1 Like
Bonjour ou Bonsoir,
J’ai vu; bien que tardivement; le "mouvement de “grève” concernant le “vikibot” et j’en suis vraiment désolée.
Je ne comprends pas vraiment la démarche de “Viki” dans ce “projet”, veulent-ils ressembler à “Net…” ou la plupart des traductions se font souvent pas ce biais. Je ne sais pas non plus si toutes les généreuses personnes contribuent " bénévolement " ou pas aux traductions de “Viki” mais quand bien même, il faut saluer le beau travail effectué et j’avoue que de savoir qu’il y a une personne de l’autre côté de mon écran qui s’intéresse à ce que je vais lire et de savoir que je vais bien le comprendre et pourquoi pas apprendre de ce qu’elle m’enseigne; en quelque sorte; et bien ça me motive encore plus à vouloir “payer un abonnement” d’autant plus que la plupart des traductions sont de qualités, comme il l’a souvent été soulevé.
Bien sûr, le fait de faire des traductions par un “robot” c’est probablement un gain de temps pour “Viki”, mais je ne comprends toujours pas cette démarche burlesque. Chaque société, association, entreprise…évolue et pour cela, elle doit faire des tests pour mener à bien ses projets et accroître les bénéfices mais il faut un vrai but d’évolution (positive) et surtout l’expliquer à ses salariés, administrés, clients…
Et si cela ne fonctionne pas, trouver des solutions ensemble…
Je suis un peu frustrée quand j’entends “oui mais de toute manière le français n’est pas le plus demandé”, je trouve ça plutôt dépréciatif et limite insultant pour les “fans” français mais j’oses espérer que cela à été dit sur le coup de la colère parce que je reste une fidèle partisane de “Viki” ou plus exactement de “l’artisanat des traducteurs”, en espérant que cela le reste le plus longtemps possible, sinon beaucoup de “fans” du site pourraient en effet le déserter, ce qui serai regrettable…je ne sais pas quels sont vos “négociations” ou vos échanges avec la “direction” de “Viki” mais faites le nous savoir, afin de vous soutenir au possible.
“On” vous soutiens à 100 % dans votre démarche, mais s’il vous plaît ne laissez pas tomber les “fans français” sur le coup d’un ressentiment exigu, il est vrai que je ne sais pas vraiment comment vous travaillez mais le résultat est là, même si on ne le dit pas souvent “Mille Merci” pour ce que vous faite, parce que vous nous “vendez du rêve” à travers vos traductions. Cela peu paraître énorme ce que je dis (j’avoue un peu ^^) mais c’est la vérité…bref je ne vais pas m’étaler plus (sinon vous aurez droit à un de mes romans ^^). Pour conclure, “on” espère qu’en effet " 3. Cet outil n’est pas conçu pour remplacer les volontaires. Il ne peut pas remplacer les traductions et les nuances de haute qualité, les notes culturelles et autres que la communauté crée."
Merci encore à vous les “Grandes Petites Mains” de “Viki”…
8 Likes
Hello! I’m a brazilian volunteer and I’m on strike, I support the french team and french fans. Don’t misunderstand some comment… We’re here for ALL TEAMS AND FANS. Please, keeping supporting us. We just want a better Viki , with more transparency and more quality to volunteers and viewers too. Thank you!
1 Like
if it would be possible would you add “something in the rain” to the channel
Dear All, Users and @camille,
I tried to summarize the bot problem on this Google spreadsheet. The history of what happened so far, the various users’ experiences as they related them in Discussions, why we don’t want it and the suggested solutions.
It’s open to everyone for editing, so feel free to add your name and write your own point of view. Kindly don’t touch other people’s contributions.
@hellgirlselena_565 @deval_chloe and others who would like to see that thread you couldn’t before…
4 Likes
Thank you 
Thank you!
It’s the least I can do 
1 Like
… bump to top … again …
I think Viki forgets subbers are also viewers and have viewer family and friends. I guess their other income sources are 100% efficient and safe, for them to disregard so many customers.
1 Like
But as I read in the discussions it is translating subtitles that had not yet been edited and where the french team was waiting for the official release from the english team, which means it already parted from some bad subtitles, while the french team was ready to provide good ones.
Then, why would you do it? Incomprehensible subs don’t help anyone. It only puts the subbers who put so much effort in the translations into a bad light. Conclusion: the bot is implemented so we can edit it and it can learn from our edit.
And another thing. When I am language moderator I can see immediately which of my subbers translated blindly (Using the bulk translator) because they would not use polite speech when needed (because they might not know, who ist speaking) and would interpret situations the wrong way. (I don’t want to criticize subbers as most of them don’t do that and even proofread there parts before giving them to the editor)
Why? Because they don’t SEE what is going on.
Please explain to me how the bot recognizes persons and situations. And do tell me how it makes the difference between a modern or a historic drama, between ironic and serious etc.
4 Likes
Ok, let’s welcome the nice bots. Hi, bots!
Hello Camille!
I understand that Viki’s intentions are not bad. So, just for fun, could you please humour me and edit your own post through a machine translator to French and also to a less spoken language (e.g. Greek)? And maybe back to English (this step can be omitted)?
Thank you.
When I did so the bot told me that “it translates the translations”, that “Viki is aware that (Viki) is discussing this” and that there will be “steps that should be followed”.
If your message was a season finale, would viewers be able to deduce the drama’s ending by its subtitles?
@ Viki community
I didn’t even bother with spelling, conjugation, punctuation and other problems. I list the parts I mentionned to Camille:
L’outil qui traduit les traductions automatiques…
Nous sommes conscients que nous étudions et discutons…
Επιπλέον μηνύματα και βήματα που πρέπει να ακολουθήσετε…
1 Like
Food for thought in this serious yet hilarious article:
The name is not intended to be an insult against the translator (although it works just as well that way), hence the quotation marks: “blind idiot” is a Recursive Translation of the old saying “out of sight, out of mind”. A computer in a lab was running a beta of some translation software package and translated “out of sight, out of mind”—meaning “if you hide something, sometimes people forget that it existed in the first place”—into Chinese and back to English, and the printout read “invisible idiot”, which mutated further into “blind idiot”.
Friends, you can all have a good laugh at Chinese (and not only) inscriptions, menu items etc. translated literally into English. (Make sure you’ve been to the toilet recently before visiting this website)
Laughs aside, is this the kind of subtitles we want for Viki?
6 Likes
Well, Viki obviously does!
As opposed to…?
I’m also going to drag out an oldie, but a goodie. Concerning the occasional lack of punctuation in Bot’s translations (although, If this were really the Bot, it wouldn’t even have the full stop at the end of a sentence):
8 Likes
Hello community,
We formally apologize for implementing French machine translations on channels after failing to correctly identify as “inactive.” From this experience, we see that our internal tools for tracking “active” vs. “inactive” channels are insufficient, due to the inherent English-dependant nature and complex workflows of the teams. As a result, our team will be developing a better solution for us to accurately gauge activity amongst channel teams to prevent situations like this from happening again in the future.
Thank you for being patient with us while we figured out the best means to revert the French machine translations on the affected channels. Reverting the filled-in French machine translations will take a while, so kindly bear with us as we carefully delete all non-volunteer contributions.
To aide us in deleting the correct French machine translations more quickly, kindly fill out this form by Sunday, September 29th to indicate that the channel you are managing, moderating, or subtitling is still active: https://forms.gle/kA9VmJez2egHfmwH9. After September 29th, we will reach out to the individual channel teams who have replied.
We are proud of how the community has pulled together to align, express your feelings and show us how much you care about Viki. The volunteer community is truly one of a kind.
Sincerely,
Viki Community Team
12 Likes
Great news, Camille!
I will be waiting for the results and I’ll also make a note to check for future enhancements of the Viki internal tools.
Until the community becomes aware of the request to fill the form, communicates with Viki, Viki checks and responds and subs get corrected, crucial time will pass and the viewers will go mad! 
Since the the bot is Viki’s internal tool and is not provided by a university or research lab for samples, I’d suggest that, for accuracy and speed, your bot-programming team simply checks the bots’ logs and does a rollback /undo or whatever programmers call it.
4 Likes
Hello Camille,
it’s nice that you seem to go back to status quo at the still active channels.
But I do not see what will happen to the inactive ones?
May I ask, you see it is still a problem with the communication and that writing “The volunteer community is truly one of kind” thanks to using text block in many replies feels a bit shallow. I am sorry, as this is a feeling, nothing that is “sizable”.
But if Viki would have a project finder that would work, volunteers could find those unfinished channels. At this point when I am looking for a Korean channel to do German subtitles - I get only variety shows about 10 channels show only one is accessible to me due to license restriction. We would need to be given a chance to find these channels. You can’t trace them/explore … You will get tired at least I do get tired …
It’s great that you recognized that you couldn’t detect those projects you originally aimed for, but neither are we.
One last question what about other problems of the community? Will they be heard or will we just move on from here? Like almost nothing happened?
13 Likes
Hi, Camille, Thanks for replying to this.
I’m very glad that subs are being corrected in the french teams. However, since the vikibot use is the real issue (for all languages) there is a bit of bittersweet flavor about your answer. Is great news that all the subs in the active channels are being restored, but…
What about the future use of the vikibot? If we had tool to track those inactive channels, we wouldn’t need it. There is many ways we could avoid AT ALL the use of the vikibot, and those ways we have being proposing them since the beginning of this tool.
What happens with the rest of the languages? Are you still gonna use it?
Spanish is one of the most affected languages of this vikibot.
We just wanna make clear, that this is not only about the french subs, is about the future of all subs in general since the real roots of the issues that caused all this are not being covered.
Thanks for the answer and thanks for listing to this issue.
16 Likes