the segmenting team that both should be preserved during the segmenting process.”
This way, the segmenters can at least give the best possible segments and thus the best possible viewing experience, be it with a higher workload.
Thank you for yours and for Viki Community Team’s attention and for joining us on here to give an answer to our questions regarding the Portuguese community, even though the seggers were left out once more. I’m glad to know that we can still work on providing subtitles on these 9 projects, and please, if there are other on air titles being translated with Machine Translations, please, please, allow us to translate it too, as an editor it’s such a pain to see translations done so literally that they don’t have any sense to it anymore, and it must be very frustrating as a viewer see something that you don’t understand what it is supposed to mean.
We’ll wait for the other 7 remaining titles to drop and happily work on them with new hopes for the future.
Hi, everyone – my sincere apologies for not being able to address segmenting earlier as we were waiting on more details. We can now share that there will be two (2) titles for segmenting from scratch coming in December. One will be Rush to the Dead Summer – a CN drama with 46 episodes.
In addition to being available for segmenting from scratch, these titles will also be available for EN subbing. Thank you for holding on until we could relay this information!
We also know that you have outstanding questions that go beyond title availability. We ask for your patience as we work on solutions to address current concerns as well as future ones. Thank you!
Thank you so much! I think this makes many people happy. Could you, however, maybe pick the CM for such a show sooner thank only a few days (as is the case with some other shows). If you need to find an entire team (subbers and seggers) that might take some time so to ensure everything goes smoothly, picking a CM at least a week up front would be ideal, I think.
Hi everyone. Have been reading through pretty much all your comments and it anoys me to bits knowing what is going on with the Portuguese community. First of all, I’m new at Viki and have only been able to contribute in one project as a subber, so it was kind of a shock when I found this topic. That is why I could not find pretty much anything of my liking to aply to. Being a portuguese from Portugal is already hard enough, becase even if the language is the same, there are some noticeable differences, and let me tell you, it was very hard for me to be asking my co-subbers to help me a lot of times when I had a question about some idiomatic expressions. I really do hate to bother other people. But it is ok, I tottaly understand that the brazilian are way more than us, so, completelly fine for me, it is still Portuguese after all. But the pre-subs, made by a machine, HELL NO! I’m too picky on the subs and way too perfectionist about my language, really hate to see all those mistakes and nonsense sentences. If this is to continue, I’d rather end my subscription on viki and keep just watching on other platforms, or even in english if I really have to. This is a huge, tremenduous lack of respect from Rakuten Viki towards the Portuguese community, they should be ashamed of themselves.
