[Viki Community] We Want Your Feedback

General Discussion
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Thanks for your reply. As I am not Spanish or Portuguese, I won’t be able to tell or test this out.

Yes, I have a question.

  • Was the sequence of 7 mins of auto-subs a pure product of the AI or some sentences in that sequence have been previously changed/improved by a human before testing?
  • Would this second phase with volunteers change something?
  • What is the goal of this second phase?
  • Is there any information about implementing auto-subs for on-air titles if the phase is successful on abandoned titles or when abandoned titles would be complete by auto-subs? Or a wish to expand it further?
  • Is there a wish to expand it further for other languages? What about French?
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I was thinking about this aspect too but not completely sure how many of these wordings exist (because my Austrian friends somehow don’t use enough to be sure :slight_smile:

Does a special dictionary for this exist? Like Swiss German/ German German?

I always think it’s bit difficult and needs more time then.

I agree, that is very sad. Sometimes even big newspapers have wrong headlines/sentences that might even change the meaning. I somehow think it’s because of too much English influence and maybe also 1:1 English-German translations… (some time ago I saw a headline of a big news page online that was written in the way that it said that the one who got killed by police was the one who killed a police officer… I checked it with translation software like Google and the way it was written was how it’d be written in English and then I wondered if the article might be a failure of auto-generated news articles taken from English news pages or written by a human who did not think about German syntax…)

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It’s very sad indeed. And I think part of that might be caused by the use of AI, but another factor would be that nowadays everything needs to be fast, rather than right. Humans who may normally be capable of writing perfect translations, are rushed and either make a lot of mistakes because of it, or are replaced by someone who may not be as good, but works faster.
And another thing you see more and more: instead of translating language A into language B, nowadays language A gets first translated into English and then English gets translated into language B.
And indeed, as you say, a lot of times the English gets translated EXTREMELY LITTERALLY. And because that happens so often, people get used to it and think it’s normal Dutch/German/etc. And this is how our languages degenerate … :frowning:

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@mirjam_465

> Humans who may normally be capable of writing perfect translations/ are replaced by someone who may not be as good, but works faster.

This is what I’ve been saying that goes on in ONE or TWO of the Spanish teams in here, that they mainly take someone in the team that work faster, and in many dramas at a time, although they lack the important skill of providing a good translation. Quantity is replaced by Quality, and we all know the outcome of that; Terrible subtitles/Low quality subtitles.

I noticed these faster working volunteers have all the time in the world, and can be hours on end here working in many Korean/Chinese dramas/shows etc… run by these same moderators that ‘‘hog’’ more dramas than they can really handle, and their rush dilemma begins; creating conflict between quality against quantity.

I may seem selfish for supporting the AI feature for the Spanish subtitles, but in reality my frustration of dealing with these situation for so many years now, is why I rather criticize a ‘‘machine made Spanish sub’’ than a real human being getting away with such disrespectful behavior against my native language.

I honestly think these feature should be used for the most ‘‘agitated asking for subs language’’ which are; Spanish and Portuguese only, and all other language has no need for this AI system (unless there is another ulterior motive) If that’s the case I know regarding German and Dutch will suffer in quality bc AI subtitles doesn’t even have (on NTFX) the question marks when they are needed in the sentence. I can imagine with what you discuss here regarding your language how much it will will affect quality in your language (subs). I hope they can resolve this fairly bc if the German viewers and OL ‘‘are not in this frenzy i want subs now;’’ I see no reason for the AI use in French, Italian, German, Dutch etc…

I personally haven’t seen any German, French or Dutch viewers requesting subtitles, but when it comes to Spanish and Portuguese that’s another story…they can really be a pain in the **** and even I get annoyed bc they make comments like they’ll die if the sub is not there soon enough. I call them Drama Queens, manipulators and some are definitely annoying trolls. In my case, I have no need for Spanish subs so my motive for the AI system is based on other reasons I explained above. I should have been more clear on that before so I wouldn’t be so criticized and misunderstood. My bad…:hushed:

I hope our ''feedback/concerns are really thought out, and a fair decision is made based on the concerns of all of us in here.

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Hi! Thanks for your questions.

Further details about user acceptance survey
The videos we used for the test contain 100% AI translation with no human vetting or editing before testing.

More details about limited scope experimental roll-out of auto subs

  • The purpose is to test it “in the wild”, so to speak. We’ve done many rounds of tests, but a limited scope roll-out is the only way we can realistically test, e.g., whether auto-translated subs are good enough to serve viewers’ needs.
  • I understand that there’s a lot of questions and not a lot of answers! The main reason is that we are still in the planning/research phase of the project. We want to get you involved earlier, so there will be more uncertainty than usual. Please bear with us!
  • What we can say is:
    • We hope to have a limited scope experiment roll-out by end of 2020, but for now cannot confirm any timeline/date.
    • We don’t plan to use auto-subs to replace human contributors.
    • We hope to inform the community in advance before we roll out the 2nd phase.

Please join our sharing & feedback sessions
Once again, I want to invite you all to join our group feedback sessions! Indicate your availability here: https://doodle.com/poll/zgssk4kn92ts4gbs (limited seats). Things to note about the sessions:

  • The group sessions will be held on Zoom, and will be guided sessions to share the design and gather your feedback.
  • Indicate your availabilities and I’ll email you when the date/time is confirmed. (Please pay attention to time zone when you vote for your available time slots)
  • Sessions will be in English, and you can join as long as you’re a contributor (don’t have to be a Spanish or Portuguese contributor). Please only sign up if you’re a contributor, as we want to hear from our community in these sessions.
  • We are trying to organize the sessions across wildly different time zones, so please understand if the time slots aren’t 100% convenient for you :slight_smile:
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Hi!

Thanks for your reply.

Can we know what the 2nd phase is?

For me, the 1st phase was to ask viewers and the 2nd phase I mentionned previously was the Zoom sessions with contributors.

Going back to the 2nd phase you’re talking about, what is this 2nd phase?

How the group sessions will be? If we don’t understand Portuguese and Spanish, what will we give our feedback on? I thought it would be testing auto-subs, but if it’s not about that, then the thing is already decided? What are we going to see?

I think that inadvertently or not, the volunteers workforce is replaced by auto-subs because the reason given in the first message by Viki community here is volunteers subtitles were slow or stopped, so instead of waiting for volunteers subtitles, auto-subs can do.

I do understand that the price has to be justified and that volunteers must stay to help in that.

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Hi! Sorry for the misunderstanding! I thought you meant the 2nd phase to mean the limited scope roll-out of auto subs.

Let me share more about the grouped sessions. The designs are done in English, so as long as you understand English, you’ll be able to follow the session and give your feedback. The goal is to share the draft design and gather feedback from the group. We don’t have anything that we can allow you to test, because we’ve not built the feature on Viki yet.

Hope that clarifies!
Yu Siang

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Thanks for clarifying!

What do you mean “the draft”?

Do you mean the feedback asked from volunteers is about the look, the appearance (the form: button)?
Or will there be feedback asked from volunteers about the font?

Do you have some questions as examples to clear the misunderstanding?

How long is it?

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Hi! The design is in a draft state, meaning it is not finalized yet. Feedback is on the design of the feature, so you can focus on any specific part if you wish to, or go as broad as you wish to. We’ll ask participants to share what they liked, what they wish could be different, etc., about the design. The session is expected to be 1.5 hours long.

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I see, thanks!

Sorry, I won’t participate.

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Thanks for clarifying what kind of session it is
(thanks to piranna for asking about the details).

Since the auto-translated subs feature is nothing that makes the work flow of volunteers easier (not mentioning that’s even nothing we as volunteers wanted or anything that offers any additional advance/use for us) I won’t participate.

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Being honest, I don’t really like this idea.

• Portuguese language isn’t difficult, but there’s a LOT of grammatic rules that even native speakers have difficult to understand. A bot/AI translation would make it very poor and horrible to read.

• We can’t directly translate eng-port, we always need to adapt the context to portuguese because it sounds strange. Mainly in chineses dramas, when the english subtitle is like a seven words phrase and it becomes a thirteen words phrase that you can’t understand or doesn’t even have time to read. We always need to read, understand the context, watch some parts to see what’s happening and rewrite everything in a “normal” way. We aren’t just translators, we are interpreters. A bot/AI can’t do this.

• Even if it’s made a enormous banner saying with all the letters that the episode is auto subbed, mostly users wouldn’t read and would complain about the poor translation. Instead of rating the shows low for the slow translation, they would rate low for the poor translation.

• I truly believe that PT subbers are the fastest. In half a hour after the “GO”, every episode part is already being translated, mainly if it’s a popular Korean show. The greatest delay is from the english team.

I think that people will complain about everything we do, sometimes they just want to complain about anything. Solving it like this won’t solve the problem, instead, it would create even more problems. They would watch a automated subs episode, complain about it and go to other sites to watch the show with better quality subs.

I think of two solutions for this problem:

1 - Solving the english team problems. They’re complaining about regional access for years, and that’s the root of the problem. If the english team is faster, the other teams will also be faster. We all need the english team. Without them, there wouldn’t be any other language subs.

2 - Releasing the episode after everything is done. After the english team is done, the viewers are able to watch. Or the episode could be delayed for 4-6 days, being aired after most languages are done.

As volunteers, we spend hours, effort and attention. We always work hard to give the viewers the best watching experience. Please don’t create another vikibot, explain the translation process to non-volunteers. _ Please choose quality over speed.
Please listen to us_. Listen to the english team that always request something important. Listen to all volunteers that dedicate their own time to “work” here. We all are a team, the vikistaff and volunteers, and we need to listen to each other. We just want the best to Viki.

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273

I honestly thought this was a really good idea…it would totally lower the amount of sub-whiners and ppl who use the Reviews page to complain and give fake ratings because of the subs
The drama might come out late, but at least not as many people will be complaining.
But I just realized that for subbers to work on the episode, THEY need access to the episodes to be able to sub it so now idk :grimacing:

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Yes, and not only that. On Viki there are a lot of Koreans and Korean-Americans, Chinese and Chinese-American, or people from all over the world who know these languages, for whatever reason. How about them? They don’t need subtitles, so if the video is withheld to avoid sub-whiners, those poor people would also be obliged to wait with the rest of us. Which is not fair.

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Yes! I think it’s a great idea! :slight_smile:

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I think this is an horrible idea, I know you guys have good intentions but this will make things way worse.
Viki is a paid service, will people want a lower quality subtitling? Of course not. This is way too much, is actually disrespectful with us volunteers! We work hard to make an good translation and thats what we receive?
This said, I wish you guys think twice about it. The best option is dont make it.

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I also wanted to add that I really hate the white background of all badges. IF you changed the page then please also “correct” the transparency of the badges. Thank you!

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We hope to inform the community in advance before we roll out the 2nd phase.

Are we at Phase 2 now?
Spanish, Portuguese and French

I thought somehow there was an agreement about French bot subtitles.
@anna79_9, @gwadaelle

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Well, that’s new viki style: Watch movies and series anywhere in the world with automatic captions, speed guaranteed!

There is no agreement, they do what they want, that’s all. They want to put their bot, let them put it! I don’t care anymore.

It is a risky investment. Bet on the bot, a tool that is not yet efficient enough. Fortunately, good pears of volunteers are there to pick up the broken pots!

Perhaps in 50 years, linguists and professionals around the world will have perfected this software. Google, what are you doing? Quickly, viki is betting everything on you, damn it!

But I guess it attracts some audience, since it works. Well… let’s see in the future ^^

(luckily there are some normal people who use the sane platforms like netflix or amazon prime)

I mean, I also use automatic checkout when I do shopping, but I can tell you, I am the worst cashier! :joy:

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If I remember correctly, it already had those damn bot subtitles, since 2019 or something, when it came to Viki.