Translation Editor Role and Reward Released

Viki Community Corner Contributor Community News
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Hello everyone,

We want to share that the Translation Editor (TE) role has been released. The TE role should primarily be assigned to any qualified Contributor (QC) doing translation editing from source language to English or English to any language as long as translation editing is mainly being done by the Contributor. As a reminder, this role will earn 2 points per contribution.

Some of the main responsibilities of a Translation Editor are:

  • Editing a translation/cultural reference within a subtitle.
  • Editing a subtitle to add cultural reference or cultural notes, as needed.

For more details on the editing roles, see our updated help articles.

We trust that this community will work together to ensure that whoever occupies a role will not abuse that role. We’d also like to stress that occupying a role when you are not performing the required tasks for that role will be considered a serious Contributor violation resulting in removal of your QC status. This applies across the board and not just to the new TE role.

We understand this new structure may not be the ideal, but we ask for patience as we try to further define the contributor community landscape. We have backend system limitations that we are working with which limits what we’re able to do and we’re looking at ways to address them in the future.

Special thanks to NSSA and particularly @dimghro for spearheading NSSA’s new English Editor academy. We’re excited to support this new addition to NSSA!

Please remember that there are many varied viewpoints in this community and our team does their best to try and factor them all in when making decisions. We continue to thank you for your feedback as we use it to inform future changes, and we will continue to reach out to you in the coming months.

:blue_heart::blue_heart::blue_heart::blue_heart::blue_heart:

-Viki Community Team

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Isn’t a translation editor’s main role to make sure that the meaning in the translation matches the meaning in the original language?

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Thank you for taking the time to reflect more on the situation created by the confusion between the EN and OL roles and create a temporary solution. Once you, Viki, will start rebuilding the roles system everything will be according to our needs.

Now I just have some remarks about this temporary solution:

  • OL doesn’t have TEs, so the ”English to any language” should be removed.
  • I consider those 2 responsibilities as being only for an EN TE since we, the OL, just translate the cultural references made by the EN team. We don’t know the Asian languages so we don’t work on the base language of a drama. We don’t add cultural references because they are already there and we don’t edit cultural references because they are already researched by the EN team.
  • I hope this will be fixed through the updated help article; personally, I can’t consider any of the Romanian contributors as being TE.

I’m sure that you are trying to create a better-contributing environment for us and for this to be done ASAP and efficiently, is very important that all of us post proposals for a better rewarding system, proposals about all the roles we need, and with a well-defined list of their responsibilities. A community can’t be built on negativity, sarcastic questions and remarks, rudeness, and direct/indirect insults on others with each occasion. I’m 100% sure that you are listening to our needs and note each solution so it’s important for you to actually find those solutions in our discussions. And if they took place at some point in the past then we can just redirect you to those topics.

The fact that you approached NSSA to create a professional environment for the EN editors is already big proof of your wanting a change for the better. All kind contributors are going to understand this and support the upcoming EEA. And I’m sure you are not going to stop here with this and I together with all those who think like me are going to be here to help you with all the information you may need. The community is not chased anywhere, we are going to continue having this community and be able to actually contribute to making it better.

With my positive attitude, I’m not trying to repay any of Viki’s willingness to support much more NSSA or to make everything look pinkish when there are actually some problems but this is just my approach on a volunteering platform owned by a profit-oriented company. I try to offer something good and useful especially if I know that we are listened to. If at any point I consider that there is no chance for this community to change for the better with Viki’s help, well, I’m going to close this chapter of my life and move on. I keep a lot on my emotional and mental health so there is no reason to stay here and consume myself while blaming others for this. If I don’t have the decision in my hands why torment myself here in mean and endless discussions?

I will close this long post, which is also a reflection on the discussions that happened for the past few days, by taking advantage of it and saying a BIG THANK YOU to @brendas for her huge involvement and willingness to listen to and help this community. You don’t deserve any rude attitude so I hope people will refrain from always showing their dark part. You deserve all our good thoughts and the entire support in making this community a good one. Fighting! :muscle:

That’s all I have to say on this topic! Have a great time everyone! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Well said! @dimghro

@brendas I appreciate you and can’t thank you enough for what you do for this volunteering community!

Keeping the positive vibe going! Fighting!

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I am confused. To be a TE from source language to English I am totally agree, and that’s a good thing. But from English to OL? What does it mean? Cultural reference -->99% is the EN TE’s task. I speak a little bit of Chinese, so I can add some interesting thing, like “her name mean this, and her company name is based on this… (As beautiful as you)” and usually I also correct my teammates translation based on the original Chinese source (as in EN some information might get lost, and also… Chinese sentence structure is closer to my language the to the EN). So what I will be considered from now on? I do a little “TE” task, but that would be a mocking of the real TE if anyone would call me like this when I’m half way to HSK4.

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What will be the basis on which TEs will be selected for the project? What is to guarantee that a contributor I don’t like will not sabotage my work because of disagreements and conflicts of interest between us? Possibly give me undue negative publicity?
Or do I get to choose who is TE?

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I might be a bit blind, but I don’t see the option to pick this role when I click to manage a channel. @vikicommunity
I’m on Chrome on my laptop.

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Hmm… Maybe you can elaborate on the issue a bit further?

In this example, which role are you holding? Of a CM, a CE, OL mod or OL subber?

The most organic setup is that the CE (English) chooses their team of editors. Then they are usually working well together.

If you’re speaking from the OL subber’s PoV, your language’s Moderator is the go-to person in case of subtitling disagreements between you and the Editor of your language. But I would just like to stress again that OLs do not have TEs.

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I believe the option will be added when you become a manager.

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I am OL moderator. I rarely work with other people, I mostly subtitle alone. What if I get a TE with whom I don’t have a good personal relationship and it affects our work together?
I’m a Hungarian contributor, my community is small but full of feuds. As it is written, TE checks from English to Other, so I need someone from my own community to fill this role…

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On my CM channels I also don’t see the option of adding a TE.

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Sakura, if you work alone, and you check, edit your own job, you don’t need a TE. If you want someone as TE because you have a friend who speaks let’s say Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and you want to be extra sure, that your translation is accurate, it is your personal decision as OL. No one going to force you to accept someone, who gonna TE your EN-HU translation.
The real question here is who can be considered as a TE. Personally, I would only let people with source language to EN be a TE, and only, if they actually editing the English subs. I wouldn’t give this role to anyone else… only, if the person can prove that actually speaking/understanding the source language to a specific level.

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It might happen in the future, with new dramas that viki gives the choice of the CM to choose that person if he needs her, but I think it would be more effective for someone with no experience to get a Co-CM

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TE should just be for asian languages to English and not for us OL.
My though…

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Oh, I think there has been a misunderstanding.

Viki believes there are two types of TEs:

  1. English TE (checking translation from original language to English)
  2. An OL TE (basically editor from your language community in charge of the same job as an English TE).

However, it is quite obvious that there isn’t a TE in OL teams. At least there has’t been one so far.

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Not true. Some languages actually do have TE, GE, and CE.
The other ones have an editor who is TE, GE, and CE all embodied in one person.

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Dear all,

Those doing the edition from English to OL do often add culture references, but English to OL editors (or even translators) do too. Because sometimes the English editors didn’t notice it, or didn’t feel it important to mention, but in OL we do see it and think it important to mention. Also sometimes because a certain reference can be kept with a certain phrasing in English, while it will disappear in the other language: we have to add the reference.
(+ It isn’t because we aren’t part of one of the English teams that we don’t know the original language at all: I speak Japanese, know the basics of Korean and working on improving it, and am starting to grasp the basics of Chinese. This kind of situation isn’t rare in our teams, we all know that: we too do see some references sometimes, even if the English version didn’t mention it.)

You don’t do automatic translation from original language to English, and neither do we when we translate English to other languages. Please keep this in mind!
For example, I worked recently on a drama where at some point one character makes a reference to video games mechanics. The drama isn’t about video games at all, even if we know from past conversations that the main character is definitely into video games when he has time, so it wasn’t specified in the English version at all. But as a gamer myself it was obvious, so I definitely used this “semantic” for the version to my language, because it made more sense. Even if the English edited version didn’t mention or even imply it.

Also, what takes time in other languages edition (no less than edition from original language to English) is making sure that the whole drama is coherent: keep the same tone, make sure that the characters use the same level of language throughout the drama (or when there’s a change follow the decision made with the moderator), search through past episodes for flashbacks, make sure that the written text isn’t too long and can be read (= re-watch the episode after it was edited, and usually shorten a few sentences here and there) (and we watch the episode before starting the edition too, in order to be sure of where the story is leading, as this would often have consequences on the translation here and there), etc. And the spelling and such, but in the end the spelling doesn’t take THAT much time, compared to all the rest.

In the end, I’m really not sure this is a good system in that it creates two types of editors, while they do spend equal time on research, making sure, checking etc. Maybe editing should receive a bit more credit because you normally don’t touch that many “fields” compared to the time spent checking everything, but then it should be all editors. And definitely not only “original language to English” (which would be appallingly unfair).

Edit (about edition, ha): It might be seen as abusing the system, and I’d be sorry for that so please tell me if Viki wouldn’t accept it, but honestly, the few times I’m a moderator, I believe I will appoint any “editor” as a “Translation Editor”. Because that’s what I expect from an editor, in the first place. If I ever “hire” an editor who would only do the spelling stuff, I might leave them with the traditional role but… I’d much rather hire a “complete” editor, meaning TE-type here.

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I’m totally agreed. In Italian, for exemple, we often use chinese terms as gege, dage, jiejie (ecc.), and when we do that, of course there is a work of editor because in english there isn’t anyone who uses these terms. So, what’s the difference? Maybe for some language there isn’t, but for other, I think there is.
For exemple, in one recent chinese drama, they have spoken about embroidered ball, which is a traditional chinese game. So, there was a research about it to understand the meaning. If this is not “cultural reference”, what is it?

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So, two questions arise from this:

  1. Should Viki change the entire role system, meaning for every language, just because there are exceptions? 1-2 big languages might have the need for a OL-TE role on one particular project.

  2. And isn’t this all de facto a consequence of Viki not understanding that there are huge differences in how teams work based on:

  • the number of team members (usually proportional to language “size”)
  • individual projects (more popular projects having more volunteers)
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Besides getting double points there is absolutely no reason for switching from the already existing Language Editor role to the new Language Translation Editor role. All the OLs are going to continue their activity like before. I mean, I’m going to edit in the same way I did so far. I already paid attention to the cultural aspect, I didn’t need a specific role for this. But I’m sure that now, some OL contributors will start from nowhere to edit under the pretext of doing TE editing. And this is hilarious because the OL never had any definition for it like the EN TE and is much harder to create a definition for an OL TE and make sure each OL is respecting the role attributions.

Maybe this is also a reason for Viki’s confusion: many OLs are mentioning here each task they have as OL editors which also includes the researching part but not at the same level as the one of an EN TE. But the truth is that we don’t need a new role for this since we already have one and our editing activity is not going to change just because of this new role.

Here are 2 different aspects to be clarified:

  1. Is there a need for a second OL Editor role? If the OL Translation Editor role is needed, what’s its definition? Who will decide that one is not abusing the role and they really do TE editing? What about a Spanish team with 3 editors? Will only one receive double points because they are considered some sort of TE in the Spanish community and the other 2 not?
  2. Do the editors need more points for their job? Yes, they need more points but while for the EN editors is easy to validate them as good EN editors for an OL editor is going to be tricky since there is no way to validate them. And if you are invoking their community, sorry, we all know about all the disputes and fights within a community. Even if one is a good OL editor there will be for sure some complainers to say otherwise and Viki doesn’t have employees for each language to validate people as valid OL editors.

They now created 2 OL editor roles without making a clear differentiation between them and without any system to make sure there will be no abuse of the new role.

LoL… I said I was not going to say anything else besides my first post but is hard :joy:

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