Chasing perfection = missing subtitles

[kbuk]

Hello,

I had a talk with admin of PL language some weeks ago. I uploaded quite a nice subtitles for rather not top-box-office movie (Blackberry) and it was removed by admin. I asked why and turned out, in Admin's opinion subtitles shoud be high-poetry level close to perfection or... none.

Maybe there are not-so-perfect subtitles but good enough to watch and have fun with movie which are removed because of somebody high ego, and OS is loosing it's traffic. Please consider. At the end of a day there are "ratings" on OS so maybe community should do theirs job instead of one linguistic tyrant

BTW: take a look on box-office movie Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning. There are TWO polish subtitles which are both crap while on napiprojekt.pl 22 versions of subtitles. I just checked first and had a lot o fun with movie - they are good! Good ENOUGH.

[SmallBrother]

I cannot find any of the communication between you, but according to admin Altair87, the subs were removed because "machine translation, maybe slightly corrected" (see https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtit ... ckberry-pl ).

I am Dutch and my knowledge of the Polish language is close to zilch, so I can't tell anything about this, but if the subs ARE actually a machine translation, it is right to remove them, for two reasons:
1. Maybe for you they are good enough, but for many downloaders it is not. As you suggest, any subtitle 'better than nothing' may lead to more traffic, but the wrong kind of traffic: downloaders are frustrated and disappointed.
2. Machine translations are very easy to make, within a few minutes max. So they will always be the first. And typically, the first upload gets the most downloads. Any poor subtitles existing will stop uploaders/rippers/translators from uploading something decent, because they will do their (usually much more time consuming) work for only a handful left-over downloaders. Most will just not bother anymore.

In addition to point 2, since yesterday there are two (apparently decent) subtitles available, see https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/search ... ie-1239971 . It is very likely that those subs would NOT have been uploaded if the machine translation was not removed.

As I said, I cannot tell anything about the quality of the subs linguistically, but there is also a technical part. I compared your subtitles to the ones of OceanOfLight and the differences are quite significant:
- Dialogs on one line (not good) vs. dialogs split over two lines (as it should be).
- Single line length up to 71 characters (almost double of what is acceptable) vs. line length of 42 characters (good).
- Maximum CPS-ratio of 53 (simply unreadable for a human being) vs. a maximum of 21 CPS (not perfect, but very okay).
- Gaps of 0 ms (which is actually a syntax error) vs. minimum gaps of 40 ms (still a bit small, but acceptable).

I think in this case Altair87 did the right thing...

[kbuk]

Those subtitles were BASED on machine translation. That is true. But then corrected to fit proper sentence order and, the most important thing in polish language, gender variations. Of course lots repeatings, words which machine translated out of context etc. It took me couple of hours to make.
I had fun watching this. Couple of my friends had no problem with my subtitles, and enjoyed the movie. Nobody complained.

That's my point: if some total crap is uploaded, yes: let's remove it. But if something could be good enough maybe people should judge and not just one man?

About technical things: yes I agree it could be better, and maybe if my subtitles were available, somebody would take it and correct those little things? Little note about CPS: this movie has it's speed, and I decided to keep more details, instead of keeping the rules, which sometimes make subtitles annoyingly out of sync.

And a word more about what would happen is they would not be removed.
"No man of god" - 2021
"Silent night" - 2021
"How to blow up a pipeline" - 2022
"Space oddity" - 2022
"The falling" - 2014
Where are subtitles for those? Maybe somebody made it already, maybe even me, but Admin removed them because they were not perfect enough. Good, but not perfect.

I really don't care that much, but I admire projects like OS, and just making a notification call: maybe something could be improved in OS?

[0pener]

Witam

kbuk, can I chime in? I hope you don't mind...

I had my own share of bloody fights with this horratious gang of self-loving and tyrannical and autocratic mods here. No, really, they worst scum in subtitle land!

However, they are also the best! No kidding, every now and then a new liberty loving revolutionary like you and me shows up here to change the world for the better, only to be stopped by SmallBrother, scooby007, oss and others. But they mean well and it's them organizing people like us (and our subs and "for all mankind"!) and thus keep providing good subtitles. Also, every single one of them kept their "nice" even if I was somewhat, uhm, not so perfect. Also#2, their ship, their rules (and I don't know any better ship than OS).

I don't know if that means anything to you but I just wanted you to know that it's not you vs them (that's how I felt at first, too), you are part of this!

Welcome home and take care, bro! <3

PS: Check my first posts, you might laugh at them

PSPS: And certainly thanks to Poland for this most splendid trilogy!
https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/search ... ovie-31497

[Dannni]

I agree with you; maybe there's room for subtitles that may not be perfect but are still good enough to enhance the movie-watching experience. Community ratings should definitely matter more in these cases. And about Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, it's surprising that there are only two Polish subtitles when there are 22 on napiprojekt.pl.