It’s the least I can do 
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… 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.
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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.
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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…
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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?
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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):
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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
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Dearest Camille,
we have been trying to find solutions to abandoned/inactive projects, especially those which have been abandoned by the English teams. Kindly have a look at them - and maybe pass on to the higher-ups.
In summary:
We don’t want the bot on on-air dramas where people are translating.
We don’t want it to over-write already done subs.
We don’t want to edit the bot subtitles.
We don’t mind if you use it for truly inactive channels. But first:
-
Check the English team first. Make sure it’s not the English team which is stalling, thus forcing Other Languages to be inactive. Then do something about that before anything else.
-
Write to the CM and give him/her a deadline, for instance one month. “If you don’t start activity, it will be taken over by the bot”. Send this message to all the moderators of this drama.
-
We need a tool to help us quickly find those unfinished channels too. It would be very useful to newbies as well. Make them accessible to the teams, though. It makes no sense that a drama from 2008 that very few people want to watch or sub is restricted for the few who do want to.
-
We need an effective project/volunteer finder. One where people could also bring up vacant position, or positions someone wants to leave. The one existing is really pitiful. See here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_Rk6ea0j6ERkSwTqTi2SQtooEO83-rCxQBTy4dLSLcY/edit?usp=sharing
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Establish a deadline for projects. It should be adapted to the number of episodes, of course, and longer if it’s an old drama. When the deadline is not respected, the moderator should be changed. The channel manager will be responsible for this task. If the CM doesn’t respect it, Viki will inquire. Against inactive managers, check with him and with the team of moderators during the year by sending a message.
Lift restrictions to increase volunteer numbers. The reason so many dramas suffer from slow or no subbing, much more than in the past, are regional restrictions. By lifting them for QCs, more subbers will be available and translations will be done faster. If you can’t do it for all QCs, at least do it for those on the drama’s team. See here: https://support.viki.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360031421874-No-regional-restrictions-for-QC-volunteers
Eliminate hoarder mods and CMs. The reason many dramas linger abandoned are hoarder mods. There is no limit for “library” (i.e. “old”, non on-air) dramas. There should be one as well. And there is no limit for moderators. There should be one. Only then new people would be given the chance to work and dramas would get done more quickly. Get rid of the mods who hoard more than 20 dramas they haven’t touched, or where they have done only episode 1. Take away all the dramas they have taken a long time ago and they haven’t touched for months.
Lure more Korean-English and Chinese-English subbers. These are the most needed and the most rare. The lack of these native subbers delays all other languages. Shouldn’t we encourage them by giving them a Vikipass early on, even without 3000 subs so that they are motivated and able to help right away?
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This is a very interesting suggestion by user @piranna.
The "marketplace"
Viki could create a page for dramas that have incomplete translations for each language (1 page for French, 1 page for Italian…).
Maybe, it's not possible to create a marketplace for each language, but for the main languages used on Viki? I think the max languages like 46 languages: https://www.viki.com/tv/12699c-heirs. Or less, if it's too much to handle.
It would be like an "offer/demand" page between recruiters and recruits or between services. This page would be the central page to recruit in a language.
On this page, we could also find dramas without an Other Language moderator or because the OL moderator has been inactive and the CM is looking for a new moderator.
We can classify by big tags "Korean", "Chinese", "Japanese", "Others", "Romance", "Genre"…
A resource for CMs recruiting moderators
The decision to put in the market will come from the CM.
The CM can fill something on this page so a box appears with the title of his drama on the “market” for "All languages" or "including/excluding" some languages because he found moderators already.
By clicking on it (link to drama + link to CM), potential interested moderators are redirected to the CM contact page and they could take a look in the drama synopsis to see if they are interested.
Each marketplace in each language will be updated with this info (for ex: if the CM picks "French" and "Spanish", then these languages marketplaces will have his box drama pic appearing with his contact.
A resource for moderators recruiting to form a team:
The moderator decides to put his drama on the marketplace to recruit.
If the team is full and moderators are not recruiting anymore, moderators can click somewhere on this page (only the moderator can do it) so the drama is not listed anymore on this page. It would help moderators to find subbers immediately and be able to provide subtitles faster.
A resource for subbers looking for a project to join
By clicking on this page with boxes drama pics (link to drama + link to moderator), we are redirected to the moderator contact page. It would help newcomers to find immediately a project, without searching all the website.
On this page, subbers could also decide to appear on a list to tell they are available to subtitle and they're looking for projects.
When moderators click on a name, they are redirected to the person’s profile.
If subbers are no more available and can't take more projects, they can click somewhere so their name disappears of this page until the next time they’re available.
It would help viewers if they want to help on this project to volunteer and finish it. We sometimes meet viewers who want to help us subtitle in comments of dramas or we received demands of subbers but the team is full or we are about to finish translating a drama. I'd like to suggest them a page where they can find this information easily and join teams immediately.
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That’s good news for the French community. Please remove Sassy Girl from the bot list. That team was active and you know we only recently where able to sub it in English due all the problems. So the French team waited for so long to sub it and now this happened. It’s not fair to them.
Also filled in the form.
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How about putting a human between the machine and the subbing team. You could simply contact the CM and the Mod of the affected language beforehand and wait for an answer. Perhaps you need to have correspondence with them. As you have seen in other posts, there can be several reasons for inactivity, of which the bot can not know of.
In general I share the opinion of Irmar about a better project finder. If there was a better one who guides newcomers and doesn’t sent them without info about teams directly into on-air dramas, and one that allows subbers to find old projects.
The only reason why I’m subbing an old drama now and then is because I have already seen it and with the wish to re-watch it, I look for it on viki and realize it wasn’t subbed to german. I wouldn’t find them otherwise.
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Thank you!
If I could give some feedback:
To implement a tool to detect inactivity, the process of volunteering is the following:
Identifying the process and the different steps with its participants.
Knowing the process, V can find weaknesses and hence finding solutions.
Where in this chartflow the process of subbing in other languages could be blocked?
Knowing that we can’t skip steps and they have to be done in the order like a cooking recipe: we can’t add white eggs whisk if we haven’t whisked them.
Step 4 English subbing and editing
Some teams are blocked at step 4 that we could cut in 2 sub-steps:
Asking the Wwwh questions (where, what, who, how):
Step 4.1 translating in English
Who? English subbers in the team
Pre-requisite: visibility (subber sees the channel without having to search for a long time), no restricted access (Viki pass? Region?), recruitment from the people in charge of that and their visibility (I am a recruiter, I am looking for subbers for this drama, in this website, where can I find them and make them know that I am looking for them?), being recruited (ex: actively answering to recruitment PM)
Step 4.2 editing in English
Who? English editors in the team
Pre-requisite: almost the same than for English subbers
We can’t skip to Step 5 if step 4 is not completed.
Step 5 other languages subbing and editing
Step 5.1: translating in other languages
Same idea globally
Pre-requisite: English edition is completed (to have something clean and understandable in our own language, we need to start from something clean)
Step 5.2: editing in other languages
–
I would add step 3 that comes before step 4.
Step 3 segmenting
Who? Segmenters
Pre-requisite: same than before + Graduation in nssa
How? If we are correcting pre-segged dramas, we spend more time than doing it ourselves.
Limit to every actiivity:
We have a limited time to volunteering.
If we have 3 hours for ex;
1 hour to segment
1 hour to sub
1 hour to edit
If we have to spend more time in checking segments for a part or episode or editing Viki bot or pre-subbed, we don’t have more time for volunteering.
We have to give up one activity (subbing for ex) or do it another day or participate in less dramas.
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This is great for the French community and we are happy. However!
- We do not want vikibot (translation + segmentation) on any channel, in any language.
- We now want to discuss with vikistaff members in order to propose ideas to prevent this from happening again (the ideas were mentioned by Irmar)…
- We also want more communication between you and us.
I think, Camille, you said “yes for that, but…” So the problem is not solved. We know you are inclined to listen now because we have your attention. It is therefore time for us to make ourselves heard, and our proposals. We hope you will make choices on these proposals.
The question is: where do we communicate with you? Should we post these recommendations in “help center”? Any proposal (DEAR CONTRIBUTORS)?
- We want an answer about our recommandations. ANSWER FROM VIKI!
- Otherwise, we know that you will do it again.
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I have a small suggestion that although is less effective but it still better than nothing.
I am aware that Viki is restricting QCs now because of legal issues and such (The lack of license for QCs I mean)
I don’t think it could be legally wrong to open the Bulk translation for QCs even for dramas not licensed for the region. I know it wouldn’t deliver the best subs but I think that even if all subbers use it, one editor with the license can edit out all the mistakes resulting from not being able to see the video.
I don’t think there is any legal issues there. The English subs belong to us afterall.
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