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Holoday is signing on to volunteer with the subtitle translation of Korean TV shows -often referred to as K-dramas- on the streaming platform Rakuten Viki.

“It’s my secret treat,” said Holaday, who has helped to subtitle 200 titles for Rakuten Viki, commonly just called Viki. Viki has both original and licensed content from Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan and subscribers around the globe. Its largest audience is from the US, 75% of which is non-Asian.

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It offers a tiered subscription, or limited content is available for free with ads. The translator program enlists volunteers from beginners to contributors designated as gold status based on the quality and quantity of their contributions. Holaday, who doesn’t speak Korean, is an editor of subtitles. She looks at portions of video that have already been translated to English, and checks the grammar, word placement and spelling. She even enrolled at the University of Hawaii to study Korean to become a better translator.īesides translators and editors, there are also “segmenters” who separate portions of video to be subtitled, so one person is not translating an entire episode.Īnother proud, qualified contributor is retired attorney Connie Meredith. “The grammatical structure is so different from English that it’s really, really difficult,” said Meredith, who has worked on more than 500 titles for Viki. She said translating a 10-minute segment can take about two hours. And it’s like doing a New York Times crossword puzzle for me, to solve the puzzle of language.” People say, ‘You’ve done that much for free?’ And I say, ‘Why not?’ I have nothing better to do with my time.

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“If you have hundreds of people contributing to the quality of subtitles, then it becomes much better than a single professional translator working on the topics that they are not really familiar with.” Makoto Yasuda, Rakuten Viki’s chief operating officer believes using a crowd-source method for its subtitles only helps with accuracy. He says the company’s name Viki is derived from the words video and Wikipedia, the crowdsourced online encyclopedia site. “Sites like Viki use fan translations, which is great, but it can be done in a hurry because people are anxious to see the dramas. So it’s probably not as polished as you might get elsewhere,” said Joan MacDonald, a Forbes contributor who covers Korean media. Viki translations aren’t just to English. “A drama can translate into 20 different languages within 24 hours,” said Yasuda. He said there’s also often waiting lists to help translate on more popular shows.

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There are a small number of translators who do get paid, if it’s on a show that doesn’t have volunteers or a licensed series that already has subtitles. “The number of people that contacted me in the last year and a half to say, ‘Oh, I just discovered K-dramas, what do you recommend?’ It’s significant.” The awareness of K-dramas outside Korea seems to be growing, said MacDonald. Other streaming sites are also adding more Korean content to their offerings.Īpple TV+ has two Korean language projects in the works: one based on the animation series “Dr. Brain,” and an adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s novel “Pachinko” about four generations of a Korean immigrant family.

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