Viki as Translation Editors

Contributing
8

I am so happy that you wrote this here because this is such a true statement, and now we won’t continue to have that problem here because this is one of the new changes RakutenViki has implemented; that no TE will be required in dramas/movies/etc. from now on.

In regards to ‘‘English teams being obliterated’’ (quote/unquote), I don’t think that’s what will happen here because in my opinion, they will keep those that like you, do a great job, and they will only eliminate/obliterate? those that are not doing the quality work viewers want to see in the dramas/movies/shows etc. This was something I was waiting to see for years, and now finally, has come true.

PS. I think the QC status needs some revamp or eliminated completely. They need to look into some changes there because (imo), that’s the main cause that we have so many volunteering here that are not qualified to be subbers, TE, moderators and CMand they are affecting the Quality in the subtitles of dramas/movies/shows/etc.

In regards to the new TE (paid subbers) we need to give them time to see if they are doing a great job or not bc as far as I know, I still haven’t seen a drama done with a paid TE. If there’s any titles you can mention here I would appreciate if u can offer the link, if possible. To be fair to all/everyone, we do have great TE here at RViki, and I know they know who they really are, and that is why they eliminated the TE’s for the time being, and will work on adding the great TE’s volunteers at some point.

9

If they are getting paid editors as well I think it’s time for us all to just leave. They clearly seem to want us gone already.

@vikicommunity @amm11 @amyk @giant_sean @fsl_viki

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10

@dudie They clearly seem to want us gone already.

I know I’m not ‘‘your cup of tea’’ but I don’t think that’s what they want to do. Why would they get rid of faithful and good working volunteers like yourself and many others in here?

They are just trying to make these changes that will benefit everyone in general, but in doing this, they need to analyze what was done wrong in the past that got to this point where you have to admit we have here some that are not even qualified to be TE’s (in any OL language) I believe they are trying to find the mistakes done in the past, get rid of these mistakes, and then start bringing back a system that will offer both Quality and Quantity to the viewers.

There are so many different language offered here, and we also have great TE’s in those OL language; so I doubt they will loose the great asset they have as faithful, committed. volunteers for years and years. We have to give them time bc no company in their right mind * would bite the hand that feeds them.* That would only work against them as a business person/company. I honestly think we should give them time to sort out things, and remain faithful to them as many have done for so many years.

Don’t forget that during these economic hard times they need to survive, and they can only do that by removing the bad apples from the good ones so they can have a bountiful harvest. At this point personally, I think people with bad intentions has joined here as volunteers just to find a way to do more harm than good, and we have a good example when we read a confessed repentant abuser give us all the full details of all his/her misdeed. In a way, ironically this abuser stated that it was a good person and it a way it was because it made many aware of all the wrong things that was happening, and how easy if was for all this wrong things to continue going on in here. IT was an EYE OPENER; at least for me it was.

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11

You’re right.

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12

I am done speculating, I don’t know if I will get a useful reply to it, but I had to get it “off my liver” as we in Germany say:
If you don’t mind, feel free to read it and vote if you like/dislike to get to know more about it.

https://support.viki.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/10984159251219-Will-Viki-adress-this-problem-

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13

As a TE, I’ll give my two cents.

From what I have gathered within the past few months, most shows’ presubs are not actually done by Viki’s paid subbers. Usually, Viki’s paid subbers come in when there are shows that have no subtitles. The presubs are generally from the distributor themselves, which can either be translated by people from the distribution company or machine translated, we don’t know.

Now, I have yet to run into a show has been TE’d by a paid subber, but I do know that recent shows that have been coming in are claimed by Viki to already have been TE’d — the messages state that TEs are not needed, or rather, reworded so that it states that the CM should find a general/chief editor only.

But often in these presubbed shows there are still errors.

What Viki’s volunteer TEs do is that they not only correct these errors, but more importantly (in my opinion), provide cultural context that you won’t get on platforms like Netflix or the presubs from the distributor themselves.

Example 1:

A character said literally, "You just threw a stone over a wall and killed two people."

What was presubbed/“TE’d” by Viki was that “You killed two birds with one stone.”

Now this seems like it makes sense (both have the words "stone" and "killed two"), but what the character was crudely saying was that the person had blindly tossed out a name and it happened to be an actual person in the company. Which is very different from "killing two birds with one stone" which indicates that you were able to achieve more than one thing. This is an example of an incorrect translation made by presubs.

Example 2:

In historical/period dramas, quoting famous people is very common. This typically can be past emperors of China, poets, or ancient texts. These quotes often contain a lot of valuable meaning that adds context to the dialogue. For instance, there was this scene where a woman was commenting on a painting of an eagle another character drew using the quote from a poem called “Drawing an Eagle” by Du Fu. The first two lines of the poem are a description of the eagle drawing which is what she quotes, but the poem as a whole is a commentary on the poet’s views of ambition and loathing of mediocracy. So this line in the poem emphasizes the painter’s character and values as it foreshadows his lofty ambitions which come later in the show.

Example 3:

PUNS. Puns are a huge part of jokes made in these shows. There was a show where a character’s nickname 路兄 (lu xiong) which is a homonym with 露胸 (lu/lou xiong) which meant “to be bare-chested/show your bare chest” And so another character was calling him by the nickname and he responded with “pervert.” The presubs had no context which may cause confusion among viewers.

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14

I think we have to differentiate between Chinese and other languages. Except for movies and especially the Chinese shows’ (and maybe Thai) presubs are usually done by Viki’s paid translators:
https://www.viki.com/users/nerdishh/contributions
https://www.viki.com/users/cicimong/contributions
(just some examples)
It’s often not necessarily visible since it’s subbed in a different channel and then added by another general account.

The whole “paid TE” matter so far mainly concerned Viki Originals (Korean and Japanese) and some Thai show. That’s what I heard so far.
I don’t know about the Thai show as I’m only involved in Japanese. However, from the Korean show mentioned, I heard there were issues with the segments that were added later on - because it’s difficult to find a solution for those without an approachable TE - not to mention a solution for logical errors. In the Japanese show wasn’t much to add, but some mistakes including those that are repeated all the times (something I put in the TN along with the original subs, but nothing changes).

The Chinese shows often get their subtitles from WeTV, Youku, Iqiyi… and Mango. Especially Mango/Hunan TV are known for bad subs which lead to dramas being “oversubbed” because there were too many changes necessary. If Viki checked these first, I’m sure everyone would appreciate it (or add them without subtitles).

Did they actually say this, or is this an assumption? The only statement I read about this change was a faster editing progress. So other languages will be available faster too (something I find slightly funny if I consider that I had to complain for a year to receive the chance to even finish some short drama).

Anyway, while I agree that not everyone is necessarily good enough in the source language or English to be a TE or subtitler I can say from the point of a GE that “less impressive” TEs usually don’t tend to ruin a drama. They rather tend to apply superficial changes by changing the formatting only. So those dramas don’t necessarily become better, but not worse either. :woman_shrugging:
I would assume there are rather more subtitlers who don’t necessarily know a language and copy subtitles from elsewhere rather than throwing them into some sort of translator. But that’s another matter.

The statements made so far here only covered a small part. Other cases showed that anyone could do this. Even if the community says they’re innocent while they’re not.
Just like someone “regretting things” isn’t necessarily honest, either.

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15

As to the reason why Viki would hire both paid subbers and TEs, we’ve had that discussion before.

Relying on the volunteers who are by no means bound to Viki to fulfil their duties (although they often do) and to fulfil them in the time Viki would like them to (time which nobody knows because it’s not being communicated to the volunteers), all that left their business vulnerable.

Not to mention that we have striked before during which very little progress was made.

What irks me is that while volunteers were for YEARS plucking their hair out in stress how to translate an episode asap and staying up late or waking up at 4 AM for the release of the episodes, while at the same time Viki claiming it’s impossible to translate shows before they are released to the public due to “technical” reasons, now it seems… that was a pure lie.

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16

Thanks Unnie for writing this up, as we know Viki isn’t available on weekend, but hopefully they will read it on Monday. I agree with everything you said!:+1:

This one looks like a paid subber too, often the episode is subbed by this profile before released:
https://www.viki.com/users/viki/overview

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17

… there are new subs, and what do I see? Using -br- when it is only a short sentence and no blank space between the words …

Weren’t we told exactly the opposite in the past years?

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18

I mentioned this in another thread somewhere… or perhaps on KKT… who does check the accuracy???

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19

The editors … Which is why an English team is still crucial even if the shows are presubbed.

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20

That’s not what I meant, when Viki gives the translating job to a paid translator, who checks the accuracy including the the usage terms in the editor like breaks, italics etc…

I assume that person must go through some test… and if so, are these well checked… I’ve seen discrepancies, like creating breaks in one short message and that sort of…

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21

That’s not a person. It’s the account from which they upload subs from whichever source, be it their own paid subbers or whatever the content provider hands them.

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22

I’m guessing there might be multiple persons or uploads as you say using it for that purpose, it’s just reading the subs on the profile I see that it’s not following the subtitling rules in the editor and I don’t mean the language… I talking about breaks in short sentence, space bar before/after - and after breaks… there is a space after / in ending italics…
A sample:
image

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23

xiaofengcanyue A character said literally, "You just threw a stone over a wall and killed two people."What was presubbed/“TE’d” by Viki was that “You killed two birds with one stone.”

I haven’t encounter this so far, but I have heard this is happening here a lot lately; which it doesn’t surprise me since I believe pre-subbed dramas are mainly done with translation tools (AI or vikibot, maybe?).

I’m not saying that eliminating the TE was the correct thing to do, but there’s not much we can do or say about it since it seems they are now doing things their own way. I think we need to keep pointing things here (in Discussion) like (imo) you excellently did here. Those explanations you gave here so well written is what we need to do in order for them to see what mistakes are being done in the drama’s subtitles/translations etc. The communication they are not having with us, but we can have with them directly or indirectly.

I don’t think a company that for years and years had their share of great volunteers here want to lose them over a low Quality pre-subbed work done; which paying customers will only complain about, and it’s only fair. That in my opinion will be the dumbest move they would ever make in here. Paid subbers in every [OL] will be too costly, so they still need those great good Quality work volunteers to continue doing their magic in here, and attract more [OL] paying subscribers.

But I do believe we have to agree that we were being bombarded by too many abusers and controlling groups that were doing more harm than good to this site. In my language for example (Spanish) the situation was so out of control, it was driving me insane, and now… so far, I’m very pleased that things are improving so much more, and that makes me very happy. So I feel that with time they will also work things out in every OL sector.

I always love these saying: ‘‘While the difficult takes time; the impossible just take a little longer.’’
‘‘When there’s a will, there’s always a way.’’ They will find a way to make things right, and fair for all of us in general. I have no doubt about it. I surely hope I’m not only making assumptions based on the faith I have on: ‘‘Do good and good will always come back to you.’’ The many faithful, good quality volunteers, working here for years and years, deserve that much.

PS. Sorry… also the new volunteers that give quality work here, and may not have been here for years and years, but deserve to be appreciated, too.

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24

Regarding the topic I created at the Help Center, I got a reply, I wouldn’t call it an answer.

So maybe some of you can help me out, if you write a post openly at Viki, and it is made into a request (yes, I know keep it private, if it is not a simple question strategy, avoid open discussions or so it seems to me at last …) is it normal, that the one from the back desk will address the staffer from the front desk … Not that I already feel kind of ignored, but getting that feeling two times in one “request” is hard to swallow.

So to make it clear
I am A the writer of the post,
B is the staffer at the front helpdesk
and C is the staffer at the back desk.

So C is thanking B for her feedback.

Hello Viki! Is what I want to shout over the ocean, I know there are many requests every day. But addressing the wrong person on a sensitive matter and ignoring that matter all in all … Makes one feel like Don Quixote …

The only part of the answer I got that I want to share with you is this one.

While paid subtitlers aren’t available for now, we really appreciate your input and proposal.

This seems out of context, but believe me when I say this is the only point the problem was slightly touched.

Does it refer to all languages? Who knows? Can I even consider this as an answer to problems of finding a project for English translators that is not only editing these days? I don’t know?

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25

To be honest, I’m not sure this so called TE is doing any editing at all. Things translated so off that even someone that doesn’t know the language can see it. Others are not translated at all. A very long line and only two words translated. I have a feeling they are just uploading the full translation at once and not even watching what is going on in the scene. I’m in 3 projects with staff doing TE. Two of them are fairly good, but one is so so so bad it made me cry a couple of times. And I can’t even see who did it because it only says Viki. That’s the worst part. We can’t even talk to the person to ask questions. Not cool. Not cool at all.

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26

They are definitely not watching the scene.

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@lutra

Not only they ignored to answer your questions, they even closed the post, and gave you the run around of a ticket that will stay in limbo or marked as solved. How disappointing it is to see this happening here…:open_mouth:

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