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Guidelines for New Subbers

Are you interested in helping translate Korean to English for our drama subtitles?

Great! We welcome your help very much and will be glad to have you with us. As we are sure you understand, our sub team wants to present this drama in the most professional way we can. To do that, we try to be consistent in the way we present the subtitles. We also review each other's work as we go…even an editor needs an editor! We all make a mistake from time to time, no big deal, but with our team we try to catch what we can to maintain a professional level.

So... if you are ready to help out, here are a few guidelines that we would like for you to keep in mind:

1. 1. Punctuation: Please try to include punctuation marks, especially in contractions such as we'll or mustn't. Without the apostrophe these words can cause the casual reader to slow down making his/her viewing just a little uncomfortable. We want the viewer to be as comfortable as possible, with the video and subs moving along smoothly. Please don't forget the period or other marks at the end of a sentence.

2. 2. Capitals: Anyone that has had even the most basic English course knows that sentences begin with a capital letter. Please try. Of course sometimes sentences flow from one segment to another and caps won't be needed in this case because it is the middle of a sentence. Please always capitalize peoples' names.

3. 3. If there are multiple videos accessible, please sub in the next video available that hasn't been subbed yet. Please don't jump around in the order. If you start a video, please try to complete that video before stopping for the day.

4. 4. If you are subbing with us for the first time, please drop a personal message (PM) to the channel manager to let us know of your interest.

5. 5. Please don't get upset if someone on the team changes something you wrote. You can review the change and see the reason why. Likely it will be for the purpose of consistency or you may have made a typo.

6. 6. Please review what has been subbed already in the drama before starting. This will help you to get in the flow and hopefully feel the kind of consistency that our team strives for.

7. 7. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to PM any of our moderators at any time. Just remember, it may take a little time for someone to get back to you as these teams are often distributed all over the world.

8. Please don't enter anything in the area for Korean translation. That space is reserved for ViiKii.

9. You must check your messages frequently. Communications between team members is very important.

10. When a channel is new it is likely that the traffic will be extremely heavy. Those subbers that have been signed up will likely be ready to go as soon as things start so please consider that. This is one reason to be in contact with the channel manager as mentioned in #4 above.

11. Please make sure the language you wish to sub has been approved.

12. Korean names: Romanization of Korean names can take several forms with the family typically a single syllable, and the given name two syllables. For subtitles, the most important thing is to keep it as simple as possible for the viewer and in a consistent format. Many prefer to use the form such as Lee, HoYong or Kim, HaEun. English normally would not capitalize the second syllable of the given name but doing so can make the name easier to read and remember for the non-Korean speaking viewer, especially when the given name has a long combination of vowels. Honorifics added to the given name such as -shi or -ah only make the name longer and may slow down the viewer, so they should be avoided in the subtitles. Whatever format is used by the primary translator should be used throughout.

13. Sentence Spacing in the same segment: Most people don't know it, but there should be two spaces between sentences as normal practice. For subtitles which have more than one sentence good spacing can make the sub easier and faster to read. Use of the carriage return,
, can give the subber better control of the appearance.

REMEMBER: CONSISTENCY AND NEAT APPEARANCE WITH PROPER PUNCTUATION!

Once again, welcome aboard!

Tips

The ellipsis consists of three evenly spaced dots (periods) with spaces between the ellipsis and surrounding letters or other marks. The ellipsis ( ... ) is a handy device that can be used to indicate a pause in the flow of a sentence and is especially useful in quoted speech:

Juan thought and thought … and then thought some more.
"I'm wondering …" Juan said, bemused.