Tips for typing faster ⏩

Contributing Subtitling
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Hey!

All right, I know that fast doesn’t mean that it’s always good. Editing subtitles is a necessary step :slight_smile:
Just thinking that typing fast can have some good points when we translate (bad too, yes, yes :slight_smile:)

As for me, I think that what helped me improving my typing speed & subtitling along the way was (might not work for some others, but this is what worked for me xd):

1.Typing everyday day, contributing on a regular basis (week at least) so we feel familiar with our keyboard, with the Subtitle editor, with translating.

2.Try not to look at your keyboard when typing. Maybe not at the beginning when you discover the keyboard but after some practice and when you begin to memorize some letters here and there, I didn’t concentrate on the keyboard anymore but on the screen. For me, it’s not my eyes that know where letters are but it’s my hands that memorize where they are by typing and typing and typing. Knowing my keyboard came with typing repeatedly.

3.Give you a limited time to subtitle one part: I mean by that I often say to myself: “Okay, you have one hour of free time to subtitle, knowing your speed, you can do [number] of parts.” And I check my watch to see at what time I “should” finish subtitling my part. So yes, organize your time to know what you are able to do on a given timing with your own fixed deadline. So knowing your speed is part of the process. Of course, one part is never the same as another part, meaning number of segments, of words, complexity of words can affect the span of time we will take to subtitle. But it gives you an approximative idea of what you are able to subtitle for what amount of time in general. And it keeps me focused on reaching my goal because I don’t have much time.

4.Contributing on a regular basis on the same drama(s) and chain parts, one after the other: because we get used to the drama’s environment, characters, language, ost, specific terms of the drama… The more I worked on the same drama, the more it became like a clear field. Feel familiar with the drama on which you contribute.
Chain parts because it’s just the follow-up of the part you just subtitled, so you will most likely understand what is happening 10 min later than waiting for the next episode and maybe feeling lost so you will have to watch what happened before. Of course, it’s only possible if you have free time and if there are not many translators in the team (mostly found on deserted channels like old dramas), etc. But all in all, sharing an episode with my teammates is a point that I must not forget when translating because it’s a collaborative work and let’s just share our fun with others so I often try to take 1 part on a well fournished team or even 2 if I see not many people will come during the following days or comparing with previous episodes that were translated (that’s why Team discussions and google sheets are a good way to see who is active and if you will have to translate more than 1 part or if you’ll share with others teammates)

5.Working on 1 long drama of 40 episodes OR 2 dramas of 20 episodes: it really depends on your feelings on the drama, and I don’t know how we can feel it before subtitling it xd If we enjoy the drama, we will enjoy subtitling as many parts as possible (normal) xd I can’t work on the same channel without working on other channels because it can get boring and I just want to take the remote and change the channel that I’m about to work on. But I don’t like to feel overwhelmed with many dramas too to work on (delegating things is something that I’m still learning :slight_smile:)
So either I will enjoy the drama and no problem with chaining episodes OR either I will get bored and I will take more time to chain them because I will try to find other things to do instead of finishing one episode xd (one of the reason why teammates can be a great support to motivate you, to help you finishing)

Example for points above and especially points 4 & 5: I improved my typing speed, subtitling speed working on The Return of Superman, a Korean reality show, because there are many episodes (so good playground), not many subtitlers, I love the show so I can chain parts/episodes.
The particularity of this reality show is there are about 2000 segments for 1 ep (about 330 subs for 1 part which is about 3X number of segments from a classic drama part), many sentences are not long, no big problem with casual/formal tone when chars speak to someone, casual language, repetitive words… It made me practice my typing at lot, typing common words because they say it many times and also multiple characters speaking, dash, break (I was so used to type break codes and italics that changing my way of doing it with shortcuts took some time because my hands move automatically to type the entire code instead of the shortcut, I’m sure I’m not the only one! :wink:)

+not much time so you’ll try to maximize the number of segments that you can translate (because it’s really frustrating to see that you subtitle I don’t know how many segments and it’s still 10%, so it’s pushing me to go faster because I don’t want to take all my time on 1 part, I also want to do other things but I also want to advance more than 10% xd)

All of that makes me improving my typing speed (but editing is always necessary)


Following points are not gonna make you type faster but it’s more about “being faster in subtitling process”, so you can translate instead of losing time in copy-pasting, finding the right segment, using your mouse, finding mistakes, etc.

6.Knowing viki and other shortcuts (computer, browser): quickly go the empty segment, etc.
For example:
If it’s transcription, our typing hides raw English subs, I just select all of my transcription with Ctrl + A and I cut it with Ctrl + X so I can see again the end of the raw English sentence on the video. And then, I just continue to write the end and copy paste the beginning of the sentence already transcribed.
Another example: when I forgot mini words or I saw some typos or I forgot the capital letter at the beginning of a segment, I just jump to the previous word with Ctrl + Arrow, if I want to go directly at the beginning/end of the sentence instead of using my mousepad, I just go with Fn + Arrow.

7.Customizing your own keyboard (if it’s possible for your language, depends on your subtitling language) if you need particular symbols that you often use (in French for example, I don’t have a number pad on my laptop so I had to copy paste from an other source to the Subtitle Editor, but after customizing the keyboard with all capital letters, money currencies, ♪, even emoji :scissors: (just for fun), it’s super convenient and quicker.

8.Spell checking on (even though it’s not correct all the time, most common words are covered for my language so for seeing some typos, it’s not bad)

9.Dictionnary always open in another tab xd (I don’t know if I should mention it but oh well)

And what about you? What are your tips to type faster?
Are there some universal tips to subtitle faster in an omega language and are there some tips to subtitle faster specific to your language?

Okay, I’m done trying to bring spring back again :yum: Just kidding, let’s just get along, every hardworker volunteer in who I have so much appreciation! Sending all my good mood to you so it can bring a lil smile to your lips :slight_smile: Just enjoy life on Viki :slight_smile: and relaax :persevere: We are all in the same big team, from the same community, who share the same passion. We have enough problems in our real life out there and in the end, we just want the same thing here, have fun while sharing our passion! And however different or similar or square or round or I don’t know how we might be, is it worth to break this solidarity among us for this tinyyyy lil dust. :ok_woman:

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My own tip to type faster is much simpler: go and do a speed-typing course, and learn “blind” typing, the one where you use all ten fingers and don’t look at the keyboard.
I learned at a school, but nowadays there is software like “Mavis Beacon teaches typing” which is excellent.

Other than that:
One should always watch all the episodes of a drama one is working on before subtitling. If you do this, even if you don’t chain the parts it’s no problem, because you remember what is going on.
Of course it’s better if you don’t have too much on your plate, i.e. working on 10 different projects simultaneously, because then you won’t even have the time to watch the episodes. What I do is that I watch the episode a little before translating, so that there’s no time to forget.

Customizing your keyboard and learning the shortcuts are excellent tips.

I also have all my tools (dictionaries, google sheets with lists of specialist words etc) on the favourites toolbars and keep them open when I translate. This makes it easier to access them at any moment.

I am afraid I don’t agree on your n.3, this “set a specific time frame to finish each part”. It should take as long as it needs to be as good as possible.

As for working on very long dramas, it depends on the person. In my case, I tend to lose interest, so I translate with less enthusiasm. But each of us is different.

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LOL mavis beacon. I think my highest WPM with that was in the 70s.

I think just typing a lot also helps.

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Tip for typing faster: work in a crazy, demanding field for many years.

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About “blind” typing, I think it doesn’t suit everyone, but it’s a good standard. I’m pretty fast and when I tried “blind” typing it actually slowed me down. I know people who became faster, but they weren’t good at typing to start with. Most people I know actually got really fast through practice.

I totally agree, we’ve seen too many examples of how speed usually means lower quality.

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i am learning in www.goodtyping.com

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Well that’s very natural, because you had already acquired speed with the other “method”, whereas this was a new thing to learn. But I think that if you stuck to it showing a little patience with yourself, you would soon reach that speed and surpass it. And it’s not only speed: with the blind method you make fewer mistakes because each finger will go exactly to its assigned key(s) and nowhere else.

It is the same for crochet. People who have used the “knife holding method” for a long time say that if they try the “pen holding method” it slows them down initially. But after a while their speed is nowhere near the old one.

Speed apart, from the point of view of ergonomics, it’s surely less tiring for the fingers/hands if the job is divided among ten fingers than among four or five .

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I type with all fingers, that’s a given to gain considerable speed. I don’t really make mistakes and of course I seldom look at the keyboard (that would also slow me down), usually when I’ve moved a lot between different languages and I’m tired or I’ve used different keyboards for some reason and the distance between keys or placing (like certain buttons in laptops) is different, I need some time to adjust.

I’m talking about the specific placing of the fingers of the official “blind”, that’s what I don’t do.

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Aaaah, so you ARE doing some kind of blind of your own. That explains the speed.

As for languages I know three keyboards now, Greek, English and Italian. I have difficulty remembering the French because I haven’t used it that much. It’s very bothersome that all Latin languages don’t have the same one at least for the main letters.
Once upon a time Italian had the “M” on the right pinky, where the Greek accent is. That drove me mad. But since computers came, for some reason they changed that, and now “m” is on its proper place. Still the parenthesis, question mark and column, asterisk, /, +, =, @, " … all these are very different.

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It makes sense, though, given the different frequency of letters in different languages.

I know Greek and English, a bit French but I don’t use it often, and I’m learning Korean. I once tried German, but gave up.

Voice recognition (done right) will save us all one day. :slight_smile:

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I think you should play around with your keyboard and create shortcuts. I only have one keyboard installed the Korean one because there’s a built in toggle key to go from Korean to English and vice-versa.

If you create shortcuts to toggle between languages it’s less annoying.

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I did have shortcuts in my previous laptop (where I also had German and French), but in Win 10 language shortcuts refuse to work. I need the Greek keyboard anyway, but I’m thinking of only keeping the Korean for both English and Korean. So I’ll toggle 2 instead of 3.

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I don’t use toggle, because I have four languages there. I use shortcuts CTRL+1, CTRL+2 etc. But you say they don’t work in Windows 10? Oh, how awful! Then that is one more reason I will not install Win 10 unless I absolutely have to (for instance, when I change my laptop for a new one).

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Thanks for the course and the software suggestions. I’m sure it will be very helpful since computers are almost everywhere.

For subbing :
Should I tell or not that I don’t usually watch dramas ? I’m almost sure that to make subtitling faster or easier, it’s better to watch before subtitling because of all advantages you listed.

I can try to explain what it is when I don’t watch before subtitling, not that I’m trying to convince people that it’s better but to have a complete vision about the interesting point you mentioned. What I think I gain or lose when I don’t watch beforehand (being a non english subber and not editor or moderator from my pov which of course is personal and we re all different):

  • The time when I don’t watch eps is used for proofreading my part after finishing it or subtitling another part.
    It’s true that I don’t proofread all the time because I can get lazy (I’m human) and I can let it to the editors (let’s work in team). Sometimes, I ask if I did many mistakes to editors or I check on edited parts that I did to see what I should correct for the next time. In general, the feedback is good with a few mistakes. Lately, I have been proofreading my parts because I got curious about my subtitling mistakes nowadays. At the end, I think that I gain more time to subtitle than watching before subtitling (just from a time perspective). So just as an example, subtitling 2 parts instead of 1 because I didn’t watch (but it really depends for each person and their subtitling skills if I can call it like that ? ).
    So maybe it’s not the best to follow the drama if it’s my original intention but for viewers, it’s subtitles released faster (with a few mistakes but I think they know that editing will follow)
    If I see that I can’t understand at all what is happening, either I talk with the mod, editor, subtitlor in our chat (most of the time, this is what I do), either I go watch previou(s) episode(s) but the problem is if I missed more than 1 ep, I have to watch more eps. That’s why I prefer to ask because it’s less time consuming (but for the pleasure of watching the drama, I totally see why people want to watch it).

  • If I watch in advance, it spoils me and I might lose interest. This is what just happened to me last week because I binged 15 eps but now, I’m going less often on the drama because I killed the suspense. What got me to continue was because I wanted to know what will happen.

  • Editors can be bored if the part contains a few errors and they concentrate their time on other dramas instead of dramas where you mostly subtitled because of time, maybe it’s better to concentrate first on dramas with more mistakes for viewers’ comfort (I’m not making up things).

So yes, my vision is something like gaining time to subtitle more parts to release faster for viewers (but it’s always possible to watch other parts after finishing my part).

I can only tell that for the moment, this is what works for me.

I’m now discovering that transcription is a good way to improve English and typing speed !

For transcription (I modify what I wrote) : instead of select, cut, write the end, copy ; it’s more convenient to select, cut, see the end and then copy, write the end.

For italics : I don’t use anymore this shortcut because I realized that it took me more time. I only type the beginning <.i> sentence because the software automatically add the <./i> if not typed.
For breaks : I just heard that I got to put a space before breaks (no need after) because of mobile crash.
Deleting the word we’re typing : alt + delete (or was it Fn+del ? Forgot)
Going to the beginning of the 1st line when the sentence contains many lines : alt + up (or Fn+up ? I forgot too)

About setting a deadline to finish a part : I agree with you too. Sometimes, I take more than what I usually do when I subtitle or segment because each part is different. Sometimes, I need to set a deadline otherwise I lack concentration to finish a part and then I do something totally different. It’s more to finish what I begin that I set a time otherwise count on me to take hours. Again, this is what worked for me to fully concentrate and making me type faster.

Hope I covered all the points : )

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Ooh how is it ?

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Let me give you my perspective.

To make something less time-consuming for yourself, you give more work to others, making them waste THEIR time. Nice!
As a moderator, I prefer that someone contributes less quantity with better quality. Editing takes more time than translating for me. It is annoying and time-consuming, especially when it concerns typos, formatting and punctuation, where you have to exactly place your cursor and only delete or add one character. As for not knowing who a character is and what they are referring to because the subber hasn’t watched the series… then why on earth take part in the project, if you’re not even interested as a viewer? No need to see (in older dramas) all the episodes to the end, but keep abreast of the episodes in turn, as they are worked on, viewing each one just before subtitling it.

Frankly, if a subtitler in my team showed that they don’t read their work again or asked me something which was clearly said/shown in the episode, I would point it over again and again, and if the situation didn’t change, I would never ever work with her again.

… and they can be mad if the part contains a lot of errors.
Personally I only get bored - and exasperated - if I have to change every single subtitle of a sloppy, lazy collaborator, who makes me waste my time with no reason, whereas I am happy and thankful when I just have to breeze through and be finished quickly.
I currently have two Greek translators who are such a blessing for me, I hardly have to correct anything. I feel I want to hug and kiss them after editing their parts. On the other hand there is a very good Italian translator with lots of knowledge, but she never looks at her work again because she has too many projects. I don’t work with her much anymore, because I get annoyed at stupid typos she could have easily corrected herself but left to me instead.

What about what works for others in the team?
It would be interesting to know what the moderators and editors in your team think about that. Have you asked them? If they prefer you doing more parts but without watching first and without looking at the translation again, or less parts but more correctly done?

You are a nice person and I like you a lot. I am also thankful to you because you introduced to google sheets and I will never forget that.
So please don’t take this as a personal attack, because it isn’t. I just happen to disagree with the way you see a subber’s role: this does not mean I have anything against you. People can disagree with each other, even if they love each other, right?

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This page show step by step how use the keyboard only the words the others for example numbers and other is with Typing master this program have you pay i like this program but i don’t where download free
Are many pages i know these page because when i stayed in 5 grade my teacher learned this in the program Typing master after i look for and find this page

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Please elaborate on items 7,8, and 9.

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Ι will let the O.P. tell you about customising the keyboard. But 8 and 9 are easy.

Spellchecker
Every browser has a spellchecker.
Internet Explorer : Go to Tools, you will see the available dictionaries and the option to choose and install other languages.
Opera:
Go to Settings -->Languages ->Under the sentence “Change the default spell check dictionary or add new dictionaries” there is a button, “Dictionaries”. Click on it.
Firefox
Options - Advanced - General. Tick the box “Check my spelling as I type”. To add more dictionaries, right click some text and see “Add more dictionaries”.
Here are detailed instructions.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-use-firefox-spell-checker#w_adding-dictionaries
Chrome
See here https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/spell-checker-for-chrome/jfpdnkkdgghlpdgldicfgnnnkhdfhocg

Have dictionaries open

Magic Search Metasearch http://magicsearch.org/
Word Reference http://www.wordreference.com/
English idioms dictionary http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/
ProZ http://www.proz.com/search/
Slang http://onlineslangdictionary.com/
Urban dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com/
Collins Thesaurus & Synonyms https://www.collinsdictionary.com/
https://www.usingenglish.com/
Idioms from usingenglish.com https://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/
Wikipedia www.wikipedia.org
And a couple of resources for your own language if your language isn’t English.

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@irmar my precious friend would you mind sharing with me who are these wonderful greek translators in case I don’t have them in my team yet?