Hi! So I am still new to Viki and discussions, but the way I decide to watch a drama is by looking at the genre, rating, actors, and then if all episodes are at 100%. If not, then I move on after placing it on my watch list for later.
I am not familiar with auto subs, but if they do not translate properly and are just there to fill the episode, it does not help. I am trying to learn a few phrases of Korean as I watch, so if the words are not translated correctly…it may cause confusion. Thanks!
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I don’t agree with the use of this tool. As a volunteer for the Spanish, I don’t feel like continuing to offer my work, I feel that Viki doesn’t value the time or the effort I offer.
As a spectator, I don’t think I’ll give my money to Viki for low quality subtitles, for that I see elsewhere, I pay for quality. And that’s why Viki differs from his competitors and that’s his advantage, pitifully Viki wants to throw it away.
I think the best thing that could be done is a campaign for people to understand how we work, to demonstrate why Viki differs from other sites.
As I read in another commentary and a volunteer friend suggested, it would not be possible for viewers to access the episode when it is fully subtitled in the language they want.
I just hope the feedback from the volunteers can help.
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First, thanks @marykarmelina for PM-ing and tagging me. I had no idea about this…@-@…
Many of you have summarized exactly my thoughts, so I’m only going to add a few opinions.
So the point of these auto-generated subtitles is to give a prize to the whiners. Ok, at least we know whose voices are heard now… Honestly, this was a low blow to my Viki volunteer ego…
Second, I’ll speak for Romanian subtitles now. I don’t know how it is for other languages (I actually do for some:)), but we have words and phrases in Romanian that can’t be translated by a subbing motor. There needs to be a human to comprehend and convey what’s being said. I don’t even want to imagine a Chinese costume/period drama…:))
You say that it will be low-quality subs. So, is it again about quantity over quality?..
Also, the feeling that I’m getting from this, as volunteer, is: you were nice to have, but bye. Maybe I worked too much in the HR Department…?..
Also, something that will for sure lack execution in what you want to implement, is the education of the viewers. Who will instruct and who will explain the viewers how this is working? And I don’t mean once and for all. This is a continual process, since many new people join Viki every day. Besides whining for “where is the subs?” in the comments, you’ll get the volunteers cursed at for the bad auto-generated subtitles in one respective language. Because people know that Viki is based on a volunteer system, so instead of doing some research and have some common sense, they will blame the subbers.
Also, maybe in other languages it doesn’t happen, but Romanians are sometimes really… let’s call it"creative". There will be a ton, a TON who will copy the auto-generated subs into their subs. How is it fair for a volunteer who worked hard to get to 10,000 lines in, maybe, 5 months, compared to one who made them in 1 month, thanks to copy/paste?..
No matter how I read this, it’s a blow for the volunteers, and a victory for the whiners.
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Hahaha!
Vikibot, autogenerate… no matter how you say it, it’s the same. A human is NOT subbing the subtitles. What you get is a mess of translations. Spanish and Portuguese? Those are the fastest languages that get subbed on Viki. Not English, but THOSE TWO. They don’t need auto-generated subs because they have 10-20 times more subbers than any language on Viki.
Why are they so slow? It’s not by their on volition. It’s called the English sub teams. The editing team is the slowest for QC of English subs. They are the ONES who slow the whole other languages down. AND I FEEL GUILTY BECAUSE IT IS OUR TEAMS. I’ve told Viki when they interviewed me that. No matter how you cut it, it’s very hard to find FLUENT subbers who are 100% accurate to check subs. To have quality subs in other languages, you have to have quality English subs… because almost 99% of the other languages sub from English.
If you want other languages to move faster, the English teams need complete access to the dramas. This Viki pass and Viki pass plus and being blocked because of regions is really a HUGE hindrance to sub teams. Not all of our subbers are American… most are out of Great Britain and Australia, and some times Hong Kong.
So autogeneration… should be for obscure languages. And that just makes me sick too. It’s like letting Google Translate do it, and even though Google Translate has gotten better over the years, let’s be real… it’s still not perfect.
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I would like to say more about that, not only the subbers are blocked because of regions access now.
I am segmenter on a Korean drama and US segmenters have access to it a few hours before European ones so I can never segment on it. Do you think it’s normal? I don’t.
US segmenters segment everything alone. Sometimes I see an episode segmented by only 2 segmenters.
And when I finally have access to the new episodes it’s already English subbers working on it, nothing to segment…
For the ones like me who also like Chinese dramas, we can comfort ourselves segmenting on Chinese dramas, but for the ones who only like Korean ones…
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Hey,
I thought about it, and even though most of the comments before mentioned the main points, I’d still like to add here my view as well. I can see different negative points, not just for our subtitlers but also for Viki.
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I really don’t like the idea to “reward” and “support” all the negative whining comment writers with this service. This implements that the more, and louder they complain, the more Viki will react and changes something, which is actually not as bad as it looks for them. This will never teach them a little more patience, and empathy towards the ones doing the subtitles. Spending hours of freetime, sometimes working during nights to get the subtitles done properly, and in a times manner. Nowadays, everyone wants everything NOW and this change of service only supports this new attitude.
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The motivation of the subtitlers can go in two different directions. Either
2 a) it goes down because they think, now that the auto-subs are online, you don’t need to stress yourself anymore. The complaining viewers got their episode and you can do it at a later stage (possibly never)
2 b) or the stress level goes up, because they all would like to edit and change the auto-subs because it gives a bad impression about the subtitlers work (as I’m a little perfectionist, I’m more a type 2b) person). I know you planned to mark the auto translated subs somehow, but you know the viewers. Let’s be honest, either they don’t read it or they don’t care about it. They will just change from complaining about delayed subs to bad subs (which I think, is worse).
And as mentioned in other comments before, not all languages have a lot of team members who can sub right after the release of an episode. We’re trying to still have the balance between private life and Viki. In addition, a lot of Subtitlers work on more than 1 project, so they have to manage their freetime properly.
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then coming to the reputation of Viki … as mentioned, the complains won’t go away. NEVER. They will just shiften to another topic which is even harder to explain as Channel Manager or Moderator. Viki is known for their volunteer work but this could change now. I can hear them complain already about “Viki is using a Bot for their subtitles now”
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And I would like to add here to Kakashi’s comment regarding the English editors and the time they need to finalize and release an episode. I’m more than grateful that those editors that we actually have, do their work so diligently as they do. I know there are just a handful of them and they are working their “asses off” to get the checks done. Not just TE, but also GE and CE. It’s true that the other languages can’t start translating the dramas right after they are at 100% in English, but as moderator/subber AND watcher AND other language editor, I’d rather wait 1-2 more days and have good, checked English subtitles to work with than bad ones which will be changed at a later stage. And think about the pressure on those view people? What if they loose their interested and stop working?
From my experience as German editor, editing an episode takes much more time than just translating it. -
Also, just speaking for German translations (well, maybe other languages have the same issue, though) … auto-generated subs won’t really do as we have various forms of formal speeches and it’s a thin line in using it or not. We are not just simple “translators” when it comes to subtitles, we are “interpreters” which is different. We have to catch the vibes, the mood, gestures etc to select the correct wording and manner of speaking. AI never get’s that as these systems don’t know the relationship between the people on screen. This could also mess up the whole experience for the watcher.
In the end I would recommend to keep it as it is, supporting the English teams and especially the Editors. This way all other languages can work faster as well and the pressure goes automatically down. It’s nice that you try to think of a solution … but in my opinion auto-translates will just make it worse.
Sure, we could try and see … but isn’t it too late then? The world won’t go down if an episode needs 5-6 days to be translated into English or a week to be translated into another language. We’re all doing our best and I’m happy to work with such a dedicated community of like minded subtitlers/moderators/editors/CMs <3
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I just feel like this is going to decrease the quality of the subs, people will be even more angry about the volunteers subs not coming that quickly and will leave lots of hate messages, I’m a Portuguese translator, I’ve seen many hate message’s rodeos, who thought this was ok???
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When I read the suggestion I laughed it was such a stupid idea. The auto subs or whatever you are calling it will be subbed from a bot and they make mistakes. Then the teams will get a lot of hate from the complainers. It won’t hurt them waiting a couple days to actually get good and quality subtitles. Life is unfair and some people need to learn to appreciate and not being rude towards others but from this suggestion it looks like Viki wanna reward them?
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I’m volunteer portuguese. Seriously, I think offensive idea. Because you all are underrstimate our work. I’m so sad about it. I HAVE A NEW IDEA. Release the episodes only after the finish translate. So, the viewers don’t claimed about delay. Just only the team can see before the episodes.
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Yes I bump into more and more region restrictions and there are quite a few kdrama I really want to work on but cannot do so. And I’m just a segger but I assume there are also quite a few English subbers facing this issue.
When does Viki finally realize they should work harder to get acces for at least gold QC’s. Now viewers can watch more on Viki then I do. Does Viki realize how stupid that is and how upsetting that is for us volunteers who work hard. It looks as if Viki puts viewers in front of volunteers. Why?!
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I deleted my comment yesterday… but I am writing this short sentence again…
nothing good will come from that and under us volunteers you wont gain friendly feedbacks.
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Hello everyone🙋🏻♀️
I took my time to write here so as to not sound this negative but oh well here I am.
If Viki is going to launch this new feature anyway (which I hope it doesn’t create more chaos to neither viewers nor volunteers), it will be another problem instead of a solution.
Viki’s well-known reputation of good quality subtitles will be destroyed little by little. And I am sure this will lead to nothing good. There will be a loss of considerable viewers and more importantly volunteers who will feel they are not needed anymore, will end up leaving us forever. And it will be hard to bring them back.
The community of volunteers is what makes Viki unique amongst the others legal sites out there.
Trust me here I can easily watch kdramas in another site but I have preferred to stay loyal to Viki mainly because of the virtual international interactions we have behind the scenes of each episode drama release. We build friendships here.
You guys are right, Spanish and Portuguese are teams which have already plenty of volunteers and viewers here at Viki. They don’t need help with their Translations at all, what they and the other languages do need is that The English Team completes subbing and editing the same day of airing or the next day at most. I know it’s not possible to be done that fast because there aren’t many English subbers around due to country restrictions or time availability. So here there are some suggestions Viki should focus more to show the love and support the English team need to keep the ball rolling:
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Experienced QCs (+10,000 contributions) and all gold QCs should be allowed to access any channel they want to help without any license restrictions. We do need them, something should be done to help them access the subtitle editor.
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It is really time for Viki to give the recognition and respect English editors already deserve. We have asked these for years and I think it is the right time to do it. New public assigned roles and a badge should be created for the Editors to let them know that they are as important as subbers and encourage them volunteering.
Just like a segmenter and a translator…
Suggested Roles:
Chief Editor, General Editor, Translation editor
Suggested Badge:
Editor
Viki take into consideration the pros and cons of this new feature if it’s to be released to the public.
And thank you for letting us know this in advance.
At least communication with volunteers is being improved somehow.
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Ah, we come again to the discussion from last year. Yes, that would surely solve the problem of the lack of Ko-En subbers. Sadly, it seems that Viki hasn’t been able to convince the content providers to make an exception.
Even when I suggested, as a compromise, that they make access available only to those who are on the team.
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Hello everybody
I know, Am I one of the viewers in German,
But count me among them, because it’s about us viewers.
I don’t want a machine that translates…
It is simply said,
It is not the true heart that translates 
And then Viki will soon no longer have a true heart 
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Well this is a bad idea, isn’t it. 
As some users on here already know I have to use dictation software to write my community posts. This is of course speech to text technology. It is from my experience of having to use this technology that I can tell you this is a bad idea. Even when converting spoken English to written English there are quite a lot of mistakes made. Luckily people on here don’t get to see most of those mistakes as I can catch most of them before posting. Although occasionally there are a few things that I have to edit afterwards. Maybe just for fun I will have to create a topic of all the outtakes, so to speak. 
I simply don’t think speech to text technology is ready for a situation where you have more than one language involved
Can you imagine the extra complexities of having to convert spoken Korean or spoken Chinese into written English or any other language in written form, for that matter. That is in effect what would happen with the auto/computer-generated subtitling feature, it is speech to text technology with truckloads of complication added on top
I find myself thinking about those that horrendous auto subtitles you get on YouTube. Such a thing could give users a very bad first impression of viki and it is of course first impressions that count the most. A bad first impression would very likely drive people away. Viki , please drop this idea from a height of 10,000 feet and don’t speak of it again
I understand that it may be frustrating for some users to wait for subtitles, and I imagine that is a significant part of the thinking behind this idea but as the old saying goes, ‘good things come to those who wait’. I think Viki will just end up frustrating users even more with this
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(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)
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In my opinion this is a very bad idea and I’ll tell you why.
These are the things I am very certain will most likely happen if automated subs are implemented to bridge the gap before the volunteers’ subs are complete:
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The people who complained about the volunteers not subbing fast enough will instead start complaining about the quality of the automated subs. They will not stop complaining, they will merely redirect their anger at someone/something else.
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Some people might complain about “slow” volunteer teams but the volunteer subbers still provide them good-quality subs in the end. If you implement automated subs, they might be satisfied with the speed but not the quality of the subs which will ultimately anger them much more than having to wait for a few days for the volunteer subbers to do their work.
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It’s been said before, people will watch an episode with automated subs and complain about the quality but they will not bother to watch the whole thing again once the actual volunteer subs are complete. Why would they? No one wants to have to rewatch an episode because they weren’t satisfied with the quality. They might as well just go to rival sites and watch it there with better subs.
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In addition to the previous point, we can assume that all volunteer subs will be useless, unappreciated, and in vain because people will not stick around to actually see the volunteer subs. They will either get frustrated and leave Viki for a rival site or they will complain about the quality of the subs and give the dramas low ratings. This will be incredibly unfair to the volunteers as well as the dramas themselves.
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THIS WILL NOT LOWER THE TIME PRESSURE FOR VOLUNTEERS. You say you want us volunteer subbers to feel less pressure but this will INCREASE the pressure on volunteer subbers. The reason being that we feel pressured to complete subs as quickly as possible to avoid viewers seeing the automated subs and complaining about the quality. We want the viewers to be satisfied, even happy with the quality. It might sound harsh but we also want viewers to see OUR subtitles that we worked and sacrificed our time for. And that is reasonable.
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You want Vikians to be able to watch episodes as soon as they are available because their curiosity is overwhelming. I can only say this: viewers who are that impatient and absolutely cannot wait to watch their favourite current drama should just invest some money to watch Korean/Chinese/whatever cable TV at home. Alas, that is often not possible. AND YET Viki and us volunteers are not responsible for their impatience. That is entirely their own problem and Viki will be feeding into that problem with the automated subs.
I can entirely understand the burning impatience to finally know what happened to your favourite character but a little patience doesn’t hurt anyone. Acceptable comments like “OMG I can’t wait for next ep, I need to knowwww like NOW” are not the same as “SUBS PLS why are the subbers SO SLOW, I seriously don’t know why I am paying for Viki Pass, might as well watch somewhere else”!
If you want to avoid that problem you should look into other options such as promoting and explaining the translation process to non-volunteers more heavily etc. -
For German translation teams this will mean that virtually no one will see the subs we spend our precious time on. Why? Because we don’t have teams of 40 or 50 subbers who work on a first-come-first-served basis. Ergo we cannot complete and release entire episodes within only a few hours. We need a realistic few days to do our work and do it well. But by that time people will have watched with automated subs and moved on so our work is useless as explained above. We need to wait for English subs first. Then we need to wait for all final edits.Then for the episode’s release. And then, only then, do we get to work on it. Not to mention that our language teams also need to edit the episodes.
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And another huge consequence will be that us volunteer subbers will feel severly unappreciated for all the reasons mentioned above.
Do not underestimate our insight into viewer behaviour and other consequences. We are subbers but we are viewers, too. We are a part of the viewer community. Of course, we do understand that there is a business side of things that we do not have insight into but we do know that this implementation will cause massive problems in the long run.
We all know automated subs are qualitative much inferior to volunteer subs. Viki has admitted so itself in their post above. That is not only the premise of my argument but also a reality. As a volunteer subber I can guarantee you: not once have I taken impatient whining from viewers seriously. It has zero influence on my life or working methods. Is it annoying? Sometimes. Does it bother me on a personal level? No. I am aware that others might feel differently but personally I would rather put up with some whining than with our efforts being worthless and the sub quality going down.
Translation is intellectual work, even a craft. It needs time and should be taken seriously. Knowing a language is not enough to put out good translations. It isn’t as easy as some might think, especially when we need to bridge such big cultural gaps. We know essential linguistic and especially cultural nuances that automated subs will never be able to convey (it’s far more complicated than just explaining what a traditional breakfast dish is). We know. We can evaluate. We know what we are doing. So take us seriously. In translation you cannot have speed and quality at the same time. It simply does not work that way.
I BEG of you to listen to the volunteers on this one. We’ve seen before how our suggestions are often in vain, how we only preach to the wind sometimes. But please listen to us on this one. Please do not choose speed over quality. Making our subs essentially invisible (since people will not stick around to see them regardless of them existing) will destroy everything Viki stands for: quality subs, community, volunteer-driven translations, overcoming language barriers, and even contributing to maintaining endangered languages.
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If you’re already dissing @dafne88 for some minor flaws, then how are you going to handle the terrible subtitles the AI agent is going to throw at you, once it’s there?
Please don’t assume to know what ALL of us think. Even though I prefer to stay on as a volunteer for years to come, this is NOT my main concern here. As a linguist my main concern is the quality of the subtitles. And the consecutive deterioration of our languages if this becomes a trend.
Btw, if Viki would really kick me out as a volunteer, there’d be no way in hell I’d become a PAID subscriber.
Paid or not, who would even WANT to edit artificially created subs?
You think? Machines may have improved over the years and will continue to do so. But they will NEVER get to the point where they can meet the standards that we need here, cause that’s simply not in their nature.
There’s two other options:
- Replace them by other human subbers
- Train them so they become better subbers.
If neither of those is possible, we’ll have to think of another solution. But AI isn’t it.
And is it really that horrible to wait a week for a new episode? If that’s the case, then you could also choose to start watching when there’s already a couple of episodes released instead of just jumping at it from day 1. Even paying subscribers have to adjust to what is and is not possible at the company of their choice.
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I totally agree with you.
Unfortunately, there are many abusers in the Portuguese community. With the implementation of automatic subtitles, the number of abusers will surely increase, so I’d like to know how Viki will deal with this issue. It’s a nuisance to report them and it’s discouraging for us when Viki doesn’t take any action against them.
I completely agree with you!
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Here is your problem (not volunteers one)
Info: I think they blame viki and its management, more than volunteers 
And personally, I feel the pressure more from you, vikistaff members, than from the viewers.
Your magic solution:
I think everyone has told you guys the positive and negative points of such a decision. I also think everyone has said why there is this amount of time, namely: English teams, volunteering, lack of qualified English volunteers. Why? For quality and accuracy. Why? For the benefit of viewers and understanding. A paid site must ensure quality, otherwise why pay?
In this community, we are 3 (Big Three V):
- Volunteers
- Viewers
- Vikistaff members
If there was a viki ethic, it would be to come up with ideas, change systems and reorganize for: the BEST of everyone (Volunteers, Viewers, Vikistaff members). And I repeat, I speak of the BEST to suit everyone, not necessarily “good”.
What is best for everyone? If we read volunteers messages, we can note that this idea is not the best for them. If we asked the viewers’ opinion, we would certainly have some interesting answers with yes and no (some answers that we can find in the following documents where the viewers had said that they did not want a machine-generated translation when we had the problem of vikibot a few months ago : Machine translation from Viki + the google doc petition, @kylamia can you give us the google document please? You are the owner). Btw, why don’t you do a survey for viewers? Ask them! But ok, let’s say a 50/50%… (I’m optimistic, I know)
I guess viki staff members are also supposed to be people who promote the well-being of volunteers and viewers. Of course, pressure from top executives also has its weight, but we are not here in the “best”, nor even of ethics or professional conscience. If we all listened to what the morons who rule us say and without making our voices heard, we would be screwed. Let’s go dig our hole immediately!
Staff members: ask yourself the right questions. By the way: would you, as a person, pay for a plateform with machine translations? (Yes, auto-translated subs and vikibot is the same, it’s not human)
We told you guys:
- What’s the problem: in english teams, sometimes because of some volunteers that we report (and you guys need to do your job here).
- We offered you more logical solutions : see above all answers.
- If you guys don’t listen and cannot take a step aside for the better overall, we will be forced to note that: you don’t listen us, you absolutely want to use these translation machines not to help us but for other reasons. But what can we do? That’s your job, not ours. If you are under pressure from above, you should consider educating them on things and explaining to them why this is not possible or why it is possible. If not, please think about other possibilities.
I think it’s general: we want to do the best for viki: for the viewers, for the staff members and for us. Do you, as vikistaff members, want to do the best for everyone?
PS : I don’t know if I said everything I wanted to say, if I made myself clear, but hey, I said my little piece of thought.
Oh, and thanks for writing here before you act. Thanks for considering us this time. We see that you want to share more, I hope that will continue. On this one, we owe you congratulations and thanks. 
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