Today I reported a user straight to Viki again because the user was copy pasting from Google Translate. Before I added that person to the team as a subber I made clear that doing this is against the rules but still this person did it, most likely thinking she wouldn’t get caught. And this was not a completely unknown language. But lately I get requests for languages I never heard of before, a little while someone wanted to be a subber for “Shindi” and that seems a ‘language’ spoken in the Pakistani region of Sindh but is not recognized as an official language.
This all had me thinking like maybe it’s time for Viki to limit the options because how high are the chances that a genuine subber from the Shindh region comes on Viki, decides to do all the work on their own and then who will watch it in that language?!
Now to keep it close to home for me. my native language is Dutch but I have various options to pick from. Dutch: We sub in that obviously. Limburgian: Is a dialect used by people from .Dutch province Limburg (and maybe the Belgian as well). People from Limburg usually use Dutch to sub too. Frysk: Which is a language on it’s own used in the Dutch province Friesland. As the Netherlands is so tiny I wonder if any Dutchie from Friesland ever picked that option to sub into and just going for Dutch we can all speak and understand. Flemish: I can’t find it listed anymore but it used to be an option. Flemish (Vlaams) is spoken in Vlaanderen, Belgium. But most people from Belgium either pick Dutch or French (or both).
The Netherlands is a rather small country and Belgium isn’t big big either and still we have multiple options. I don’t think The Netherlands is the only country that has multiple options listed. And from those options which are actually used by genuine subbers who really sub in that language and not use it to abuse the system? It happened quite a lot that work from other subbers is just copy pasted in a rather unknown language because someone wants to be a QC fast or maintain that status.
Yes it’s great Viki is all about building bridges and get rid of language barriers but I think that as the community is growing, as the volunteers are growing, as the abuse of the system is growing… I think it’s time for Viki to really look into the language options they offer and how much of those are used by people in the correct way.
So which languages should be removed in your opinion and why?
A few days ago I saw a “language” in the list I had never even heard of: Lolspeak
Obviously, Lolspeak is not a language that “builds bridges”, since it’s just English with a lot a spelling errors.
In general, though, I would say keep all genuine languages. And I don’t necessarily mean only “official” languages, but languages that could be someone’s mothertongue. I wouldn’t like to exclude anyone, just because their language is “not important enough”.
I do get your problem, though. It can be hard to check the sincerity of volunteers of less known languages. But if all CM’s who didn’t speak Dutch hadn’t allowed me to be in their team, I would have had a lot less subs than I do now.
You might consider keeping the “suspected” languages away from your team or maybe find some way to check them. But totally removing them as an option doesn’t seem right to me.
Btw, I’m pretty sure Frisian users would love Frisian subs.
Lolspeak was used (or is still used?) during segment training sometimes. Ohh and frysk can stay because that’s a whole new language. I more talking about the dialects like Limburgian.
It was used for training to let the trainee know what was wrong with the segment. Like then you would have “0.01 late” “add cut here”, “extend” etc. But it was used when there where not really training channels yet. Now there are channels that are used for training.
did you also put her out of the team (s) she was on so she can’t do more damage on the show where she did that? would be a shame if she can do even more damage with subs before she is stopt by viki.
and I also agree that the languages should be limited to languages known from each country,
so as you say, the languages that you can check, and the languages that are not as well known, or not known at all, be careful because as you say, it can be hard to find subbers in a language that hardly anyone speaks here on viki and therefore you can not really check whether those subs that they put in are correct or not.
In my opinion, they should remove all language that are dialects. They also need to remove language that have no viewers (like that Lol I bet it has no viewers so dramas need no subs in that language anyway).
I noticed this happens a lot here (when I was a moderator it happened to me a few times) some people say they know a certain language, and if we don’t have other people that can confirm for us that the subtitles are (legit) correct, who knows what garbage they are adding as subtitles in the drama/movies/shows/documentaries?
Yes, we can use a translator but we won’t know if they are using the correct grammar in that specific language, too. We will not be able to spot other stuff that are important when writing subtitles in a drama.
I had an experience with a subber who said she knew this language, requested to be added as a subber, and did the subtitles in the documentary. I was a moderator (while back), at that time and I only know Eng/Span, but another viewer who knew the language mentioned in a comment that the subtitles in the drama in that language were very wrong.
I was able to confirm that the viewer was right because the sub my subber wrote, made very little sense when I used the translator; but when the viewer gave me her --’‘modified version of the sentence’’ to check the subtitle as of, her sentence made 100% sense when I checked with the translator. I ended up using her as a subber, and to this day I see her working in many other dramas. Btw, I did reported the other subber, who now hates me. But oddly enough I still see her around here asking to be a subber in dramas with no luck. She’s around Want to Subtitle. Everyone beware…
What we also could do (perhaps), would be (temporarily) removing the perks for the unknown, rare languages. That way the sub collectors would stay away since they’d get no bonus, yet genuine subbers would still get a chance.
People move, immigrate, want to speak the language of their ancestors.
Commercial argument to break the language barriers. Adding instead of reducing possibilities. Including people from all over the world, minorities included instead of excluding them. That is appealing.
for languages that share similarities: for me, I ask myself if I see it useful and if ever I do, no copy paste, completing the subbing and editing.
penalizing both honest and dishonest people at the same time because of bad exp in a rare language, bad segmenting, bad subtitling…
Yeah, it could reduce abusing activity in subbing, but the risk will always be here on Viki. Volunteering, no entry test and recruiters can’t know very well the 10 most popular languages on Viki.
Abusers are not enough a reason to exclude minorities or exclude languages where we met abusers in my mind.
that is filled or no, it doesn’t matter. What matters is for recruiters to give this possibility and for them to have this possibility.
lolspeak: would keep it for test languages, segment fixing or erase it to rename it =>
Viki could create more choice of languages for academies. Same use, different names.
for languages that are dead since a millenium, the evolution of languages created new words that would be either difficult to translate or impossible (for ex: technical things like medical, legal, technology that didn’t exist yet at the period of the language). If it’s impossible, then maybe rename them into languages for academies. That would be useful for training.
or Viki creates more choice for languages academies and in the segment timer, making 2 sets of languages appear for segment fixing (English + segment fixing with the possibility to erase segment fixing subs later and making the video appears bigger to bear 2 sets of subs. It’s a dream, I know LOL)
If we use lolspeak for practising, I think we should rename it. “Practice Corner” or something like that. Otherwise someday, some CM might get this message:
ID LIEK 2 BE TEH LOLSPEAK MODERATOR 4 UR DRAMA.
But I agree with you that we shouldn’t exclude anyone. And apart from communication, languages also have some sentimental value, at least for some of us.
So, we’d better find some other way to reduce abuse.
Good.
may i know if i know her and maybe work with her on a show that you are the CM of? because I’m just afraid that it is someone I know and that there will soon be holes in the subs of episodes that are finished and may have to put them back in later.
that would be such a shame.
especially because we have almost completely translated that show into Dutch.
Don’t realy have to know the NAME, just want to know IF i know her.
Thank god!!!
would really be such a shame if it was as there are only two episodes left to be translated to dutch from that whole show that i was talking about.
re: Lolspeak. During browsing various channels I actually found someone whom viki appointed as a channel manager for an old drama for which he has done zero contributions. He had become a QC in contributing lolspeak subs. I complained to viki staff but nothing was done. Lolspeak is not a language viki used to also have an artificial language on the list. I sent them an article about the language which had about 100 English words and nothing more. A subber claimed to be subbing in the language but was copying completely the English subs. Thankfully the language was removed.
