A new site called Viki claims it has 100,000 volunteer translators subtitling for free.

Subtitling is a highly difficult and painstaking translation task. Comprehension of film dialogue can be difficult even for native speakers; rendering the dialogue into coherent subtitles that take into account space and time limits is even more challenging.

A new site, Viki, claims to be keeping 100,000 volunteer translators busy – at least in their free time – creating subtitled versions of film and TV shows via an online platform. NPR reports today that Viki has mustered up $4.3 million dollars in venture capital funding just this week, and hopes to make money by selling rights to its products.

The company is based in “Singapore and the U.S.,” but for the moment the site has a distinctly Asian look.

As of today, the top 6 video channels present subtitled versions of Asian TV shows: 5 Korean and 1 Chinese. “Playful Kiss,” a Korean TV series, is apparently being subtitled not only in English, but in a myriad of other languages including Greek, Persian and Mongolian.

This is a fascinating project, yet I wonder how faithful the thousands of subtitling troops will be in the long-run.

Viki is one of those sites that will bear checking out a year from now – so I’ve already put a post about it on my editorial calendar for December 2011.

Betty Carlson

See Also

• Language Translation, Inc.
  A leading language translation and interpretation service provider for more than 20 years.