The Bully War: Tales of Violence
Winter is here! Yes, my favourite season of the year just rolled in with in my case rain and… rain. I sadly celebrated my birthday along with Jin and other beautiful people who were born on 4thof December. Yeah, the day also reminded me how old I'm getting and how I should finally grow up and stop sleeping with plushy, like hell it will happen anytime soon!
Anyway, after the huge success of the first article, “Translators’ lifestyle explained by memes’’ I finally decided to write part 2! It’s not that I was lazy or something, but life was pretty harsh – exams, clinical, life etc. I also wanted to provide you with a good content and not some shabby thing, “just because the first part was popular’’.
So buckle up and let’s jump into part II of “Translators’ lifestyle explained by memes”!
1. Wi-Fi and other devilish charms
Okay, so unless you are living in S. Korea (YW: or Romania), you probably have an average Internet speed, which sometimes acts up. Can it ruin your day? Hell yeah, when you finally come back home after a long day at work/school and want to finally cuddle up under a blanket and have some k-drama marathon and the videos start to buffer. Oh, we all know the circle which just turns and turns and turns until we finally give up and decide to download the episode so we can avoid the annoying buffering. Of course, the download might take even longer than the actual runtime of one single episode.
But all this is actually okay compared to us subbers, who kinda really have to depend on the Internet! For example, when I subbed for Viki, the subbing programme is all run online so without the Internet, you can bid bye-bye to translating something and thus making millions of people at home angry and cursing us under their breath with, “why are the subs so late today?!” And this applies to all subbers because even though you use PC programme which is NOT depended on the Internet, you still have to download the RAW episodes and to top it all if you translate from English to another language, you need to download the English subtitles first. And how can it be done without the Internet? You can only pray the Internet starts working again, or you can travel a few kilometers to the next city, so you can download all the material you need from your friends PC! What a struggle….
Has this happened to me? Yeah, recently our village had some breakdown so they were fixing the Internet for almost two weeks. I suffered a lot and I give applause to all my followers who just left kind wishes on my page instead of asking when is the next episode coming.
2. The struggle with hardsubs
So, this might take a little bit longer to explain, but I try to explain the term hardsub and softsub as simply as I can. Softsubs are subtitles which are not glued into the video, while hardsubs are glued to the video (like a watermark) and cannot be erased, or taken out. Most dramas have softubs and they can be found on Subscene. That’s the KEY to translating from English to other languages. You download the .srt or .ass file (yes, for real the name of the file is .ass) and then replace the English text with the given language you want to translate to. Hardsubs cannot be taken out of the video so you are done! Yeah, as I said most of the dramas all have softsubs, but when you want to translate less popular dramas, then you often encounter hardsubs and the author often does not want to speak with you, to provide you the softsub (you need to have the softsub to make hardsubs). Thus, you have three options:
1st : Get a hacker and somehow extract the subtitles from the hardsub
2nd : Give up on the project and move on
3rd : MAKE the subtitles which means timing the dialogues which can take many hours
From my experience, I encounter subbers who simply give up on the projects because timing is really hard and precise work.
Again, do I have experience with such a thing? Yes, I really wanted to translate Together With Me the series, but only found the hardsubbed videos and no softsubs, so anyone, if you have softsub feel free to share!
3. Rivalry
With number three I can go on and on and trust me, it has no end! Viewers probably have no idea about this, but even in translators life there is rivalry and I must say, sometimes it gets steamy! Not in a sexy way, but more in the, “I will pull out your hair, bitsh” way. You can say that the biggest rivalry is among the licensed companies which actually own the copyrights of the said dramas. Which means Viki, Dramafever, Viu, Kocowa etc. But the most notorious rivalry out of the legal companies goes to Viki and deceased Dramafever. Their fights over copyrights went on and on for years and maybe viewers didn’t notice this as much as we, subbers did. In viewers perspective, you take it like you got multiple options on where to watch the drama, which subs suits your taste better and of course, which site has the episode uploaded the fastest! The last one is the most popular “marketing” trick out of all. The winner is the one, who has the episode first up and subbed in a span of a few hours. It’s all about the time and eventually money. This, of course, can blind some companies like Viki, (yes, I am bashing my old workplace) and air the episode fast and give the viewers the episode fast too but... at what cost? Viki changed in these years so much, and not in term of subscription and more paid items. It changed in the quality of subtitles they provide, but that’s for another story…
You think this doesn’t happen with solo subbers? You are so wrong! If you go on Subscene and scroll through the subs you can see that for example What’s wrong with secretary Kim is translated into Farsi by 9 TRANSLATORS! That’s a ridiculous number, don’t you think so? This opinion is not shared by all translators so don’t take my upcoming words, as words from the Lord. In my opinion, if the subtitles are good, then why should I make a new one? I wouldn’t do that and instead focus on other projects which are in need of translation, so why should I waste my precious time on something that someone else is working on? It doesn’t make sense to me, but like I said it’s my personal opinion. If you ARE a subber who translates works that someone else already did, then I applause you because I got no time or patience for that.
Also, for solo subbers, the rivalry is the same pattern as for the official translating sites. The one who translates and uploads the fastest takes the fame. It’s sad, but true…
4. Plagiarism?
This is a very sensitive topic, and I think many of you can relate to number 4. This topic, mostly touches those, who translate from the spoken language in said Asian drama into English, which for me is the hardest translation out of all types of translating. Not once I encountered how many sites publish other peoples hard work without a single credit or mentioning. Is it fair? No, not even a bit. I know a lot of viewers are even happy that the subtitles are stolen because let’s face the truth, Dramafever and Viki are very restricted. Only a few countries get to see the episode directly from the streaming sites, which leads to some drama services to steal the subtitles in order to air the show for people, who do not live in the countries which Viki or others are licensed to. For some it’s a good deed, but how must the translators feel, when the credits on some unknown site say, “Subtitles translated by drama****” instead of the true translator's name? Yeah, if the subs are stolen from legal companies who hold the copyrights, then they CAN sue the said fake sites, but what about solo subbers like me and others? We kinda steal, but not at the same time? We don’t publish the English subtitles, but instead re-translate them into a new language, but does this mean that I hold the copyright for my work? I am not a lawyer at all so I am not sure about this one, but I don’t think so…
If anyone can answer this question, then please drop your answer in the comments!
5. Free time? Hell, no!
I know, that lot of people think that translators are always on track with every single airing drama, which I’m sorry to tell you – is NOT the truth! We can barely manage our daily lives & translation projects so where can we find the time to watch everything that came out? In my case, I got so much studying to do off school that I am happy that I can manage my time to translate the projects. You need to keep in mind that day has really 24 hours and not 30 or something… We eat, poop and go to work/school and translating is for many of us just a hobby which we LOVE to do, but if we translate it consumes a lot of time meaning less time for watching. That’s why some translators take a break – usually in winter, so they can focus on their studies or slack and watch tons of dramas. But don’t worry, after a good rest, we always come back with a blast!
6. Wait, what are they saying?
I hereby say that I am not that dumb, on how I look like, okay? I can’t be the only translator who gets lost in the complex sentences MOSTLY which are in Chinese wuxia TV series. You know, for me the Chinese language is the most complex language out of all languages! It’s old, it has deep roots and not only has hard grammar, but a ton of words which do NOT exist in other languages! Now, how am I suppose to translate something, which has no word in my language? Yeah, you are right! I replace it, and I’m sure I am not the only one who has sinned with this one. Not long ago, there was an amazing article called, “A horrible attempt to translated Chinese lyrics”. If you are not familiar with the article then please go read it and LOOK at the Chinese translations because they are insane. I think the Chinese language is mostly built on allegory, which is the reason why everything is hard.
Once again, I applaud to all subbers who manage to translate the Chinese masterpieces.
Merry Christmas to all of you! Thanks to all the people who read part II till the end and showed support for part I, which you can read here - Translators' Lifestyle Explained By Memes
I am really happy for the love you all showed for part I, and trust me, your kind words were also spread outside of the MDL. I hope I did justice to part II, which was written this time on a bit serious note, but who said that our lives are all pretty and funny? If you have more encouraging words for subbers then please drop them below, because I know that many translators are just silent readers, but trust me, they love each word of support.
See you in part III, anyone?
