[Viki Community] We Want Your Feedback

All the drama and after all, the outcome was a totally different thing. So the auto-generated subtitles is to have plenty choice of non on air dramas/ movies, and shows available with (this) subtitles to keep the so called ‘‘sub-whiners’’ entertained while the subtitles become available in the many on air dramas (I imagine movies/ popular shows, too etc.). Good strategy, and by the looks of the survey done; it seems the quality in the AI subtitles (at least for the Spanish and Portuguese viewers) is not bad at all, and at least 50% of viewers are willing to use it. Myself included.

Looking forward in trying this new feature here at this site. I already saw those generated subtitles in a drama provided by my stream service I pay for, and I was very pleased with the translations/subtitles.

Btw, my stream service gives me several choices, and the other one is DUBBED korean dramas (5 so far available) and I don’t like it bc the voice don’t match the person so I rather use AI when they have it available.

PS. This note is for that one person that said my stream service doesn’t use AI.

How does Nx use AI?

Nx utilizes AI capabilities along with human supervision to dramatically improve the brand’s product offering and the user experience. all to increase the probability that you will click and watch. And I surely watch and am very pleased with it.

I figure the supervision part will be taken care by the best here since that is also important to maintain quality in the subs besides providing a faster service. Good Luck and again, wishing the best on both goals: speed/quality. Thank you so much for showing the love to all of us alike, viewers, volunteers and everyone in between.

3 Likes

Thanks @mariliam for your lengthy and explicit answers to so many questions.:rose: It is as you wrote, an idea must be tested in order to see how it will work. I’m very delighted to read that Viki is taking many volunteers concerns into consideration! :clap:

4 Likes

I believe the rest are just willing to wait whatever amount of time they have to wait for the subtitles to be done by the volunteers, and have no interest in using the auto generated subtitles no matter how good they turned out to be.
Wished I had the pleasure of doing that survey but never knew about it 'till now.

2 Likes

I guess you didn’t get invited to the survey cause, even though you speak Spanish, you don’t live in a country where the majority speaks Spanish.

2 Likes

I get it now. Well, I was just curious about the survey to see for myself ‘‘how good’’ or ‘‘how bad’’ those auto generated subtitles really are or will be at this site. Something doesn’t add up in those numbers, and although the explanation was so detailed;I felt something was/is missing in there. Only time will clear the doubts creeping into my gut feeling.

The fact that this subs can’t be touched/improved in any way, and stay as is, doesn’t make me to confident on what amount of ‘‘quality’’ will really be in them.

1 Like

I guess that’s because they’re supposed to be there just temporarily. Once the human subs are ready (or at least 90%), they will disappear again, as far as I understand.
The fact that Viki uses software that’s been specifically trained for Asian dramas will probably give less bad results than some random translation software would have. Still not human level, if you ask me, but I guess it doesn’t have to be if it’s only there temporarily.

3 Likes

I forgot that part, glad you reminded me that they will be removed once the volunteers subtitles reach the 90% level. You’re so right, it can never replace the skillful work of translations done by the hands of so many loyal volunteers at this site

I’m so glad we still have RViki site up and running. So many TV shows/Wonderful Spanish programs were cancelled this week and so far they ‘‘fired’’ 4 wonderful female host that for 20 years served the hispanic community. I HOPE RVIKi stand victorious, and can pull through these trying economic mess.

2 Likes

Yes I think that wonderful idea :bulb::heart::heart::heart::heart:

  1. People will stop giving our shows low ratings for NO REASON OTHER THAN SUBTITLES.

  2. THIS ISN’T ABOUT US. Why are we making a fuss about being heard and understood instead of helping others have fun?

These are 2 reasons why auto-translated subtitles are okay with me.

I’m going to speaking objectively a moment, but it doesn’t mean that people’s feelings aren’t important, in fact I think they are. But objectively, I think you should never EVER have the “auto-bot” if it’s like the picture shown above–I’m a professional translator and it absolutely affects the way someone translates and will probably cause lots of mistakes, not to mention that people will try to translate when they don’t even know the language!!! And objectively, the auto-translated text is fine for someone who just wants to mostly understand what’s happening and doesn’t care about the technical details of the business trades, etc. It’s only really bad if they actually can’t understand, right? And then they have to go back and re-watch and try to piece everything together and it’s so annoying.

With all that said, people’s feelings are extremely important!!! So whatever happens, it can’t only be objective, right?

In Him,
PT

1 Like

Hey Mirjam. I just commented on a drama that I’m watching, and I haven’t been commenting on Viki for a few months now but I see that my comments are waiting to be approved by Viki. Is this a new thing or is it just me? I remembered your post when I saw it, because you suggested they have someone approve comments before they are published.

1 Like

Oh, I haven’t seen that yet (haven’t commented lately either), but it might be a new rule. I did suggest it, but I don’t know whether they implied it or not.
Maybe @mariliam can tell you more. :slight_smile:

I had that too, after a few approved comments, it went back to showing the comment right after writing it.

O okay, thank you :slight_smile:

1 Like

O okay. So either it’s because of my inactivity or it’s a change in how Viki manages the comments. I actually want to see how it would go if they were reviewing and approving comments. As long as I can freely express my thoughts on a drama (respectfully, and not spoiling it for anyone), I would support that kind of change because it might reduce the stress for the volunteers. Anyway, thanks for replying and letting me know!

When this happens, it’s usually a Disqus rather than a Viki thing. Sometimes it’s triggered by a word - which can be quite innocent, you never know - or a link or whatever.

3 Likes

When the AI software is able to adjust to changed translations (English subs pre/after edit) why couldn’t it be used to adjust or at least marks (without changing) volunteers’ subs in this way:

English team finished the subbing - all other languages have to wait for the English edit - viewers think OMG these damn OL subbers, never doing anything!! - even when it is only because of waiting for the GO of the English team.

There are shows that are completed, all episodes are available in English but the OL teams are only allowed to translate 5! episodes, even after many, many months.

So when it is okay for VIKI to use AI translations immediately when the English subs hit 100% why do the OL teams have to wait for months, when the AI software is able to adjust?

Sometimes volunteers are involved in too many projects (more than they could handle) because for once the English edit is fast - with couple of dramas at the same time - while many other times the volunteers may just have one project or very few like 2-3 and then there is no GO and the OL volunteers have to wait for months until they’re allowed to sub something.

That might not be a big deal for Korean dramas or movies but for Chinese dramas that often have around 50 episodes (sometimes 30, sometimes 70) it’s really troublesome for the plannings.

So why not allow quicker translation for OL and use the AI software as some kind of AI ‘editor’ that marks changes in already done subs so the OL editor can fix that later?

(I watched most on air dramas with unedited English subs and it was okay in most cases so I don’t think it’s such a big mess when OL would translate it before the English edit when the AI software would prove it later if any severe changes were done during the English edit).

2 Likes

I have been in very popular online shows where the Chief Editor had to release even when our editing wasn’t 100% done, there were about 10-15 sentences which had to be researched and pondered on and discussed between us.
What we told the OL moderators was this:
“We are releasing now, so that your subbers can start the translation. We hope to have the editing done before you get to edit, so that when you edit it will be the finished English version. But in case you are so quick that your edit is over before we finalize our changes, we’ll send you the Post Release edits as soon as possible”
And I send those, as promised, within a couple of days. With exact timing, before version and edited version, everything to make it easy for them to find the exact place of the subtitle just by doing a CTRL+F search on Bulk Editor.
HOWEVER. Sometimes a moderator complains about those post-release edits, saying it’s bothersome.

I remember once an episode like this. I wasn’t in the English team, I was Greek moderator. And there were post-release changes. On Team Discussion, I thanked the English editors for letting us know about those changes, because truthfully those sentences had me scratching my head when I edited the Greek but now they finally made sense. I also thanked them for their commitment to excellence.
However, the Spanish moderator was extremely pissed off and said “Maybe it’s okay for the slow languages, but for us the quick languages, this is extra work” and so on.
I got very pissed off myself, for this “slow languages/quick languages”. From that day I pushed my team to be the very first language to finish - after the Spanish, of course. And we did succeed. At times we were second (after the Spanish), at times we were third (after Spanish and Portuguese), but never below that. And I made it a point of posting on TD to announce it, the moment the Greek edit was complete.
Okay, I was young (on Viki, not in real life!) and childish, this was a few years ago, I had just started as a moderator. Today I would never do such a thing, I now feel secure here, I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. But at that time I felt she was belittling me and all the others who didn’t have 30 people in their team - I had only 6.

Sorry for the digression. But even now, when I’m in the English team, I hear some complaints about post-release edits. We release more quickly than we’d like to for THEIR sake, because of THEIR sub-whiners, who are the loudest - but still they are not satisfied. That’s why some other editors say “who cares, what the hell, we’ll wait to release when we’re completely ready”.

Of course I know that this is not the situation in old interminable Chinese dramas. On the contrary, there are Chinese dramas which OL have started to translate without them being edited because they understood that the English editing would have to wait for months or years. I recently happened to work in two of them, as an Italian subber trainer. (Suddenly This Summer and Waiting for You). It was sometimes extremely hard to understand what was being said, the translation was so bad it gave me a headache. At some point maybe somebody will go back to them and edit the English, but do you think they will bother keeping a list of all the relevant changes of 30 plus episodes? And if they do, that the OL editors will go back and painstakingly visit every episode, search for the exact subtitle to change it? No way! We both know this won’t happen. (Those two dramas were so boring and draggy that I wanted to throw a party when my work on them was over).

To come back to what you wrote…
The AI can adjust without complaining because it’s a machine. If you tell it to work 24/7 it has no choice but do it. But humans will complain.

3 Likes

Thanks for sharing your experiences :slight_smile:

Maybe it’s not clear enough, what I was thinking about.

VIKI said they want to take pressure away from the volunteers. Their feature of implementing AI translations means that they think it is a good idea to offer subs a) faster and b) also for abandoned projects plus c) right after the English subs hit 100% even without being edited.

When I think about comments and PMs I got from viewers their main thought was:

Why are the English subs already there (sometimes for the whole drama) when our language isn’t? Do you even work on it anymore???

To be sure I checked our subbing progress + the edited and release status for OL teams before writing a reply. We were always quite close to the English release for OL (e.g. 2 episodes unfinished 2-3 days after they were released, which is a good time progress for smaller language teams). For other dramas I got asked although I wasn’t neither a language mod nor a subber there but I knew that all episodes that were released for OL teams were already translated for my language.

So I explained them how VIKI works because the viewers seem to have no clue about that, especially when a drama is finished with English subs.

So instead (or as addition) of using AI translations VIKI could offer some kind of AI grammar/meaning software that proves and compares English subs to OL subs. In that way the OL teams could start subbing earlier and the AI could correct it. I think the sub’s quality would be still better with volunteer teams than with AI translations.

So I think they should think about other options too how to use AI software related to subtitles and faster access for most viewers.

Another aspect is that no matter if it’s about English subs or OL subs - the subs are always visible right after they were written. That means X% of viewers might watch unedited subs anyway, especially those who are eager to watch a new drama.

I think that a software that is more used as some kind of grammar/content/syntax correction tool instead of a 100% translation tool could offer some relief for every language.

(The languages that do not have hundreds of active volunteers always have to decide how they work and what’s their focus: do they want to offer subs in their language for most possible dramas in a short/er amount of time or do they want to focus on editing and 100% perfect subs, related to syntax, etc. … Some moderators already said they need ~2-3 hours for editing just one episode; but the same time could be also used for translating untranslated episodes. So in my opinion VIKI should offer a software that supports the editing and not the translating process. As you could also use writing programs that give advice related to grammar, syntax etc. when you’re writing something in your own language like a short story or so. Such programs do not do your work in the way of thinking, writing chapters, creating characters etc. but they can make the writing process easier in showing if you used wrong spelling, missed something or so. You can also exchange a certain word, e.g. at first you had name X for your character and Y for another and later you realize that the names or one name is not so good because it is too similar to Y and then the software is able to exchange this name within the whole text. Something like that would be really useful and helpful for editing dramas because even when you create a doc, made a list with terms that are used multiple times and should be the same in each episode it happens that person A uses this term but person B not and C uses it but writes it different. So for such things a software would be really good and time saving…)

2 Likes

As an English editor, I wait for the TE team to pass an episode to me after it was already 95-97% subbed for many days! The origin translators have already subbed most of the new episodes, but the TE team is six episodes behind by a week or more. I only accept the amount of editing jobs that I know I can handle, and I never hold other language moderators hostage. So I would never blame the English editors for the hold-up. The GEs on my team sometimes work until 2 a.m. and they are never behind like the TE team!

Working with pre-subs, I still wait three to four days for the TE team! Once the segmenting team finishes fixing the pre-subs, there are still blanks from missing OST lyrics, signs, text messages, documents, etc.

Our hold-up here at Viki is with our TE teams!!! I would be willing for Viki to pay our qualified, educated Translation Editors so they don’t have to work and just check pre-subs or subbers’ translations.

My hubby translates messages into Czech and he says it’s taxing on the brain and anything auto-generated doesn’t work. The Translation Editors of origin languages MUST HAVE UNIVERSITY KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR LANGUAGE OR EQUIVALENT! I work with TE teams and sometimes none of them can figure out an Ancient Chinese sign. I can ask the segmenter to delete that blank segment in order to release the episode, but I cherish the fact that Viki offers the best subs in Asian dramas! While I edit the episode, I send messages to other TEs I worked with, and someone often comes through with the translation. I never had to resort to getting a segment deleted yet!

Why pay for machine-generated subs when we need quality subs that were checked by humans?

OR we can resort to the standard at other major sites which do not offer the quality or quantity offered by Viki. The quantity is the main reason why I’m at Viki. My second reason is quality. I paid for Pass Plus here in Canada and was pleasantly shocked when Viki gave me free subscription at QC level. High End Crush, for example, was on YT but had nothing of the quality found on Viki. I watched Noble My Love on NF years ago, but it made much more sense on Viki. I thought he was asking her to date unexpectedly because he fell for her, when I watched it on NF, but on Viki I learned it was contract dating! Like how bizarre is that? And let me assure you, I rewind and check details because I detest plot holes!

The other solution I can see is that Viki needs to delete all reviews marking a drama down because of subtitles. We must not enable the abuse of complainers in any way! Most of those complainers do not pay anyhow. Also, since I got QC status, I was able to watch dramas on my computer before the license ended, such as “Will it Snow for Christmas?” QC status means you have early access to dramas. That’s one reason why CMs choose moderators with QC status.

2 Likes

AI editing human subtitles? The horror! :scream:

Those systems also have a lot of flaws. Any word they don’t know is marked as wrong, they give suggestions that were not even close to what you meant …

Just let AI manage the comment section. Language is for humans. Translating even more so.

3 Likes