Translating One Liners and the inherent problems herein

I tried my hand at helping by translating a few one-liners… just to make sure I was not overstepping any bounds set by moderators for individual shows.

But a problem quickly became apparent with this approach: Much of a good translation is based on context.

An example of this was the line “By John Park”… Is this:

  • Made by a guy named John Park?
  • In proximity to a park called John.
  • Next to aforementioned guy named John Park.

What are the opinion of more established translators?
Am i overthinking the whole thing and this has already been addressed?
Or will any mistakes caused by one-liners being taken out of context, just mark me as a subpar translator?

/Alminox

The context is always the firts.
i’m spanihs so when i’m translating and a line come like this:
-I’m getting nervious whit this gig.
my translations is like:
-i’m getting nervious whit this “actuacion”.
but they are not going to act.
is a job. so i must tipe something like:
-I’ getting nervious 'cause of this job. (they were going to steal something)
lines in viki, can be changed by any user, in the one by one traductor of viki.
and it depends of the votacion. if people think is a bad translation it will be chaged anyways.
i hope this is what you mean .

I think that’s the main issue people have with One Liners.
Translations are very dependent upon context, given by both speech and actions. In that sense, I feel like you should actually be watching what you’re translating as well as being able to see the translations before/after (if that makes sense).

I’ve never really used the tool, so I’m not familiar with it. But trying it just now, it seems to just pull up any show that fits your language criterion…
When it first came out, I was under the impression that you’d be translating/improving lines for something you were watching at the moment-- In that way, you’d have all the context and be able to correct any translations that seemed off…or just write new translations or whatever.
If the One Liners were more integrated (I guess that’s the word) to individual shows, it’d be a much better tool.

All that said, if you’re actually interested in translating, I’d suggest just going in and contacting a team about joining them.

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