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.
If we were to point out all the mistakes found in the subtitles, the topic would be huge kkkkkk
We could make it into one of the new Discussion games… LOL!
Reminded me of this thread…
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.
Examples:
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.
IMO, My two cents, it’s their marketing 
strategy to turn “Global TV Powered by Fans” into a money bag, aka: paid subscribers. 
Ouch! 
I’m in that handful. 
Portuguese PT here, I got that felling too. i haven’t been given a chance to to segg or sub
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.
I deeply thank God for everything.
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 .
Hello!
As a segmenter and a CS. I can tell you that segmenters HATE all these pre-subbed shows. An experienced segmenter can segment a 10-minute part in maybe 10 to 20 minutes. (Depends on the density of the dialog)
But viewers were not happy having to wait for English subtitles, so Viki started dropping shows pre-subbed in English.
Segmenters have to jump through hoops to fix the segments on pre-subbed A&C shows. At least segmenters get credit for pasting subs together when we combine, but we aren’t creating segments. We are only fixing bad timing. The time to work on a part increased to 30 to 45 minutes per part. Many segmenters refuse to work on A&C and have dropped out.
A&C - Adjusting the timing and Combining segments and subs is very time-consuming Plus, it is prone to errors due to latency. Segmenters are from all over the world and the work we do is not instantaneously updating the Viki servers. Latency caused the paste and extension errors and the loss of some subtitles. Viewers complained. At least on A&C shows, the sentences are intact and there are no duplicate segments/subs.
Then, to make international viewers happy, Viki has started dropping shows with English AND Portuguese and sometimes Spanish and French subtitles. The time to combine both English and Portuguese subs increased from 1/2 hour to one hour. Add another half hour for each language.
Segmenters are not willing to paste together 4 languages per segment if they have to combine segments. They take too long plus latency ruins things. So, these multiple language shows are paste English subs only.
Other languages HATE working with broken sentences across multiple segments. A few have been rage-quit saying that segmenters are doing terrible work. - I agree with them! Segmenters hate them too. But segmenters are few and overworked. Overworked segmenters don’t have the time to devote to saving all the language’s subs. All we can do is paste the English subs together so the OLs know which ones should be grouped, and let the OLs fix their own languages.
More segmenters have dropped out. They don’t have an hour to give for one part. We tried reducing the parts to 5 minutes and that brought the working time down to 30 minutes on average. However, we have found too many errors due to latency when we are pasting subs together on multiple languages because the segment timer and bulk editor were not designed to work in tandem. The segment timer can overwrite what we just combined in Bulk due to latency in the sync process. We can’t see that unless we refresh everything and look, which increases the working time yet again. Multiply that reload time for every segment and it is too much time.
To avoid latency errors, we tried pasting English together first, then each of the other languages separately, then going back to English and deleting excess segments and extending the single segment. That is great for the Other languages and it is preferred by them and the TEs who need to hear the full sentences, BUT we can miss a combination here and there.
Even more segmenters have dropped out.
For the CS, (chief segmenter) verifying the combinations and the subs on multiple language shows take a tremendous amount of time to verify. PLUS, most CS do not speak the other languages so they won’t always know if a language’s subs are intact anyway. We depend on the OLs to verify the subs.
Almost all segmenters refuse to work on adjust-only shows for 3 reasons.
1: We can not earn our Viki pass.
2: Spending so much time fixing the timing but still having the broken sentences flash past too fast to read is unfulfilling, and dissatisfactory. And reading broken subs is annoying.
3: repeat #1 & #2
I watch shows on Ne tf lix and i Qi Yi that aren’t on Viki and I will tell you that I hate the broken subtitles and bad timing. I am spoiled watching VIki’s shows with good timing and decent subs. The other sites’ bad timing is all due to machine-cut segments and a lack of skilled human beings to fix them.
IMO the people in charge of Rakuten/Viki, the corporation, do not watch these shows, they do not see what bad timing looks like, don’t see the behind-the-scenes either, and probably don’t care. They are only interested in their bottom line $$$$. Happy viewers = $$$$$. We volunteers are just ‘free’ service to them that they probably don’t respect because we aren’t paid - since paid workers are often thought of as being more ‘capable’ than mere volunteers.
It is what it is. Unfortunately, Viki will end up losing a loyal volunteer base if this continues. Then Viki will become another streaming site full of broken timing and subs. But they probably won’t care because the fans who love this show aren’t flooding Viki with thank yous. Only the unhappy people bother to write their complaints about the lack of subs.
It’s happened before:
This is Viki’s future goal: to get rid of the volunteers. I don’t understand why, since they’ll lose out in the end. Their subtitles will be bad so people will go to another platform.
I don’t like working this way, I feel like I’m an English editor, since they can do this themselves. Like, if we just fix the segments without copying/pasting anything, they can easily copy/paste. So since I wasn’t feeling like a segger doing A&C projects, imagine being in one project where seggers are not needed at all 
I agree with you. I don’t think we should have to paste subs either - Let us create segments right the first time around! But Viewers complained that there were no subs so Wala! pre-subs!
I guess the only reason I am still here is I try to find a way to have decent subs for the viewers.- because I hate reading subs with bad timing. If the timing is bad, the subs are hard to read.
It’s a package now, all the projects comes with English, French, Portuguese and Spanish subtitles & the CS isn’t allowed to combine segments during the A&Cs as this will affect these subs BUT then they do a whole month of sub/ segmenting marathon to encourage volunteers to contribute?!!!
everything is just so weird now.
Realizing the limitation of MT, many businesses prefer translators who are familiar with CAT tools.
Unfortunately, the languages in the Category I of the List of Language Difficulty Rankings are going to be the first to fall victim to MT or CAT.
Having a bad timing subtitles is totally a Viki’s choice.