What if a moderator is bad at translating?

all the dramas I like has this person as the language moderator (rather obscure/unpopular language I guess) and tbh their translated sentences sound very unnatural, probably not google translate but kinda robotic. So this person is a moderator and won’t let others join, and nobody higher up can verify if they’re doing a good job or not… what can you guys do in cases like that? I mean if it were me I wouldn’t want to rock the boat by telling on them as a new person. It’s just volunteering after all.

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Maybe just inform it to the Channel Manager. If you’ve already done that, then I don’t know, message the Help Center to tell them about the Moderator, I guess.:confused:

Let the channel manager know. The CM should talk to the moderator about it.

Moderators are supposed to be welcoming to any new subbers and open to hearing any mistakes they’ve made. If they’re not doing that, I personally don’t think they should be on VIKI. Moderators are role models to anyone “under” them, so they should be like a teacher willing to help and give to the students.

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I agree that contacting the CM is the most appropriate thing to do. As CMs, we rely on the communication from team and community members to know if there is an issue with the channel. We appreciate the feedback. :slight_smile:

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I agree with what others above me said. Additionally…

If the CM wants a confirmation that the sub quality isn’t good enough, I suggest you contact a moderator of your language, who you know translates well and ask them for a second opinion, which you can then send to the CM.

Did you try to contact that person directly and offer some feedback?
If they accept it, all is fine. If not, contact the CM, Viki or a chief moderator.

(By the way, why did you say “I guess”? )

I’m currently facing as somewhat similar problem.
One user who used to working on a project with me, used to makes deliberate spelling mistakes since apparently in his/her region people type words on the internet like this. That user swaps letters, which changes the whole meaning of the word or make it extra hard to read and understand. All of the editors in that project complaint because of that user. I told that user this is an official translation, not an internet lingo. But, that user said that his/her keyboard was broken and said he/she will try to fix it.
However, looking at his/her subs now, that user still does the same mistakes and he/she is a QC and a language moderator for some new shows! Even now, almost no one works with that user, since they can’t seem to agree with him/her on the subs.
I told Viki staff recently about it, hope they talked to him/her. But I doubt that user would changed since many other users informed him/her about the spelling mistakes and that did nothing.

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I had a case like that, a person translating into Greek. Nobody understands Greek but Greeks, so of course the CMs couldn’t control the quality of her work. I did write to all the CMs and I took the utmost care to explain, with examples, why and how it was wrong (in a way that could be understood by a person who doesn’t know the language). I also included a list of 5-6 other Greek respected vikians to whom the CM could write in order to check if they agree with my assessment. I didn’t expect the CMs to trust my opinion alone - some of them knew me, but most of them had probably never heard of me. Because there is always the chance that someone can write such a complaint message because of personal grudges or malicious reasons, or simply because you want to take the job yourself.
Now if your language is really really rare, and you don’t know any other person you can design, then of course it’s difficult.

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I wish we have a rating system for volunteers, in which moderators and CMs can rate translators.

Maybe update this: http://subber.viki.com/volunteer_finder
And only allow active volunteers to show up.

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this would make things so much easier with extensive written feedback

@cherrypie94 I support this idea. It’s really hard to find subbers as moderator, if I have to check every single person to see, how is active (for eg. now I checked them, and on the first page only one was active lately). A rating system on volunteers’ profile would also help and not only the moderator of that certain language, but the CMs too, then they wouldn’t add incompetent volunteers as moderators and they shouldn’t have to ask other members about the performance quality of the moderator applicants.

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