Traditionally, the reason an English TE would be filling in an empty seg is because that particular segment was too hard for a regular subber to translate. A lot of regular subbers are 100% fluent and they are only able to sub as much as they can, and leave the difficult sections to other fluent subbers, who are usually TE’s, but not necessarily. Some other fluent subber could come in later to fill in the rest. So, the bottom line is when a TE fills in an empty seg, it usually takes more time and effort to translate that particular line, because all the easy lines have already been filled in. It’s a moot point anyway for English TEs since there will be no empty segs anymore.
But I can see how this could be problematic for OL TEs.
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Of course dear,
TE is the editor
GE is English Moderator
CE and CS is All.
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I think there’s an update to this article on TE here: https://contributorhelp.viki.com/hc/en-us/articles/18460050460819-What-is-a-Translation-Editor-TE
There’s some more official information, and I think it’s new. I literally just noticed it a moment ago, so I thought I would share.
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Some of the main responsibilities of a Translation Editor are:
- Editing a translation/cultural reference within a subtitle to better capture the meaning in that language.
- Editing a subtitle to add cultural reference or cultural notes, as needed.
- Editing a subtitle to provide a more accurate translation of an idiom in that language.
- Editing a subtitle to provide a correct translation of a slang term/reference in that language.
- Editing a subtitle for fluency so it sounds natural in that language.
- Editing a subtitle for consistency across all names, terms, rituals, and customs.
- Researching cultural references and verifying the original Asian language meaning so the above translation editing can be done.
Am I totally off, or are the points 5 and 6 the responsibility of the English GE? Better not get OL editors involved in this explanation or else things will get chaotic, since every language (and every team in it) has their own rules on roles in the team.
All in all, too much thought has been placed on “cultural references” and not enough on “accuracy”.
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@vikicommunity Why are you so keen on keeping the TE role for OL? What’s the purpose?
If there are OL claiming they are doing TE, that is just their belief and they just want the double point. I’m also an OL editor for a long time already and there is no such thing as a TE for me. Sure, I do something that can be labeled as TE tasks here and there but it’s absolutely untrue that I do the TE’s job and I should have a role for this.
Let’s talk a bit about the new guidelines of the TE role:
A Translation Editor (TE) is one of three types of Editors on Viki, along with the Chief Editor (CE) and General Editor (GE).
The TE ensures the translation is accurate and retains the same meaning from:
- The original Asian source language to English.
English to other languages.
This one is contradictory: TE is an EN role but you also say it should be used for EN to OL.
- Editing a translation/cultural reference within a subtitle to better capture the meaning in that language.
- Editing a subtitle to add cultural reference or cultural notes, as needed.
- Editing a subtitle to provide a more accurate translation of an idiom in that language.
- Editing a subtitle to provide a correct translation of a slang term/reference in that language.
- Editing a subtitle for fluency so it sounds natural in that language.
- Editing a subtitle for consistency across all names, terms, rituals, and customs.
- Researching cultural references and verifying the original Asian language meaning so the above translation editing can be done.
These are a must for any OL subber. So you basically say now that any OL subber is right from the start a TE. And let’s not forget that you don’t control at all the quality of OL contributors. So how can you make sure that each OL subber is capable of doing all these tasks and they are entitled for the OL TE role?
Even though translation editing has not been traditionally acknowledged as applying across all languages, it is being done in all languages and thus all should be included whenever translation editing is discussed. Ensuring proper context, understanding, and cultural references across languages is essential and a responsibility shared by Editors in all languages.
You are in the impossibility of proving this for all the languages. You can do it for EN only. So right now we may have many abusers… who knows?
Who can be assigned a TE role?
- Any qualified Contributor (QC) doing translation editing from source Asian language to English.
Any qualified Contributor (QC) doing translation editing from English to another language (e.g. Spanish, French, German, etc).- Any qualified Contributor doing translation editing from English to their pre-subtitled language (eg. Portuguese).
Not sure about the last point since the PT editors don’t know the Asian language and if there is no TE done on the EN pre-subs, respectively on PT pre-subs, how a PT editor can know the cultural aspects to make sure they include them in the final PT subs? This one is a bit tricky. It could be okay if there are TEs in the EN team so it’s clear that the subs will be worked by them to provide the OL with a much better cultural approach than the pre-subs.
For language teams other than English where an “all in Editor one” approach may be in use (e.g. one person is playing multiple Editor roles) the TE role may be used for that one individual if they are doing translation editing. If you are an other language team doing subtitling and translation editing at the same time, please use the guideline of whether an individual will be doing translation editing when deciding whether or not to assign a TE role.
This one is quite unclear to me. I understand the first part that if one is doing all the editing on a channel (like I do) they should have the TE role, but the rest of it it’s confusing.
Please note this is not the final iteration of the Editor roles. We will be working to further address the inefficiencies of the systems and in the meantime encourage you to adopt this role while we’re finessing how everything works.
You encourage the abuse of the new role. I already saw this happening.
A final reminder that translation editing does not mean checking for grammar accuracy, correcting typos, or adding line breaks. This applies to all languages, including English. If you are doing this kind of editing, we ask that you please use the general Editor role.
This is actually what an OL editor is doing most of the time so with your own words you cancel the false need of having the TE role for OL.
Still nothing clear about those being both subber and editor at the same time. Right now they get double points for creating subs, right?
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Also, meanwhile, I realized something: the contribution system is becoming irrelevant since double points on the subbing/editing part do not reflect anymore the exact amount of subs and edits but how active one is and maybe not even this. And let’s not forget that you can’t control what an OL TE is doing on the channel. Their most activity is about what you mentioned here:
A final reminder that translation editing does not mean checking for grammar accuracy, correcting typos, or adding line breaks. This applies to all languages, including English. If you are doing this kind of editing, we ask that you please use the general Editor role.
@vikicommunity Have you ever thought about making the contribution count something personal? Why not make it private and this way eliminate any race and feuds based on this count which is already becoming more and more irrelevant and imprecise? Like we have now the slots.
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I understood this was referring to solo mods. If so, why just not write it as such? Simplify. What are they actually saying here?
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About the so-called TE role in other languages…
Viki, please stop creating artificial roles in other languages just because your system doesn’t allow you to limit the new roles to English.
If needed, this community can limit this role to English only by CMs manually controlling/removing the TE role in OLs.
So please don’t create roles on your own and say to us “well, now that we can’t do this properly, you figure out how you are going to use the role”.
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@vikicommunity Sorry for tagging you again but there are many problems with this role.
I was just chatting with someone and they mentioned the Subathon, which probably is going to be soon this fall. How are you going to deal with it and this double-rewarded role?
We have contributors who will continue with the normal Language Editor role and we already have contributors using the new OL TE role. I am sure some contributors edit much more than others but just because others use the new OL TE role they get more contributions. Will be this fair in a Subathon? Do I have to use the new OL TE role for the Subathon just to not feel the unfairness that you created? Asking about it because this situation is already a reality on Viki.
Also, how do you plan to deal with the abusive practices? Because I’m sure some are going to find the time and the pretexts to ”edit” more for the Subathon.
Also, how about those who are most of the time both subber and editor at the same time? Like me and many others from small and medium communities.
I know that it may be technically complicated to remove the role or to add some limitations so maybe the best solution will be to just decrease the reward to just 1 contribution per edit. You just need to change a value in the code. 
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I join my voice to the request by the previous posters to withdraw the double reward thingie which is unfair and divisive for our community.
Yes, all OL editors are technically Translation Editors, since they edit translations (duh!). No editor edits ONLY grammar or punctuation, we edit those and also inaccurate translations. It’s all part of what editing is, you cannot separate the two kinds of tasks, and it’s absurd to have two different people, one for the grammar etc. and one for the translation.
This said, on Viki we have been calling Translation Editors only the ones in the English team. And those also don’t need to be awarded double. They are important just as everyone else. It’s teamwork, no one should be given more importance than the others.
Dear Viki,
it’s not embarrassing to admit that something was a mistake. It can happen. It’s okay to take back something that doesn’t work. We will appreciate you all the more for taking our sincere feedback into account.
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I think we already had a conversation on how OL can do TE, yes, it does happen, but reading the recent reactions… it’s like that conversation didn’t happen?
What of “let’s leave it to the teams to know their members and stuff, and deal with this as should be”? (just extra-small-size summarizing here, of course)
Are we back to square one / is it because some volunteers work a certain way that everyone works a certain way?
Long story short and so that there would be no need to repeat what was already said: I would think that Viki also wants to enforce that there is no real hierarchy between the teams. This could have legal implications actually (on volunteer vs. employee). As a result, I would think that’s one of the reasons why Viki doesn’t want to enforce that the English team and translation is The Absolute Law for all other teams: if some TE is still needed at some point for an OL, Viki doesn’t forbid the OL to mention what they think is still needed.
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I believe this has been updated as well, including FAQ. Just noticed it, so I’m sharing.
And one more, I guess.
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Can anyone enlighten me about this TE stuff regarding OL? I am a Dutch moderator and I’ve never had an editor (TE or GE) role for this language so far.
I noticed that there are people who are an OL moderator as well as a TE for this OL on the same show. Sometimes even a CM, so they actually give those roles to themselves.
I wonder, does it mean that if I write something, make e. g. a typo, go the the next segment, go back and correct the typo, I don’t get any extra points, while those people get extra points for correcting their mistakes because they also have the TE role?
By this, I don’t mean to offend anyone, I’m just curious if I understand this correctly.
No one gets any points for correcting their own work. Normally we get 1 point for writing 1 subtitle or correcting 1 subtitle that someone else has written. Once we gained a point on a subtitle, we don’t get more, no matter how often we change it.
For TEs, it works the same, except that instead of 1, they get 2 points.
write a sub: 1 point (regular volunteer) | 2 points (TE)
correct someone else’s sub: 1 point (regular volunteer) | 2 points (TE)
correct one’s own sub: 0 points (regular volunteer) | 0 points (TE)
correct someone else’s sub for the 2nd time: 0 points (regular volunteer) | 0 points (TE)
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Thank you! I wonder why people choose to be an OL TE while working on the show as a moderator of that language as well, then. What’s the point?
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What do you mean? A moderator may or may not be the editor in the team. Most of the time they are, but not necessarily.
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I’ll give a hypothetical example to make clear why I was asking these questions. Let’s say there is a show. There is only 1 person listed for a specific OL, let’s say Dutch, as a Dutch Moderator. No Dutch subtitlers, so the person works alone. The same person also gets the Dutch TE role. I was wondering what might be the reason behind that. Why not only the moderator role but also TE? You edit your own work anyway, and as mirjam_456 said, you don’t get any extra credit for that. 
According to Viki, you must appear on the channel with all the roles you are active in. For example, there are situations where I am the Channel Manager, the Romanian Moderator, the Romanian Editor, and also one of the Romanian subbers. So you are going to see me on the channel with all these roles as per Viki regulations.
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Thank you all for explaining this to me. It’s nice to see that when someone has a question, people don’t hesitate to answer it. 
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I have never added me as subtilter, even if I am always subbing on my channels 
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