Viki's standards being low af

General Discussion
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I stopped working on presegged & subbed drama because the editing of it all takes a lot more time then simply delete it all and re do the whole thing.

Like sometimes they cut sentences in 2 and then you want to combine them. Viki will let you copy paste the sub in an other segment but it doesn’t allow you to delete the segment that is now empty because you combined two. That really drove me nuts at times. Adding an extra segment fine but removing one segment that was once subbed… no my friend.

Maybe they changed that, it has been a while…

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To start over from scratch would defeat the whole purpose of people being able to watch shows as soon as they load. Thus I mean it’s vital to fix segments and edit subtitles. Sorry for the miscommunication :relieved:

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No prob

Yeah, speed over quality.
It’s always the same equation we can’t solve.

Without a competent TE, it’s void of real edition, it would be partially edited.
This pre system involves what we lack the most on Viki: competent TE.

Even if the team has lots of editors or an army of editors, it would still be really limited (and time consuming for these editors) if the editor doesn’t know the original language, because the main problem of pre-subbed is meaning and not grammar.

No matter how well the sentence is structured or how good the grammar sounds after edition, if the meaning is not there, it’s back to the basis.
A subber in a foreign language will still have to scratch and look for the real meaning behind the English subs (what a TE would do).

That’s where we can recognize whether the TE has enough knowledge or no, or an English editor was enough diligent or no.

A very few TE would want to edit pre-subbed dramas. I don’t know why actually.

Without a skilled TE = no guarantee for the quality. That is for sure.

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no, we (segmenters) have all been made mods so we’d have deleting privileges. not kidding.

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@honeybuns
You questioned why segments have two people’s dialogue in them. Although ideally it should be one person per subtitle, sometimes the person says something so short (less than 1 second) that the resulting segment would be less than 1.5 seconds even with a generous 1.2 second extension after what was said – but the video doesn’t allow for any extension at all after what was said. So then segmenters are taught to include what was said by the other person either before or after the really short verbalization. What I do try to avoid is daisy chaining the segments so if you imagine a and b are having a conversation with quite short sentences. a is what person A says and b is what person B says and what each is saying is less that 1.5 seconds long and there is no pause between the two for any segment extension. Then I want to avoid segmenting like this where / marks the border between segments.
/aaabbb/bbbaaa/aaabbb/bbbaaa This is what I call daisy chaining as the beginning of a person’s dialogue is in one segment, the end is in another segment with the beginning of what the other person says. In the pre-subbed dramas I see, this daisy chaining often occurs in the give-and-take of a conversation which shows the emphasis seems to be more on meeting some standard of number of characters than on the viewer’s comprehension When I edit pre-subbed dramas, I try my best at my intermediate level of fluency to make sense of any subs which seem strange, have mixed English metaphors or screw up the translation of Korean idioms and when in doubt, I check the Korean script to make sure my ears aren’t deceiving me. Editing pre-subbed dramas is not in any way faster than dramas subbed by volunteers and often takes longer because I have to tweak the segments too. I also notice that some episodes need more segment tweaking than others, which tells me that more than one subber worked on the drama.
@worthyromance – Difference between the pre-subbed “professional” subtitling (assumed when we receive the drama pre-subbed) where “professional” means paid for and non-professional means not paid for, and not implying that the subs are qualitatively better. The subtitles produced by our volunteers retain more of the original content of the dialogue than the pre-subbed subtitles. Scholarly studies have shown that "professional’ subtitlers practice a lot more “reductionism” in which the original dialogue is not completely translated. This occurs because of constraints put on the “professional” for amount of space/ characters used by the subtitle and timing, the duration the subtitles appear on screen as well as cultural differences on what may be important and individual subtitlers personal opinions about what is important to be included in a subtitles which the is gist of what is being said. At viki we don’t place any constraints on space or timing of subtitles and this is why our subtitles are longer than “professionals.” Linguistic reductionism, in which units of meaning are left out of the subtitles are seen far less often in the volunteer produced subtitles than in the “professionally” produced pre-subbed dramas.

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19

I feel that volunteer based subtitles/segments are better than paid subbers/timers. I would compare it to being your own boss versus putting in hours just to get paid. Volunteers put in overtime without thought of money, whereas if it was just a job, most would do enough to get paid and keep the job. I see volunteers on Viki go above and beyond what most paid workers would do. For example: the volunteer segmenters who realign segments second by second which came to us supposedly “professionally” done, but were so way off that viewers complained until our volunteers fixed the timing.

As an English editor, one of the TE experts who came after me said she had few subtitles to fix. I think we can all be perceptive, even though we don’t know the origin language. All of us can spot plot holes. Most of us who watch the dramas can spot the plot holes and when the subtitles don’t seem to make sense.

I haven’t found this regarding the TE experts with whom I have been privileged to volunteer. They are highly experienced, very professional, organized, knowledgeable, considerate, always willing to edit first or to let me go ahead, and a joy to know. I also recognize that they are in high demand, busy with several dramas, and super helpful people :smile:

My dear, life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. A queen sent a worker to count all the flowers in her kingdom, and another worker was sent to count all the weeds. The weed seeker returned first and said, “Oh, Your Majesty, what shall we do? Everywhere I looked, there were only weeds! Our kingdom is doomed!”

Suddenly, the other worker returned full of smiles. “Oh, Your Majesty, you are so blessed to have this wonderful kingdom! Wherever I looked, all I could see were flowers!” For example: we can see wild roses as weeds with thorns, or we can view them as more fragrant than cultivated ones, more prolific, more hardy, and possessing natural beauty.

I don’t want to see Viki disappear like DramaFever. No one makes me volunteer. I choose to be helpful for the sake of those of us who enjoy Asian dramas. When you feel stressed, step back for awhile and take a rest just watching the dramas. You have every right, and don’t feel guilty. When you’re ready again, you will feel renewed with fresh energy to tackle just whatever is on the schedule :grinning:

None of us needs to feel abused. If we can’t enjoy our volunteering, then leave it to someone else for a time. I feel I get lots of dramas to watch and that Viki does its best to spend millions of dollars licensing shows for us.

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You’re referring to “segments that feature two people when it wasn’t the least bit necessary,” right? Why’d you ignore the “not the least bit necessary” part? (And what about the opening post, doesn’t that make it clear I’m talking about sth very different?)
Some of them are awkwardly segmented just so that two would be together, when splicing them seems a lot more natural. Usually I have the easiest time separating them. (I don’t think I’ve come across any that needed to be combined.)

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It depends on which dramas and also on the TE.
Some translations are correct, some seem to make sense but are a mistranslation.

I think it’s because of different roles and experience.
When confronted to the same exp, I tend to think that it’s not about stress, more that it’s “I don’t understand why.”
I don’t expect an editor to understand a segmenter’s pov (a difference in roles).
If he didn’t do the training of nssa or is not a segmenter who fixed segments or did segments, it can be difficult to relate to honeybun’s experience or post.
But people who did it already will understand what she means.

Once you are trained to do something, it is difficult to go back to the previous “you” and keep the same pov.
Her reaction would be different if she was not a graduate who fixed presegmented dramas.

And I would say it is the same in life. Your understanding keeps changing.
Only when you are confronted to some experiences or met with some volunteers, you get to know people better, it’s possible to understand people (at least better…) but not only a part of the population but more people in their globality. More faces of the dice.

That’s also why I would also recommend segmenting training.

Each one can have his own pov.
My pov: I think that when something is not going well or we are wondering “But why am I doing this that way?” (efficiency) or “why am I doing it?”, it is best to say it when it’s possible to say it, like she did.
And not denying a segmenter’s feeling, because we were not segmenters or didn’t segment her drama, but listening and accepting that she feels this way or sees it that way, that could be different from someone else’s feeling.
Understanding that she has a different experience from us or we didn’t get yet to live this experience.

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Beautifully said. I don’t have experience with this particular phenomenon, but I understand the feeling of frustration either way, based on my other experiences in life. People need a listening ear, acknowledgment of their suffering. Not their feelings just being brushed aside with a quick fix or a “nothing you can do about it”, let alone a “carpe diem”.

I get your point, but still those weeds might effect some more than others.

Do you get the script handed to you when you accept the job or do you have to search for it and hope it’s out there somewhere?

Even without segging experience I feel like I totally agree with you.

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@mirjam_465 I used to have to hunt for scripts myself on the internet. Then I learned often on C drama and Taiwan Drama, viki was obtaining scripts for the team so I started begging like a broken record on every drama I worked on – I would say for about 80% of the K dramas now we get the script automatically and very often the scripts are uploaded very close to the time the video is uploaded.
@honeybuns “Then, of course, we have the segments that feature two people when it wasn’t the least bit necessary, and other quirks.” Well, it’s a matter of how one defines “necessary.” Ninja Academy guidelines say “Combine segments by DIFFERENT speakers when their speech is significantly overlapping or a speaker’s segment is less than 1 second.” If you are following the guidelines, than one could argue the two speaker subtitle is necessary when one speakers’ segment is less than 1 second. You state “I don’t think I’ve come across any that needed to be combined.” Perhaps when you have segmented as much as I have and edited pre-subbed dramas as often as I have you will encounter as many sliced up sentences as I have and divisions of sentences at “unnatural” locations contrary to general guidelines for dividing an English sentence.

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Imagine that during fighting/argument scenes everyone who yells something needs to get their own segments. Or during the drunk noraebang scenes where part of the people sing along and others have a conversation. Or when a patient on medical drama is bought in and all the doctors etc discuss it very fast.

If they all have their own segments not only you wont be able to read it all because it keeps flashing on the screen. We also won’t be to translate everything… At some point I even add 3 people in one segment because at times you don’t have an other option.

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Okay look, clearly you’re very knowledgeable about segmenting, and I’m glad viki has people like you, I actually think you were one of my NSSA senseis (although usernames can be similar and I’m not 100% sure). I appreciate you took that much time to explain in detail about splicing segments, but I didn’t mean to ask about that.
Of course scenes sometimes necessitate more than one speaker in one segment, of course. I graduated from NSSA, idk if there is any team on viki that “hires” people that aren’t graduates (whether NSSA or seg101).
I of course used NSSA guidelines to describe the bot-made segments with two speakers I’ve come across as unnecessary. They are. I used NSSA guidelines to separate them. Easily. I don’t think anyone in sandbox would create some of those segments I’ve come across. Yes, sometimes segmenting gets tricky and you need to do things that you do need training to know. That’s not what I’m talking about.

This really, truly, isn’t grounds for an argument. Idk how that turned into me not knowing segmenting either @dudie. When I see both of you explain to me about basic segmenting rules, I feel astounded and a little helpless because I want you to understood what I’m trying to say. Would you be willing to tell me if you do, especially when you have more experience than me (which you do)? I think it would make sense for you to know exactly what I’m talking about, and in much more detail.

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Are you upset because I gave a blanket statement about bad segments when I haven’t made it clear that I know segmenting, or care about it? It sounds like you want respect for how much goes into creating good segments?

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I’m about to talk about my experiences in the past. I don’t work on dramas like that anymore. I used to be asked to fix segments made by the software (and sometimes they were made by Viki staff, who I tried to advise on what they needed to avoid and to take NSSA training).

It’s stressful to fix, because you can’t fix things the way you want to and it just sucks up all your time. No thank you.

I did see some Viki staff on the NSSA waiting list, but not sure if they actually went through the training. It’s not their job to only do segments and I’m not sure if they still do or if the program is used.

Edit: changed bot to software. I used them interchangeably, but they do mean two separate things :sweat_smile:

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Thank you! It’s interesting to know some of those are made by staff, who haven’t undergone training.

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In my experience, I was working on a drama, and I saw someone who I’d never seen before making these very weird segments (usually students who’ve read everything in the segmenting guide don’t make some of these mistakes in Sandbox). I thought I had come across an abuser, so I reported them to the CM. But then I found out that that person was Viki staff :sweat_smile: I did talk to her, and her segments improved somewhat, but still needed a lot of fixing.

The CM had asked for help from Viki, because people in the comments were whining, we had a very small team and all the episodes had been uploaded at once.

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Saying because someone is actually paid s/he works less and stops when it’s done adds a very poor impression to everyone’s job in general - no matter what kind of job a person has.

If that’ll be really the case: Everyone who is a professional translator works just shitty bc of only doing it for money our whole book industry would be low bottom quality, all the synced/subbed movies from abroad too etc.!!!

Maybe US American translators are shitty, because Americans rather remake everything (even when the whole atmosphere and essence of the origin characters and story gets lost then) instead of watching something with subs or synced version. And yeah I remember the horrible US versions of anime… with all the Americanized names for Japanese characters…

But thats something typical for the USA, that doesn’t mean it’s typical for Europeans or Germans. Germany has a long tradition of translations; we are used to watch almost everything in cinema and TV as synced version. Although we have quite big publishers they’re pushing American books over origin German books, that means, they prefer translating books that are written by Americans over books that are written by Germans (just because there are more English readers than German readers and it’s cheaper for them to translate American into German than pushing a German book first and translate it into English later…). Of course it depends on the genre and the translator but there are many oldschool translators who write better (style wise) than modern German origin authors…(mainly bc many modern authors think easy twitter-styled short sentences show ‘skill’ while complex long/er sentences how it’s used to be by great German authors in the past is ‘bad’ skill now - without thinking about that it could just be a lazy technical issue when people only read on little smartphone displays instead of reading paper books or eReaders with lager displays…)

Doing something unpaid doesn’t mean the quality is worse by default but doing something unpaid means anyone can do it… there is no restriction, no quality control. A company that wants to earn money, a shop that wants to sell products has to contain a certain level of quality otherwise they won’t earn money. Here on VIKI when people give a *** on following the rules or working as team, you have lots of trouble or stress but these people usually don’t have to bear the consequences (since in the end the general excuse always is: it is unpaid…so there is no commitment…)

If you want to offer high quality subs on VIKI you’d need to work with small teams only and it’ll need much time until a project is finished because there are just too many new shows each month and way too less people that work on a semi-professional level so you wouldn’t notice a difference between a VIKI volunteer and a professional.
Recently there are so many new shows that it happened several times that 2-3 weeks after the English main team already released several episodes for all other languages they said they gonna change stuff (like terms or sometimes whole sentences). So the amount of time we spend here is enormous. I’d even say some who work on many projects spend as much time here as if it’s a full time job and I always wonder how they are able to spend so much time here.

As some already mentioned, editing usually needs more time than redoing it. I saw that multiple times with most new subbers. I’m not talking about typos or missing commas. I’m talking about wrong translations, partly wrong translations, context wrong translations, wrong syntax… (plus the wrong subtiles bc the English sub was wrong).

When I watch a movie/series that is done by professionals I usually can enjoy it much more bc it’s done on a higher level. The sentences are usually with correct grammar and syntax, when it’s synced I can just listen instead of reading etc. (I’m not only watching Asian shows with subs, I sometimes watch other languages with subs too. Sometimes also languages I understand to see how close or far away the subs are from that what is said. One core aspect for German subs is that the written form is adapted to READING so you can read and watch at same time that means when a character is just blablallbbla bubbling as it is common for dialogues the German subs cut it down to a nice written form and that’s why I like these subs more bc the keep the core essence and put it in a form in which you can enjoy the visuals of a movie even with subs what is usually never possible when you watch VIKIs German subs because they translate 1:1 and keep all unecessary fillers and that means the German sentences are too long to read them at same time while watching the visuals).

So at some point I had to realize and accept for myself that it is impossible to get a consistent high quality of subs here bc of too many shows, too less volunteers and too different individual opinions and abilities (and editing doesn’t solve the problem bc in certain it’ll end up like translating the whole thing again instead of just fixing few typos or so).

PS:

@ the complaining viewers

If they really wanna fast access to subs they should start to pay the volunteers!!!

When even modders and fan creators for AAA+ studio games are paid by donations by other gamers = consumers for providing the fan made content without the game would be super boring and not be played (and bought) then the viewers should start to support the volunteers here as well!

You girls think it is ‘special’ doing something for free and even have to deal with unpatient viewers but in the end it may just be a female socialized behaviour that requesting a compensation for time is not okay while the guys in gaming communities make it clear: Either people have to wait longer since everyone has to work for paying the bills in another job then or the fans pay (donate) for the content so the fans have to wait less and some now do it as their full time job, living by the donations of their fans who want that specific content as addition to the base game. (Many games work like that now; that gamers are paid by other gamers via donations for fan content. It’s legal because after a certain amount of time the fan content is free for everyone and that is the condition from the game studio to allow fan content with donation of money option).

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Don’t you think that also takes something away from the original? At least I prefer to hear the original language, regardless of whether I understand it or not. A K-drama where the actors talk Dutch seems quite ridiculous to me.

I guess that goes not just for German but instead is a standard for (almost) all “professional” subbing. In The Netherlands too and, I assume, worldwide. It’s a matter of preference, but I do agree that sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the subtitles here.

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When I have the chance I watch Japanese and Chinese movies/series with subs and origin language. It depends on the origin language. I dislike the sound/melody of some languages so I rarely to never would watch them with subs.
I could watch American/British shows without any subs because I can understand the language but I dislike the high/deep voices of Americans(most male figures have too deep voices and most females too pitched voices). Chinese actors have a very similar high/deep voice level to German voices but when Germans do synced versions for Chinese movies they often chose voices that are more similar to the high/deep level of Koreans so it sounds bad (= verdy deep male voices and high female voices).
Some South American dramas are really great. Their origin voices are also on/within a similar field as German voices and their Spanish is easier to understand than European Spanish for whatever reason.

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I don’t think that’s your no-no, reporting them when they work for Viki. I think their standards should be higher, so that of course their staff doesn’t mess anything up, and you should never ever confuse them with an abuser because they have no idea how to do their job. (Especially when sth as basic as reading the segmenting guide would lead to improvements already - I mean seriously, it sounds like zero effort.)

What I really want is that viki treats their volunteers better and works with them/us on issues the volunteer community pretty much unanimously agrees on. That shows don’t come presubbed or presegged when the community gives a clear and resounding No on that.

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