Well, I’m a Chinese to English subber and I used to do period drama marathons when I was younger (and period dramas were better, at least in my opinion) so I sometimes find historicals easier to sub. I think I find modern slang words harder to sub, because they have so many hidden insinuations that really need a full sentence/paragraph to fully translate.
I think the issue with that current project of mine is that it’s a show that’s currently on-air, with a couple thousand followers. But for some reason, I seem to be the main Chinese-English subber. Like a couple of others pop in and sub a couple of lines once in a while, but if I don’t sub, then the progress is left more or less stagnant. And some of those viewers are horribly impatient. And I sometimes feel like why the hell am I being scolded for just volunteering to sub? And feel awfully tempted to just jump ship. I can always sub for other shows with more polite viewers.
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personal request:
Can you sub up Bubujingxin? It’s like 1% or 2% incomplete here and there.
And… we have some segs in parts of Flower in Prison that… I would love if a mandarin subber looked at because it’s in mandarin.
We also… have traditional chinese signs and my skills aren’t so up to par to read anything besides simple characters. i know less than 20.
==> new way to volunteer on viki (mandarin consultant).
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Haha. Sure. Don’t mind acting as a chinese consultang ^^
I just looked up Bu Bu Jing Xin (Scarlet Heart right)? Aren’t all the episodes subbed? Although I personally don’t recommend watching it. I read the novel. It was HORRIBLY tragic. The last half or so needs a full box of tissue.
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yep.
oh you never watched it? i thought it was very like must watch thing 90s babies watched (like everyone). then NVM. unless you want to.
I found a translated version by some very nice Taiwanese-western-country person.
Can I pm you the segments?
For modern words:
either we brain wash them and say something like:
oppa (older brother, but really a term of affection/title of respect given to older males) and sub it out continually like so.
or we flat out just do the western equivalent older brother and call it a day.
Sure. Just pm me.
No, I didn’t watch the show. I read the novel, and decided that it was way too tragic, and that I really should be environmentally friendly (save tissues and save tears) 
The translated version of the novel? Or the drama?
I think I do the same for Ge Ge and Jie Jie and all the other gazillion name prefixes/suffixes. Depends how often I think it’s going to appear in the drama. If it appears often, I’ll just write the author’s note and stop bothering about translating it.
But I can’t quite do that for all the slang words. Because there’s A LOT of slang words out there now. Especially with the explosion of the internet in China. And sometimes they’re very region specific, I even need to Baidu (the Chinese version of google) them cause I’ve never heard of some of them. And sometimes even if you want to add an author’s note to it, the author’s note will have to be a paragraph long in order to fully explain the word. Sometimes I just give up completely, especially for swear words and just translate any English swear word that might be appropriate for that context.
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ok I’ll go through the eps and find all the segs.
I’ll pm you and you go through when you’re free ^-^
We have “naver” for that reason.
i’m not sure how well the korean-to-other languages work but as a Korean dictionary it’s great. (dic.naver.com)
I recently found another one, but I need to test drive it.
The one that’s been driving us crazy is you foam like you have rabies (ji-ral) and i curse typhoid fever on you (yeom-byeong). The other ones are euphemisms for procreation so… we got our English equivalents.
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Sure ^^ Since I’m taking a break from that project now. Those rude people can slowly wait
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Haha! I like the way they curse! Well, there’s some Chinese ones which are literally translated into “Your grandfather!” or “His mother!” or “Your (insert family member)” things like that. Which when literally translated doesn’t mean anything? And is totally random. But it’s supposed to be rude in Chinese, because it’s kind of like you’re cursing that person’s family, but it doesn’t have to be that you actually have a sister when someone scolds “Your sister” at you? And it’s really ridiculous to translate. Because you can’t really substitute it. Because people sometimes follow-up that sentence with… “But I don’t have a sister.” or “My grandfather’s dead.” So you just have to write that “Your sister” (btw, this is vulgar).
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That’s so interesting! thanks for sharing!
Those rude comments definitiely discouraged me from subbing. I’m not talking about some new users who are not familiar with the Viki subbing process. I can simply explain the process to them. I’m talking about those who do know that we are volunteers but still make nasty comments and belittle us. Some of the comments are just so ridiculous and infuriating!
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I think it’s fun and I love being able to help other viewers understand shows that aren’t in their native language 
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Unfortunately, the only language I know fluently is English and I’ve only been learning Korean for about 3 years through self study ( and one beginner’s course)but I remember what it was like not being able to understand anything. It sucked and I wished people out there would sub the shows, but there just wasn’t anyone who could or would. This is like in the early 2000’s or so and the only way I could watch any drama is if I got the drama cd’s at a bookstore or something (but they were mostly $70+! Something I, as a 12 year old could not afford). So as much as I can, I want to be able to help people understand the shows or dramas they love, especially if they can’t watch it elsewhere.
Also, my listening Korean skills suck. But hearing what is being said in the segments and practicing my listening is a reason why I sub too.
Most definitely! But not because of people complaining it’s too slow, I know the team will get them up eventually. And I know we value quality subs, sometimes it just takes a long while to get there. Rather, I got discouraged because I didn’t know enough Korean. I can only understand English perfectly fine but especially in the beginning when I just started to sub Korean to English projects, I couldn’t even understand most of it not even full sentences, just simple words and I felt incompetent. I wondered if I should even be doing this.
“I wondered if I should even be doing this” I think anything is allowed with CM’s approval to be honest.
YES! i totally gave up trying to make korean subs for imperial doctress because I didn’t know any chinese grammar. I heard enough cognates to be able to look everything up, but yet… lack of knowledge makes for bad subs so I stopped. i did 1 part 
Yeah, I know. Sometimes I feel like retorting that I’m a VOLUNTEER. Highlight, re-highlight, capitalize, underline, blow the word up in their face. And probably put in a dictionary definition of the word too. Haha. Sometimes I think there should be a pop-up reminder before people write comments.
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Do teams accept you even if you’re not fluent in that drama’s language? Cause I’m learning Thai and was thinking of helping sub Thai lakorns to improve. But it seems that teams usually prefer subbers who are fluent in the drama’s language, so I’m not certain if they’ll accept someone who’s only semi-articulate in the language. And is it hard to find a segment to sub then?
I think it just depends on the language. I know that there are a lot of Korean-English projects out there but only 5-10% of the Korean-English subbers, maybe less who actually know Korean fluently that can sub a whole chunk of a video by themelves but they can only handle so much. And people learn different Korean vocabulary, grammar and phrases so since one person might know something that another person does not, I think the CM would allow us to subtitle anyway. As long as you only subtitle what you know. But then again, there are translation editors who can edit if you heard it wrong and subtitled it wrong. (Yay for team effort!) 
Finding segments to subtitle was hard in dramas at first cause other people would sub in what I knew at the time. But when people started becoming inactive I kind of got the opportunity to subtitle a lot of the basic sentences.
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