[Viki Community] We Want Your Feedback

[vikicommunity]

Hi Viki Volunteer Community!

We’re in the process of designing a new feature. Your thoughts and concerns are important to us, so we’d like you to:

• Share your feedback on the proposed feature (please comment below!), and
• Let us know if you’d like to preview the new feature (we have limited seats, so first come first served!)

We’re designing an auto-translated subtitle feature in the video player

In short:

• When an episode’s volunteer subtitles are in-progress (less than 90%), we want to show viewers a separate subtitle track with auto-translated subtitles.
• Viewers will by default continue to watch with in-progress volunteer subtitles, but they can choose to switch to auto-translated subtitles.
• Whenever auto-translated subtitles are shown, we’ll make it as clear as possible to viewers that they’re watching auto-translated and not volunteer subtitles.
• Once volunteer subs reach 90%, auto-translated subs will be disabled.

As part of the Viki community, you’re the reason why we’re able to spread the joy of Asian entertainment around the world and across language barriers. Your voice is important to us, and that’s why we’d like to explain our plans and get your feedback.

Why do we want to do this?

As we continue to grow, the number of new shows has been growing faster than our community. This means that often, you’ve faced (and continue to face) immense time pressure to translate shows as fast as possible. At the same time, many viewers (who might not understand that Viki subtitles are created by volunteers like you) get impatient and unfairly blame the volunteering teams for a lack of subtitles.

That’s not good, and we want to solve that. We wanna create an environment where you can create the highest quality subs in the world in a safe and pleasant working environment. We want to relieve and remove the rush to create subs as new episodes get released, so that you don’t lose your passion for translating shows. Subbing is as much an art as it is a science, and rushing through the subbing process will benefit neither volunteers nor viewers.

We think auto-translated subtitles allow us to do that, by serving viewers with a separate subtitle track for auto-translated subtitles. This way, when subtitles by volunteers are still in-progress (less than 90%), viewers have the option to watch with auto-translated subtitles. Once volunteer subtitles reach 90%, auto-translated subtitles will be disabled for the episode. This helps provide viewers with lower-quality subtitles if they want to watch an episode as soon as possible—and help relieve the time pressure on you.

Is this… Vikibot?

It’s not! We’ve learned from our past issues in the discontinued Vikibot, and that’s why we want your voice heard. Unlike Vikibot, auto-translated subtitles will also not override any subtitles that you create.

We want to reassure you that we will never replace you and/or the amazing subtitles you create. Auto-translated subs are meant to temporarily satisfy viewers while you’re crafting high-quality subs for shows. That way, you have more time to create thoughtful, precise and culturally-aware subs that you’ve made Viki known for. We know that auto-translated subs can never match up to the quality of the ones you create with such passion, knowledge and expertise! Your effort over the years has created and will continue to create one of the best viewing experiences for Asian content.

Whenever auto-translated subs are shown, we’ll make it clear to viewers that they’re watching with auto-translated subs rather than volunteer-created ones. This way, viewers will not mistake the lower-quality auto-translated subs for the high-quality ones you create.

And while we explore auto-translated subs as a temporary solution for when volunteer subs are in-progress, we’ll also continue to invest in our volunteering community in parallel. For example, we’re working on a new and better onboarding experience for new volunteers, so they can get started faster and easier. We’re also exploring how to make it easier for you to recruit a team and find a project to join.

So, how will auto-translated subtitles work?

We intend to translate volunteer-created English subs into whichever language is currently in-progress / less than 90%. We’ll focus on Spanish and Portuguese first, because that way we’re able to serve the most viewers who want fast access to subtitles.

If an episode’s volunteer subs are in-progress, viewers will see an extra option to watch with auto-translated subs. They’ll still see volunteer subs by default, and can choose to watch with volunteer subs if they want to. If they choose to watch with auto-translated subs, we’ll make it super obvious that our volunteers are working hard to bring amazing, high-quality subs to viewers. Once volunteer subs reach 90%, we’ll remove auto-translated ones, since their purpose will have been fulfilled.

Picture this:

A Brazilian Viki viewer has just started watching an on-air K-drama. The plot is gripping, and the Vikian is hooked. The volunteer subs are on point and help to explain subtle cultural references in the show. In a matter of hours, the Vikian is at episode 5—alas, volunteers are still working hard to bring Portuguese subs to that episode.

The Vikian’s heart sinks a little—but then she sees a message that while volunteers are hard at work, she can watch with auto-translated subs if she wants! She really loves the high-quality volunteer subs, but she also must know what’s gonna happen to the male lead when he finally gets to meet the female lead! Omo, ottoke? She decides to watch with lower-quality auto-translated subs first, then re-watch the episode when volunteer subs are complete.

Meanwhile, since a few hours ago, volunteers of the Portuguese team have begun working on translating the English team’s subtitles. This time, however, the team is able to put careful attention into making sure idioms and cultural explanations don’t get lost in translation. Instead of a rush to meet an impossible deadline, the focus is to create the best subtitles in the world.

That’s the scenario we want to create with this project. We’ll serve lower-quality, auto-translated subs to viewers who need to watch new episodes ASAP, while lowering the time pressure for volunteer teams.

To recap: the differences between Vikibot and auto-translated subtitles

We want your feedback!

We’re not gonna lie: All of us here at the Viki Community Team are quite nervous to hear your thoughts on this project. We’re very aware of the elephant in the room (Vikibot), but we hope that you can see that this time, it’s different. We know that you’re passionate about what you do, and we want to have a transparent discussion about this feature and address your concerns.

If you’re interested to preview the design prototype of this feature, you can register your interest here. Please understand that we have limited slots so it will be on a first come first serve basis.

Thank you for being a part of the Viki Community, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts, suggestions, and feedback!

Amy, Camille, Jes, Mari, Sean, Val and Yu Siang

Viki Community Team

[mirjam_465]

Okay, you asked for my opinion …
Let me first say that I understand you have good intentions with this. Yet … I think it’s a horrible idea. Auto-translated subs are bad subs, that’s just a fact. And as a volunteer I would feel even more pressure to hurry up subtitling, just to get rid of those horrible auto-subs.
And all this just to serve impatient viewers? If they’re that impatient, they should either watch old shows or learn the language, so that they don’t need subs.

[rairaijung]

I’m totaly agree whit you.

[irmar]

Ha ha, I can just picture you all reviewing many times this message, trying to make it as soothing as possible for volunteers, careful to not ruffle any feathers, by reiterating a zillion times how great our subs are (usually, but many times they aren’t, really!) etc., changing one sentence here, adding one there again and again, walking on eggshells… I feel for you. Your sandwich position is far from enviable.
My first reaction was that if the auto-subs are clearly differentiated, it could be okay. In bright turquoise or orange colour, with a different font, and with a sign somewhere saying “automatic subs” (that’s the least you can do).
But then I started thinking of the possible scenarios and I saw that things aren’t that simple!

Likely scenarios
A viewer wants to watch, but sees it’s still at 85%. This means that a couple of scenes will be completely missing.

1. The viewer decides to watch with volunteers’s subs until the moment they start missing, and THEN switches to auto-subs.
   That would be a reasonable choice. Using the auto only for the missing parts.
   But the problem is that, behind the scenes, six different subbers are working on six different parts of the episode, so the missing 15% is not all concentrated neatly at the end. Instead, within that 85%, there are up to six small gaps in different parts of the show. If a viewer knows that from past experience, or even if they don’t know, but find it out by finding a gap early on (it will be the end of part 1 or part 2, although the viewer doesn’t know that), then s/he may switch to automatic right then, even if all the rest of the episode is fully subbed.

2. So the most likely scenario, on seeing this 85%, will be to switch immediately, since the beginning, to automatic subs, and watch the whole thing like this.
   (In the meanwhile, if the subbers are working at the time, the episode may be filled up even before the viewer finishes. But s/he’ll never know that).

Will they re-watch it? Not likely.
After finishing viewing the episode, even if it’s 100%, how many people re-watch the whole thing again? Maybe some, but they are a tiny minority. I know I never do, even if I missed a couple of lines here and there. A viewer who HASN’t missed any lines (even if badly translated) will have no reason to go back to watching again.

They’ll never see our subs
Therefore, this impatient viewer (and many like him) will never get to see the volunteers’ subtitles. Their experience will have been worse than before, because he’ll have watched a whole episode of automatic subtitles which, in some parts, will make zero sense. There will be a sense of dissatisfaction. And his experience on Viki will have been considerably worse than what he would have on any of the rival streaming sites. I think you may even lose customers.

Viki experience vs Other Sites experience
The other streaming sites have the whole professionally made English subs the moment the show is uploaded. And also, in the case of some of them, a couple of other languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, depending. Yes, because of waiting for the translation to be finished, sometimes this means that the English is available exactly at the same time or even later than here on Viki. But there is no frustration for the viewer. He just waits for the episode, he doesn’t wait for it to be subbed. It’s actually the same thing, but most people can’t understand it.
(Of course for Other Languages Viki has a disadvantage, because they have to wait for the English to be complete and edited, whereas Rival Sites have direct Korean-Spanish or Chinese-Spanish subbers)

Consider this example:
On Rival Site the fully and professionally subbed (even with the problems we all know) show is available, say, 6 hours after airing.
On Viki the raw is available, say, 4 hours after airing (shows from You-know-where may have a longer delay). Then it takes, at best, 4 hours to segment and sub (not edit) in English. Within those 4 hours, the auto-subs will be available for the impatient viewer. Yes. But Rival Site will already have the professional subs by then. In some other languages as well. If you’re an impatient viewer who values speed over quantity and variety (where Viki is superior to all the rest), why not choose Rival Site?
In a nutshell: if I am a very impatient viewer who wants something quickly and am not willing to wait, I’d rather choose Rival Site with professional subs than automatic nonsense subs.
Less popular languages that are never available on Rival Sites keep people on Viki, but if you’re talking about English, Spanish and Portuguese, they can find them elsewhere.
So if you’re doing it to keep those impatient viewers here, it won’t work, since they have another, better option.
At least that’s my opinion.

The whining won’t stop
How will you communicate with viewers? We’ve been telling them how it works and keep telling them but there are always new ones. They DON’T go to Help Center. And replies to comments don’t show up in mobile phones and tablets. Therefore they may not whine about missing subs, but they’ll get a new reason to whine, nonsense subs. Even if is made completely clear that these are automatic subs and not volunteer subs (let’s assume you’ll do your best on this), they will still whine towards Viki, if not towards us.

What it means for us
Many people who won’t leave Viki for Rival Site will regularly miss the volunteer subs completely. We know that it’s human nature to grab an opportunity when it’s available. Now many people choose to wait until it’s 100% because there is no other option (other than watching with frustrating gaps). And they learn to wait patiently. When the auto-subs will be available, these people who did wait, now may choose not to wait. We will lose viewers. We will feel that our work will be seen by much fewer people. Do you realize how demotivating this is?
More importantly:
For some subbers, this will also mean they will take their own sweet time, and not turn up to work. “Anyhow, the viewers can watch the automatic translation”. They are also human, and they may become lazy, it will be much more difficult for us to make them come in a timely manner. This will be catastrophic for the teams. There will be no rush, nobody will lose their sleep to complete subs quickly, so actually the Viki subs will be available much later - and in no better quality. The better quality comes with editing anyway.
As it is, there were two options for viewers: watch as soon as it is 100%, unedited, with mistakes in translation or wait for another 24 hours to see it polished (this is true both for English and Other Languages).
Now, if Viki subs come later than usual because of the subbers’ complacency, the patient viewers who don’t want automatic translation will be penalized! Do we really want to do that for them?

This would be bad if you only did it for English subs. But for Other Languages it is even worse! Other language viewers have to wait for much more than the English language viewers, since they also have to wait for the editing. Therefore they are much more likely to resort to automated translation, and never even see the good translation by the volunteers. This will put Other Language teams into an even more difficult position - regarding motivation of the subbers etc.
Some subbers may be tempted to copy the automatic subs (just as we know some resort to Google translate, or followed Suggerstions when they were available), thus lowering the quality of volunteer subs and making editors’ work more difficult. Some of them may not even try to fill in gaps and leave the project.
Everything on Viki will become slower!!!

Suggestion
The only way to somehow solve this if you’re really really keen on it and will do it no matter what we say, is the following - but it might be technically difficult:
to automatically switch to auto-subs only for the missing parts. Segment by segment.
So if the viewer chooses to have “autosubs for missing parts”, if a segment is filled in with volunteer sub, then for that specific segment auto-subs are disabled and the volunteer sub is shown. If it’s blank, then the auto-sub is shown.
It his even possible?
Of course this solution still leaves open the problem of the lazy subbers who will take their sweet time, knowing that there is the safety net of the automatic subs, so they don’t need to rush. Editors will wait forever for the subbing to be completed and the “fantastic” version you’re talking of will take ages to come.
So that’s also not really good either.

Summary
These are the reasons I’m against it.

1. People who don’t know about the system will be disgusted with the quality and leave for other websites (many of whom have the main languages concerned).
2. The whining won’t stop, they’ll just whine for a different reason.
3. Impatient people had two choices, wait or see with gaps. Now they will see the auto subs and never see the good ones.
4. Fewer people will see our volunteer subs, which is very disheartening - we will feel we’re working almost for nothing.
5. Subbers will become lazy, and will make it hard for moderators to rush them to complete in a timely manner
6. Our stress won’t lessen. We will still be stressed out to finish quickly to get rid of those horrid subs, but it will be more difficult than before, because of reason n.3
7. Some subbers may be tempted to copy the automatic subs, thus lowering the quality of volunteer subs and making editing more slow and difficult.
8. Good subs will be even slower means that impatient sub-whiiners will be satisfied while patient people willing to wait for quality are penalized

[lutra]

I will make it short. I understand it if I think of Viki as a business and at this point I will not take other things into this “suggestion”.

When you do it - pretty please - use 1!!! drama channel only, to get feedback then from both sides volunteers and viewers.

We can once again start to debate the pros and the cons at the end Viki will still push this through, so instead of flooding all channels at once with this option try to use one for real feedback. We can now assume but in these times I really do not feel like giving my opinion, as some others mentioned, we do get tired that our opinions are being asked again and again and the crucial points for volunteers seems to need an extreme amount of time until they are heard and maybe not only been taken in consideration but actually do see the light.
There are newer points like light mode option, there are older ones like giving feedback to viewers and volunteers about expiring licenses before the channel is closed and doing it at the help center is no option either unless you do one post we can “follow” and will get an e-mail about the matter. Dropping a topic is good and fine to say we did notify about it, but honestly to drop a topic at the help center is as useful as handing out the good old flyers manually in a village, when you are a global company.

This is my suggestion however, neither I nor the other volunteers, or viewers will have the right to decide about it - it’s on Viki to do that.

[sunset_vermont]

If our opinions are so great, please kindly consider the suggestions that have been put to you by the volunteers over the past years. How come our opinions are only important to things you only WANT to do.
If you responded to volunteer needs at the rate you do with the viewers’, wouldn’t that be great?
Isn’t it funny your brand image consists of ‘volunteers’, yet you don’t listen to us.

[lutra]

We intend to translate volunteer-created English subs into whichever language is currently in-progress

We’ll focus on Spanish and Portuguese first,

On Viki the raw is available, say, 4 hours after airing (shows from You-know-where may have a longer delay). Then it takes, at best, 4 hours to segment and sub (not edit). Within those 4 hours, the auto-subs will be available for the impatient viewer.

Isn’t it about the other languages this time?
I understood English by volunteers and starting with automized Brazil Portuguese subs.
Unless I am wrong.
So 4 hours at best for the English teams, so I am giving up the spot I am not entering there.
Don’t you know any South Americans who are likely to be in the main spot at the moment?
I have no more South American contacts but I would first try to contact them, most likely because of the time now is not as convenient as could be …

[dudie]

I don’t know what to think of this. Is this only for English or also for the other languages? And will we still see the automatic subs in the editor/bulk translate? I have a feeling this either leads to demotivation by the other language and more abuse of the system by people who don’t want to play fair.

I think it’s good you want to get rid of the pressure for us volunteers but I don’t know if this is the best thing. I think it’s better that Viki is more visible in the comment section and monitors the comment and review sections better so those sub whiners lose their platform as they will be deleted asap by vikistaff.
And if people keep going against the review and comments policy they should get a warning and in really worse cases their account suspended.

Anyway I signed up to check it out but why did I have to pick a time and day? And is that time linked to my timezone? I wanted to check it with Kdrama I already watch.

[somejuwels]

For other languages it would be a mess!

When the English subs are on 100% and the viewers are waiting for our subs, we have to wait for the edit and the release, sometimes 24 hours, sometimes 3-4 days, depending on the English editors. There are already so few of them, imagine the pressure, they would get!

And until the release the auto-subs are already up. So, how should we language moderators motivate our subbers right now? German teams don’t have 40 or 50 subbers like other languages. We usually need 5 or 6 days for the episodes, excluding the final edit. I don’t think, that any viewer will come back and rewatch the episodes with volunteer subs.

Concerning Chinese dramas, most of them broadcast 6 or 8 episodes per week. German teams can’t follow with this speed, we are already struggling to find enough subbers for 2-3 episodes per week. So the auto-subs would be up for weeks. I guess, no viewer would come back and rewatch the episodes after this time.

And it would give us much more pressure to provide the subs faster and faster, which would lead to a lower quality and opens up the path for abusers, who would simply copy and paste the auto-subs, maybe with modifying single words or to use deepl or google or other translating sites.

[sonmachinima]

How about paying your volunteers instead of using auto-translated subs?

When you’d pay your volunteers they don’t need to work in other jobs to earn money for their living costs and then! they could work full-time on your ‘growing’ content for your viewership.

After changing the page in so many aspects that the access and work flow is only getting worse for us volunteers, this auto-translated subs idea is another punch against all volunteers…

Why should we even translate a show - again - after it’s already auto-translated? Why should we even edit or do care about a show’s subtitles when it’s okay for you to offer bad subtitles for weeks or even months?

Do you know that viewers blame and complain to other language mods because of ‘no subs finished yet’ even when it’s not the fault of the other language team but the fault of the English edit that is sometimes so slow that it could happen that the English subs are almost finished for a show but the other languages aren’t allowed to start translating… (I’m not blaming the English teams here, I mention it because the majority of viewers probably doesn’t know how VIKI subtitles work. Many seem to think VIKI is some kind of Asian drama Netflix-like company).

Fans that put so much work in content, e.g. fans that create additional content for games, usually get paid by other players who want that content fast.

So why not implementing that? Why not supporting those who do all the work by letting viewers donate for faster subs? Why not giving your volunteers the opportunity to live from their passion and time they spend for your content?
(For VIKI it makes even more sense since until now ~all subtitles were done by unpaid volunteers. Without the volunteers there wouldn’t be any subs in over 20 languages, right? While the games would also exist without the fan contect but probably with less players because some games are only good with additional fan content…)

I really can’t believe that VIKI wants to offer a subscription streaming platform with auto-translated subs and still believes the volunteers continue to translate for free. If someone can’t wait, the person is free to watch the English subs, right? How many viewers are really completely unable to understand some English and how big would the quality, the understanding issue be when you compare a non English speaker watching episodes with English subs vs watching auto-translated subs…
(It happened in the past that I was eager to watch a drama and since there wasn’t any subs at all I watched it with origin audio only and guess what happened when the English subs were there? I did not rewatch the episodes because watching them once is enough, especially for dramas with 40, 50, 60 episodes…)

For me this auto-translated subs for other languages is abusive behaviour towards your dedicated fanbase that’s willing to spend hours of their time so you can make profit.

#speechless

[frustratedwriter]

I’d rather have our humans that get paid for doing this instead of those A I’S doing the job, all these people on here put their thoughts on this “idea”. why can’t you pay those people for doing this , the subs that is,

I do have a question for you, and excuse me for this, but why do those other companies don’t have as much trouble as you do in the subs? does it mean if you start paying these people that you have up the price? guys do get your act together huh?

we want quality in the subs. I am sure these people work hard at what they do! I know I sure am not able to translate english to german or spanish or any other language, same for the Korean ,Chinese to those other languages! are you trying to cut corners? there were so many good comments on here, I could copy & paste but thats a waste of my time. there has got to be a better way for this to be sure. why do you always want to fix the tire when it isn’t broke.

you guys changesdstuff here on Viki what a year ago? and a lot of us still aren’t happy about it. but changing the way subs are? donate or yes added payment for better subs, ye many balk at that, but to me I’d rather have the humans do it than those AI’S! even with me on a fixed income, I would do that.

[angelight313_941]

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

[kaorikazehaya]

What will Viki do if a abuser volunteers to have a drama completed in a language but they leave it in between becuase the auto subs are there for viewers.
Maybe, for languages as big as Spanish and Portuguese, they’ve got good volunteers and abusers of these languages are easily noticeable.
But what will be done if somebody claims to be native of a much much smaller language, like Maithili, the poor CM will accept the volunteer because, the person claims to know the language.
The abuser might start subbing and leave it and go and get a different show because, the subtitles are there translated for the language. There might be hardly any Maithili viewers who can actually complain that the subs aren’t done for months and years, but if the viewers don’t say anything, who’ll notice that the person is an abuser and abusing the system using Viki’s new idea.

I like @lutra’s idea of using just 1 channel and maybe one language too for a trial rather than imposing this idea on the whole site.

[mirjam_465]

vikibot would only give poor quality subtitles

And so would auto-translated subs. Viki may IMPLEMENT them in a different way, but in essence they are the same. Both AI, so no human subtleness.

so many incompetent subbers who don’t even have a first grade knowledge in English

I know there are incompetent human subbers, but replacing them by non-human subbers would be robbing Peter to pay Paul. And letting bad human English subs be translated into other languages by AI, would mean maintaining or even worsen the mistakes that are already there. At least a human OL translater can think: “Hey, this English subtitle doesn’t seem to make sense” and do some research to find out what is actually meant. The machine will just translate whatever it sees without questions asked.

I also hope this method will take care of those ridiculous long subtitles they are adding lately in the dramas that I bet is done so they can get high number of sub count.

This doesn’t effect the sub count. Subs are counted per segment, not per word. So whether I would write “Hi!” or “Su Won and Hye Jin were enjoying the delicious ramen their mother had prepared for them at the big, round table with the blue tablecloth, while talking about the good old times. < br> (T/N: Ramen is a kind of Asian noodle soup)”, in both cases I would get 1 point.

Because of these long subtitles by the time you finish reading the other scene is already playing forcing viewers to constantly have to pause and finish reading.

This part I agree with. Long subs can be a bad experience for the viewer. But the AI subber will translate all the long English subs into long Spanish subs, while a Spanish human might think: “This could be said in a more efficient way!”.

the best in both speed in availability of subs and great quality in the subtitles

We can’t have our cake and eat it too.

[sheishun]

We’ll serve lower-quality, auto-translated subs to viewers who need to watch new episodes ASAP

This is sad, to the point of pathetic, that the Sub-Whiners will ultimately get pandered to, at the expense of true quality that Viki subs have been known for all these passing years. What an insult to the dedicated Viki volunteers - as though it isn’t insulting enough that many of (majority of ?) the suggestions, pleas and requests from the Viki volunteers, for the betterment of Viki, seem to be ignored or passed over, again and again.

It’s truly disappointing that our beloved Viki will soon be known for serving lower quality, auto-translated subs, ultimately forsaking the excellent work of the dedicated volunteers.

Needless to say, Viki: I think your proposal is disastrous!

[sheli]

In my opinion, with this feature Viki will just switch the “missing subs complaints” to “bad sub complaints”.

As a viewer, I also won’t watch it again just because I missed some dialogues, I guess it’s this way for most people. With this mindset of quantity over quality, they will not come back for our volunteer subtitles, even if the auto-translated ones sucks, having a rough understanding of the meaning they’ll keep watching other episodes, this might be their thoughts: “Why waste my time re-watching when I could be watching the next episode?”

And as a Portuguese moderator, I already have seen a lot of abusers and this probably would be a new way of abuse. Having these auto-translated subs could work in two ways for the subbers, feeling even more pressure to translate it quickly or feeling no pressure at all, translating it at turtle speed.

I once got a PM from a viewer suggesting to me that we only should upload the episode when we were done translating, just like N site. I understand it’s not possible because we have so many languages but at the same time not that many subbers in some of them, while N has only a few. But the thing that makes me more dumbstruck is that they have no problem waiting an extra week for the Portuguese subtitles there but can’t wait 2 or 3 days until ours is done.

Perhaps Viki should promote more how actually subtitles are created here instead of hiding it at help center, where almost no one can find it. And speaking of hide, good thing that I check discussions once in a while, otherwise, as a volunteer of one of the affected languages, I wouldn’t have known about it.

[bbf_260]

I’m gonna give you my honest opinion, I don’t think that is a good idea.

My opinion as a viewer is that the most probably I won’t watch an episode again, so I don’t think auto-generated subtitles are a good idea, and the complains about missing phrases and slow translation are going to become complains about bad subtitles.

My opinion as a volunteer is that is going to create more pressure to us to translate the fast as we can to get rid of those bad subtitles, and that is going to create erros in translations and decrease the quality of the subtitles.

And I almost didn’t knew about this, another volunteer warned me to check this out, you should put these kind of things, like important announcements and information about viki in a more easy place to be found. I don’t think that people that watch with other languages subtitles mind to wait some days for them, because they know that are subs with quality and those who doesn’t like to wait are a minatory that doesn’t understand that the subs are done by volunteers in the best way possible for everyone enjoyment.

[gifabeya]

I’m from the Portuguese volunteer team here on Viki and I totally agree with your statement! Even if the Portuguese community is really large, this means we have a lot of complaints of not having an episode fully translated to our language. I’m sure that everyone that watched an episode with the Time Comments on, will see tons of messages with the Brazilian flag probably asking for subs.

And it would give us much more pressure to provide the subs faster and faster, which would lead to a lower quality and opens up the path for abusers, who would simply copy and paste the auto-subs, maybe with modifying single words or to use deepl or google or other translating sites.

I don’t think the auto-subs will relive our pressure, it’ll get worse. We already have to deal with so many abusers just for using the Google Translator to subtitle, and now it’ll be so much easier for them to just crtl+c and crtl+v the subs like you said.

[gifabeya]

I couldn’t agree more with you! Totally agree with your statement! I’m also from the Portuguese community here, and those auto-subs it’s gonna be a mess for us - translators and viewers.

[nxyhttp]

It’s actually a horrible idea. As a Spanish volunteer, this won’t work AT ALL. We already feel suffocated by the viewers and this will only make it worse.
Please, don’t even think about trying this.