I am seriously considering dropping my vikipass! I enjoy Chinese dramas and Taiwanese drama and Japanese dramas(yes I know i’m probably the only guy that doesn’t watch a lot of Korean dramas) but it’s getting frustrating that I have to wait so long for subtitling. I understand that subtitlers are volunteers but when you pay for a service you have certain expectations. I knew that the service allows adfree service but I don’t pay for the adfree aspect. I pay to get access to shows I can’t find anywhere else or I get it faster here .HOWEVER , if their excuse is that the main reason you pay is to get rid of ads then it’s not worth the money. I will just deal with the commercial and get service for free. I have been cut off at the knees too many times where I start watching a drama then without warning the subtitles trickle out and I have to wait weeks to get an episode or worse yet they stop all together. examples are a Japanese drama I want to watch that is quite long but for whatever reason they just stopped short and never subbed the last 2 episodes…WHY??? and I am currently watching april star and was getting an episode about every 5 to 7 days then suddenly BAM! the subbing just stop at 20% for the last week and hasn’t moved.and finally why does no one ever sub variety and reality shows? if you are not going to sub shows why even make them available it just upsets me seeing all these shows I cant watch. I have another subscription with another service (I won’t say who but i’m sure most of you know) and the amount is the same but I get adfree AND I get a reliable schedule of the episodes. I want to keep this service but I get frustrated that I pay for a service that doesn’t deliver. it’s like paying for a daily newspaper but you only get a paper every other day and then they tell you the delivery boy is a volunteer.
If for you the guarantee that there will be English subtitles for any show available on the site is a priority, then indeed you’ll be better off sticking to other websites.
Because here it is a service by volunteers for all audiences (not only vikipass holders), therefore viki cannot control it or guarantee it in any way.
It’s not an excuse. It’s the way it works. Make this very clear in your head. You don’t pay for the subtitles. (I hope saying it once is enough, because from my experience it is a difficult truth for some people to stomach).
Vikipass offers
- ad free
- HD
- exclusive content.
Period. Nothing to do with subtitles.
Not everybody in the world is an English speaker. Maybe you and I depend on subtitles, but there are lots and lots of viki users who understand Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese etc.
Let’s try to open our view yet a little more: there are lots and lots and lots of people here who don’t really understand English, so English subtitles are useless to them if there weren’t for the teams who also translate into Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Tagalog, Indonesian,Italian, Turkish, Greek, Russian etc etc… Viki is special that way.
And don’t forget that, for people who live in Europe, DF for example is out of the question, because it never gets licenses for European countries, so even if we wanted to subscribe we couldn’t view anything there.
The important thing for each one of us is to find a service that caters best to our individual needs. If one site does not correspond to our needs, then luckily there are so many others to choose from.
However, I find that there’s no point in whining, be irritated or feel entitled because we don’t like the way a site works, since that way is very good for other people, and since everybody’s free to not choose it.
Do you usually sign contracts without reading the context?
And always click on the button to accept terms of conditions?
If so, you should break of that habit for your own good. Why agree to a contract, when the conditions don’t meet your criteria? And then argue about it. This discussion post is something you should write as an email to your contract partner. [quote=“dale_seymour196220, post:1, topic:15774”]
I will just deal with the commercial and get service for free.
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Do it and be happy!
I would like to invite you to participate like a trainee into the work of all the volunteers at Viki to get to know HOW MUCH work there is behind. I will tell you anyway:
Episode is uploaded
Episode needs to be segmented (this means divided into many, many small parts) so subtitles can be added; they need to be reasonable long as the segmenters need to have in mind that some languages need much more words for one sentence than in another language. THIS is indeed kinda quite professional work and is done by few people. Why only few? Because in the past people did it and did it very worse so subtitles were flickering and this way annoying to the watcher. So many teams have decided that it might be more clever to choose the people who will be allowed to segment to offer you very good quality of subtitles.
Segments are checked if reasonable.
After segments are done, they add subtitles very often ONLY BY LISTENING! And now imagine what you should do if people murmur too much.
Now the English translation is checked.
After all this is done, the teams of the other languages are able to even start!
Looks quite complicated, doesn’t it? Yes, it does! It is to keep the good quality up. Nevertheless all people are able to see the subtitles before they are checked as those were immediatly saved for public.
Join once a team and experience the joy of volunteering for a project which is done by people who are not professionals or even have learned to be a translator or segmenter but those who just do it by heart so people who are not able to speak chinese, korean, japanese, english… will be able to watch dramas they might never be able to watch even in their own language.
If you do not want to pay for it, then contribute to the project to get the same access; but this should not be the intention behind. Many many volunteers do not even use the benefits of the Viki Pass because they feel more joy in offering YOU as the enjoyer subtitles in the own language.
Volunteers do not get paid materially but they get paid. How? Because people say thank you for the work, for the happiness they are able to spread throughout the community.
Greetings,
a Volunteer
in that case I will just cancel my service because there is no exclusive content that I watch and like I said getting adfree isn’t worth the money. after all dramafever only charges me the same 5 dollars and yet they pay their subtitlers. makes me wonder where the money they get from me and others goes to if it doesn’t pay for subtitlers at least with dramafever I know that my money goes to the subtitlers.
I understand that you needed to share, but:
- Details of an agreement are not “excuses” when we don’t like the outcome.
- What makes Viki special is that it doesn’t pretend English speakers in the USA are the only audience.
- Volunteering isn’t for everyone, and I understand if you want to remain a viewer, in the end that’s why we volunteer, for the viewers.
But maybe, just maybe, since this a forum of Viki users (and mostly volunteers, I may add), it’s a bit insensitive to direct to us your wrath against Viki.
I put this in discussion so that an actual discussion can be raised as to exactly where their money goes when they become a vikipass member. I see many on discussion and ratings who wonder the same as me .
I hope you’re not serious. Viki has license costs and employees and an online platform and a hundred other things that a company needs to keep running. You do realize all these cost money. But I wouldn’t care if they used their extra money to buy fancy hats for their cats, if they deliver what is described on our agreement.
Also, based on what my team members say, whose opinion I 100% trust in this case, DF subtitles are of lower quality compared to ours. If you don’t mind that your paid product is not as good as your free product (the subs in Viki are free for everyone who can access a drama), well, that’s your preference.
Then you need to chose your words better. We all can read what is written, but what is ment between the lines, we can only guess.
The money probably goes to … Drumrolls … Viki.
You want to know what Viki does with the money? Paying for their staff, the servers, the rent, licenses, advertising, and more. It’s a company after all. I guess you are not reading a lot about internet options, that you use. You normally just use the services and if something goes wrong, then might be the point to check. Anyway you shall never write the name of the “other side” on this side.
I understand what you’re trying to say but factually you are incorrect. I admire anyone that takes their time and their love of dramas and tries to give back to the drama community however I also think that if you truly want to do a job all that I ask is that you finish the job. volunteer or not. and where you are incorrect is that places like dramafever have the same expenses that viki or any other streaming services has and yet they still manage to pay their workers and put out their product on time for the same price as viki. plus as an English teacher I can tell you that the subtitlers that I have watched for the most part are very good but their grammer and syntax can be horrible. so I believe your team members may be hard working their opinions on dramafever may be somewhat biased at best…it’s like getting a doctors opinion on a medicine that he makes himself and asks how good is the competitions medicine.
Um… no. You can’t make someone finish a project even at work, because life happens. It’s not a fact that someone has to see a project to completion, it would be nice and necessary, maybe, but not a fact.
DF is not available globally and doesn’t support 100+ languages and other things that Viki has, so it doesn’t have the same expenses. I won’t bore you with the technical stuff, but factually the costs are not comparable.
Also, factually, you can’t judge the accuracy of subtitles unless you know the source language. So, having an opinion about whether DF actually translates what is being said on screen without knowing the original language is like mixing pharmacists with doctors. Or not?
sorry if I offended you but I was trying to be honest and civil. but if you truly need to know I can easily inform you. but keep in mind I still feel that viki is a commendable service and I was only asking for basically one thing and that was timely episodes and that shows once started would be completed. now then regarding completion you are right that no one NEEDS to complete what they start but in most workplaces it IS expected. and secondly for your factual information DF is a subsidiary of time warner (a multibillion dollar company) which i’m sure has many more expenses than viki in regards to being global DF has licensing deals with all three major Korean TV networks: Seoul Broadcasting System, Korean Broadcasting System, and Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation. It is the first website to work with all three South Korean content providers legally and its partners represent over 60 of the top TV networks and production companies from China, Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, Argentina and Spain as well as Artear, CCTV, Imagina, rtve, Sanlih E-Television, Shanghai Media Group and Telefe among others.and since my foreign language skills are lacking my English skills are not. and I stand by my comment that the English translation (the actual English words on the screen) even if they are more accurate they are grammatically incorrect. example would be if the actor is saying “i will love you forever” the subtitle should not read “me loves you for that long” and yes I have seen grammer like that. but again I was only trying to create a dialogue for constructive criticism. I didn’t realize you would take it personally.
I guess an English teacher who has to teach grammer doesn’t know that a subsidiary doesn’t cover, incur or share the costs of the whole group it might belong to. Since it’s my business, I factually know. Also, global partners and global distribution are two different things. And I have yet to see another streaming site offer the option of 100+ languages, which you conveniently choose to constantly ignore. There is a whole platform supporting all these languages, but it’s technical stuff, so I’ll leave it out.
If you don’t mind inaccuracy, then why do you need the subs, anyway? If they shout, probably harsh words are spoken. If she stormed off, he probably said something wrong. If they kissed, he probably said he loves her.
Kind reminder, this is not a workplace for us. If you have a business inquiry, you should contact Viki directly, not offend and belittle the volunteers here.
You are wrong, how big is that market, US and maybe the other American states?
viki buys licenses in other regions too. In Europe were you can’t watch that other streaming side legally.
And you want to pay translators, for all the other languages too?
If dramas are unfinished, no one is keeping you from making a post here and ask about help.
You know how it works. You have your opinion. You don’t really want a discussion, you just want to voice your sentiment.
Are you here only to advertise the other side, if you go on like this you should read the viki guidlines first.
I don’t care about the work of others, I just care for the initial thought that created viki.
As a pre 2007 user I can say viki came first. It was the first to ever buy licenses so our fan made subtitles would not disappear in 12 hours or sooner!!!
It was revolutionary.
By the way do you even read the sheer amount of material to educate the viewers? If you want the best subtitles you will get please wait as long as possible. The subtitles are edited. Just because there is a draft doesn’t mean it is ready.
If you want Americanese grammar with many unsubtitled lines of dialogue (paragraphs I recall) do stick with dramafever, which is exclusively available in North America.
Please do not ever think to wish things like accurate translations of the Italian (the hard subtitle order was wrong), accurate Thai (again timing was off), German or Latin.
We translate with a team that is truly global. I am not certain you watched a finished product.
Dear dale_seymour196220,
I am a volunteer for doing Chinese dramas. There are a lots of reasons why a drama may not complete totally. Mainly, as volunteer, it is hard sometime for people to get time to it everyday. We are encourage by Channel Manger (who are mostly volunteers too) to drop a few line each day if possible. In my own experience, I do take times to complete a drama. At times, I am able to finish at least two episodes a week. But then, something in life came up and I had to stop for a few weeks. Sorry to say that, since this isn’t a pay job, the priority is low for me.
Of course, there are also volunteers who tried their best as the foreign language isn’t their first language. Even though I may be fluent at Chinese. There are many “type” of Chinese slang. Each region of China use words a little different from others region. Similar to English, there is modern English (I, my, me, you) as well as Shakespeare/King James English (thou, thee, etc).
Also, China is a country with rich history. Thus, there are a lots of difficult terms used. It takes a lots of time for us to research. Since not all dramas can come with hardsub, it can be frustrating if one can’t figure out the words the actors are saying and then, the volunteers have to give up.
I totally understand your frustration in purchasing a service that not totally meet with your expectation. May I suggest that you contact Viki for this matter. As far as I know, Viki does hire (or at least they advertise for) Chinese translator.
In weeks to come, there will be less dramas to watch on Viki as they will be removing all the Fan Channel. Perhaps, you may want to contact Viki and ask if their hired staffs/translators can help speed up the translation.
As a paid customer, I believe your voice of concern will weight more when contacting Viki directly.
Alternately, you can watch (if you haven’t) the following Chinese dramas which are almost 100% translated to English. Can’t say that the acting or plot suit your taste. But at least something to watch…
Ip Man
Naughty Princess
The Legend of the Monster
Revive
Code Thirteen