Skibelo

I meant that if AI was capable of looking at the picture and recognising the characters, then it would know whether he or she was the correct pronoun, for example. Possibly. One day in the very distant future.

Gaga seems to have become very commercial lately – there's more intrusive advertising in the player and I get a lot more promotional emails from them. So maybe money is tight. Maybe their subtitles are bad because they have trouble finding enough translators and are not prepared to pay for good ones.

Let's not forget that neither Viki nor Gaga ever use translators who speak English natively (i.e. bilinguals). As long as that's the case their English subtitles will never be of particularly good quality. Viki's credits sometimes mention someone who sounds as if they're supposed to check the English, but I've never seen any sign of that being done. Every single video has basic English mistakes that a checker should have corrected (wrong vocabulary, wrong tenses, etc). Viki's teams also don't work effectively as teams: the different team members spell the same names differently, translate the same text passages differently, can't agree on how to translate honorifics, and obviously never discuss these things as a team. That's the problem with using amateurs with no training in translation work. Gaga too uses different translators for different episodes, with all the same team coordination problems as Viki has. One thing I appreciate about Viki is the translator's notes, explaining humour and obscure words. Gaga never has these.

Sorry, I wrote director when I should have written producer or production team, or something. I don't know much about how films are made.

My experience with True Film was that when I gave them details of major errors in their subtitles they were concerned and quickly corrected them. In my naivety I thought that's how any indie filmmaker would work. They (particularly the director and writers) are passionate about their work, want to make a name for themselves, and realise that good subtitles are important for achieving international recognition. So they're concerned when they find out that AI is mangling the translation of their screenplay.

The picture you paint is much bleaker than that. I think you're saying most filmmakers don't make their own subtitles, so presumably don't care about their international reach. It's left to the streaming services like Viki and Gaga, who want to attract international viewers for purely commercial reasons, to create subtitles. And these services of course have no motivation to ensure that the subtitles have any artistic integrity. Thanks for destroying my illusions.😥

I have some familiarity with how AI translation works and you're right that it's chronically incapable of getting speech register right. It also fails anywhere where a human-level understanding of context is required. This is why you constantly see wrong pronouns in English subtitles to Korean (and other Asian) dramas, such as he instead of she or you instead of I. Korean can omit pronouns where they're implied by the context, and poor old AI is completely lost when this occurs. Inability to understand context is THE huge deficiency in AI translation, one that all the hype conveniently omits to mention. AI subtitles could probably be better if the AI could look at the picture while translating the speech, but the technology to do that is a long way off right now.

I'm not sure about the low budget argument. A human could correct the subtitles in this show in a couple of hours, and that wouldn't cost much. And since a lot of effort goes into a drama like this, I do wonder why the director is content to equip it with a sloppy translation that mangles his subtle screenplay. I think the answer is that the production team have no idea that the subtitles are bad. Like a billion other people in the world they've been convinced by the hype that AI can write letters, poems and dissertations and magically translate anything. It can't of course, and the slop it produces is readily detectable by any literate human. But Koreans in particular are, I'm told, world champions in adopting all new technology uncritically.
But you're right that it's not as simple as that. I know from people who have offered to help with subtitles that it's a chronic problem througout the BL industry that directors cannot be persuaded to care about the quality of subtitles. Perhaps the problem is that there are just too few literate viewers complaining about them. I'm not surprised that GMMTV doesn't care, but I'm disappinted when indie producers don't do better. Though, I have encountered the occasional Korean indie that does respond positively to feedback:, most notably True Film.

The English subtitles are done with what looks like the same bad AI as Sukfilms uses. Pronoun mistakes and wrong speech registers leave you guessing what exactly the original script meant in certain places. I wish Korean producers would learn that if they use AI they need to get a human to fix it up afterwards.
It has now been released as a single binge watch on Youtube and GagaOolala.

Thanks for your trouble. How very strange. You'd think the producers would want people to see it, in order to get a return on their investment.

Your review makes me want to watch this. But I can't find it on any of the the usual streaming services (Viki, Gaga, WeTV, iQiYi) or YouTube. Do you know of any legal paid streaming service where one can watch it from either Europe or the US, or via VPN? Thanks.

The story is a cliché-ridden puerile mess. Apart from that, what sensible grown-up wants to watch 12 hours of violence, torture and murder? This forum is seething with people who scream with outrage at a nonconsensual kiss and yet are apparently prepared to watch an unending stream of criminal violence and senseless killing without so much as a murmur of disapproval. How screwed up is that?

Thanks for explaining. Since the display name is what you see when reading reviews and the one you know your favourite reviewers by, I think it's crazy that this forum allows duplicates. But it's not going to change. :-(

Profile at https://kisskh.at/profile/kate127.
He(?) has left a review of "Dare You To Death".
The profile photo looks like a gentleman, which made me wonder if this was a deliberate attempt to steal your name. I'm surprised that it's possible for two users to choose the same account name: it may be a programming error that two names identical apart from case can coexist. Whatever the reason, I think it a bad idea. It's a kind of identity theft.

Sorry to put this here in a random place. I've just noticed that another reviewer has usurped your name (with a lowercase k). That seems like something that shouldn't be allowed, especially since your reviews are immendsely valuable and his are not.

I thought the moderators were supposed to delete personal attacks.

You don't need to defend yourself against the fan army. The whole point of kisskh is to publish reviews from ALL viewers of Asian dramas. The more varied the reviewers and their opinions (favourable or otherwise), the more valuable a resource it becomes. Adults in the room are especially welcome, so don't be deterred by the tantrums of the juveniles.

I like your reviews but I find all this talk of "red flags" to be an irrelevant imposition of fashionable Western ideology on a foreign culture with different values. It's also inconsistent: people who fuss over sexual peccadillos they disapprove of calmly watch murder, torture and violence in a series like KinnPorsche without a murmur.

Insufferably slow and pointless.

Written and acted by juveniles for juveniles. Nothing here for grown-ups.

You can watch this (as well as the prequel) on Youtube on the channel https://www.youtube.com/@kaiblxhhofficial in the form of four videos each containing 10 eps. The English subtitles are amateurish but fairly complete.

This is translated in the version at https://youtu.be/a22U5lZoIOA – so maybe it would be an idea to watch that version instead or as well.

Also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a22U5lZoIOA

S2 is called "Happy" here in MDL. There is a link to it above. I watched it on Youtube.

Have a look at https://youtu.be/9Of2lGTZsbg
I think it's the same thing, although it's twice as long as the 48 minutes you'd expect from the information here on MDL.