I am sorry if your experience with Kor-Eng subbers was mostly negative. I can’t speak for others, but I personally don’t feel like I was ever treated like a queen and I certainly hope I didn’t behave that way. If I ever came across that way, I apologize. As to the non-contributing subbers, I actually think their names should be removed from the team. No contribution, no recognition, simple as that.
I understand that with so few available English subbers, CEs may have been hesitant to give proper feedback but now that Viki is hiring more translators, isn’t this the right time to start giving feedback?
What? NO! Of course not. You have always been a dream to communicate with, always ready to discuss things and to come lend a helping hand whenever asked (including recently). Why would you even consider that I was talking about you?
I used to do that in the past. But then I thought, why cover their deeds?
So don’t include them in the credits at the end of the video, take them off the cover page, but still leave them as team members, so their zero contributions are there for everyone to see on their contributions page.
I discussed with the Chief Editor and she agreed with my reasoning, so that’s how we do it now.
It’s the same principle for which I am against removing moderators from teams. Let everyone see what and how much the person has done in each project.
I was quite sure that we communicate very well. In fact, other than MaryK, you are probably the person I discuss most with, both on Discussions and by PM. The apology is just in case anyone might have gotten the impression that I behave arrogantly. I do sometimes worry that I might be misunderstood when I decline 90% of invitations to join a team. I agree with you that if a subber has no interest in contributing, s/he should not ask to join a team. However, I can somewhat understand the subbers who join a team through invitation because they didn’t want to say “no”.
It’s like in love. Someone giving false hopes after a confession, instead of rejecting the person right away (because of politeness, because of feeling guilty and not wanting to hurt their feelings), is doing more damage in the long run.
You’re right. That’s why I would rather risk being misunderstood.
Anyway, I am glad that Viki is hiring more translators, which would help with the Kor-Eng subber shortage and thus allow the CEs to be a little more selective.
I am also glad, but there is a problem. Viki puts the hired translators within 12 (in the best case, 24) hours after the video upload, if volunteers haven’t come within that time. This demotivates volunteers, makes them think “Oh well, even if I don’t go, somebody will”.
I think that Viki should send the paid ones only after the CM asks for them.
Viki does contact the CM about it first. On one of my shows, they asked after a day if we needed help. I then told them I’d like help for that week, but wanted them to hold off after that cause I thought it might be because of the holidays that the subbers didn’t show up and I didn’t want them to be robbed of their chances yet. So we got a staff subber for that week.
In the end, there were several other weeks were the subbers did not fully do their job and then again, I was asked if we needed help.
From my experience, Viki usually sends in their paid translators 24 hours after the video is uploaded which, from a business standpoint, is probably the right thing to do. However, I get what you are saying about some volunteers possibly getting demotivated. Translators, even when they might not agree with the translation style of other subbers, can recognize stronger subbers and sometimes stay away so as to “not get in the way” of the faster and/or stronger subbers. Since I am rather slow ( I am going to blame it on the age, lol), I have done this myself.
I am on a project now, where Viki wrote to us that they will automatically send them after 24 hours, but for some episodes they didn’t even wait that long. It was upsetting.
Yes happened to me as well in the last episode. bit was supraised, but last ep. so what can we do… Its was after 5 hours so was in time XD anyway the translating done, and that’s the most important.
I agree that, at the end of the day, what is most important is speedy release of videos with quality translation if Viki is to stay competitive with the other streaming sites.
@xialongne, I want to take this opportunity to applaud you for the infectious positive energy you displayed in your recent role as the CM. You were fortunate to have some really strong English subbers as well as a TE who was available and willing to help with translation, but I am sure that your positive energy is what helped move things along so that we hardly needed any help from the paid translators. Although I’ve only been a subber at Viki for less than two years, it was the first time I saw a CM or a CE refer to the subbers as the “backbone” of the team and I, for one, will remember it.
Yes, and thank you I am very grateful to all the team members, everyone did a wonderful job. Time difference or not… everyone was on top of their game. And yes I got a comment in PM on how you managed to get the team together with super translators and TE. The secret is… there is no such thing. I was just very lucky. Very very lucky.
A liaison officer would be an absolutely awesome position! We tend to wait around 15-20 days for a message to be replied and all the waiting is killing us and killing our passion to continue helping here. The community needs immediate support to keep us going on…
The viki volunteers are very passionate and committed to their projects but not getting the immediate support we need to continue volunteering is what make things frustrating
In the end the only one who truly needs “them” is Viki though because they want to make money while most volunteers work for free so the volunteers are “the slaves” anyway.
I know many volunteers spend their heart and time for contributing to Viki for years and really care and love bringing subtitles in multiple languages for Asian shows to viewers around the world even when it seems hardly appreciated.
So at the end of the day everyone needs to decide if something - whatever it might be - is still a source of joy or just a black hole that absorbs all light and energy.
I agree that when it comes to quality translation, more is not always better. In fact, if a team has dozens of subbers but there are many abusers and/or unqualified translators among them, the result will most likely be a slow and/or low quality translation since they will likely end up just getting in the way of the good subbers and might even create extra work for the English editing team. I take pride in my work and I would hate to see my name appear on a project with low quality translation.
Personally, I think a good English team would need less than 8 subbers maximum, as long as no one has a time commitment issue. I would like to see 3-4 (a few more if available) fast subbers, 1-2 seasoned and skilled subber(s) who can fill in the empty segments, and possibly 1-2 newbies for training.
Yes, that’s a reasonable subdivision of subber types! But the time commitment is a lot if everyone or almost everyone is required to be on both episodes every week. Wouldn’t it be better if there were more?
Other Language teams usually have 12 subbers, so that each one does one part per week (not the Spanish and Portuguese, they follow another method). And -at least for some languages that I know of- the parts are fixed. You as a subber usually know that every week you have the 3rd part of the 1st episode of the week. Sometimes they do change, so that not always the same person has the easy first and last with the song, but still it’s always one part per week, and they know they have 48 hours to complete it.
Spanish subbers, being so many, have another interesting method. You must have seen it on Team Discussion. They write their name under the episode post, to reserve their place. As soon as the moderator tells them “It’s yours, sweetheart” (they are all very affectionate with one another), they have I believe 90 minutes to complete that part.
My method is different yet. I have a Google sheet where they write their name to reserve a part, and they have 24 hours from release time (more if the episode was released late in the night or in the wee hours when Europe is sleeping). They can come or not come, but if they don’t come one week, they are supposed to do more the next week.
I thought this “getting in the way” bit could have been resolved if we have more parts than the current (usual) four (for drama episodes). If there are eight parts (or six), eight (or six) subbers would have been able to work on each part quickly and simultaneously. As for the stronger and quicker ones, they could even move on to the next part to either start on it or to fill in the blank segs without having to check out and check back in later. I thought this would also enable more seggers to work on segging per part simultaneously and wrapping it all up quicker too.
@irmar, the numbers I had suggested were for the English team and the OLs should, of course, adjust those numbers based on the size and availability of their own pool of subbers.
@jadecloud88, I agree that smaller/more parts per episode would help the segmenters and large subbing teams. I recall that for the K-drama “Mouse”, we were fortunate to have a good number of strong and fast subbers so sometimes Viki or the CM would divide the episode into 8 parts instead of the usual 6 parts. Sometimes, subbers happen to be available all at the same time and it would be a shame not to take advantage of such fortune.
Anyway, I am so glad that we are discussing concrete constructive ideas to improve the working conditions of our valuable volunteers.
I am very grateful to all the team members, everyone did a wonderful job. Time difference or not… everyone was on top of their game. And yes 
