The grim and uncertain future of segmenters and Portuguese volunteers community

Portuguese PT here, I got that felling too. i haven’t been given a chance to to segg or sub :frowning:

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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.
:sparkling_heart:

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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 .

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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.

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Soon they’ll drop the “subtitled by fans”

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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.

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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 :sleepy:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Having a bad timing subtitles is totally a Viki’s choice.

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Although I’ve only been here a short time, just nine months, I’m worried about this situation. Projects that come with subtitles are horrible, we have to edit practically everything. Errors of agreement, idiomatic expressions, gender variations, none of this is seen, making it difficult to understand the subtitles. If the objective was to present Portuguese subtitles more quickly, the quality has been lost. And just as there are people who look forward to the subtitles, there are also people who wait. The VIKI team lacks common sense and a vision of the people who use the platform. I wonder, if they want to put an end to translations, why do they allow new translators to register?

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We’ll be reduced to a hand full volunteers, our fellow subbers will have to leave since not everyone likes editing. Once again, such a large community reduced to a few members, what a shame.

The most recent I know of is “Moon in the Day”, and I’m sure the moderator would have lot’s of requests from subbers who wanted to join the team and the translations would be done quickly, but now the only thing left is the editing part.

And Viki asked which animal badge we want? We won’t even have the chance to get the lowest contributions. Seggers now have a free pass to heaven, gaining no points but still trying their best, but for how long?

I agree to everything you said. The problem is serious and is aggravating every day.

Yes, you’re right. We’ve lost English once more, before it was the subbers that were tossed away, now even the English Editors are being excluded. What was that survey about then some time ago? Just because we said CE and FE are the same they think there’s no need for them? Their paid people are not that good either, I had a hard time earlier this year with a channel they said would be TEd by them.

They could grant us access to their pre-subbing channels and we would translate it quickly, with no such dumb mistakes as characters gender inversion, addressing the Emperor as “you” in a very informal tone and so many other mistakes.

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I remember seeing a French subtitle with the use of formal and informal speech in the same sentence. :woman_facepalming:t3:

They always want more money. maybe they want to put an end to the QC benefits so that we also pay our Viki Pass. They must see us as a loss of profit.

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Hi how are you? I’m the Portuguese moderator at VIP Thailand , really, when I was reviewing it, I didn’t understand it either… it must probably be an CE error…

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Viki failed with us when they didn’t invest in making things clear to subscribers when they created their account that we’re volunteers.

I don’t know it we have the highest number of viewers, but certainly, we have the most whiner ones, and it makes me think it’s because of them we’re not getting new projects to translate ourselves.

They can change to “Global TV Powered by Subscribers” now. Money is the big boss everywhere.

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I’m sorry you didn’t get an opportunity to join the subber teams, you would learn so much and have fun with it :sweat:. I hope things will change and you can still have a chance to become one of us, volunteers.

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It’s hard for some of us to cut ties. It’s something we’re doing for years and it grew on us, but I guess we’ll have to do it eventually if this goes on.

So many seggers left when A&C started, and even more will leave now.

Viewers only want it to be translated, they don’t care if the subs are wrong, as long that there are subs :woman_facepalming:t2:

I remember that “lovely vikibot”. It seems they forgot what we had to say at that time… Well, I guess the staff from that time are not around anymore to remember that.

If only Viki allowed access to us on their pre-subbed channels… Segmenting from scratch is so much faster than adjusting bad segs!

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You hit the nail on the head. For “Lost You Forever,” I had so many requests to join the team but unfortunately had to turn them all down since all I needed were a few editors. It’s a horrible feeling to reject so many people at once.

I was talking about Spanish Lol. But wow Portuguese viewers are whinier than English and Spanish viewers? Yikes.

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Because every subscriber who has an account can become a subtitler, there is no distinction between a paid subscriber account or a volunteer subber account.

That’s possible. But I’m not sure if I want to pay to watch bad subs here.

Heck, they really are!

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