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Can't add a new translation

A new problem appeared today ! 
I sent a french translation some month ago and today I wanted to send a better version of this translation. But when i want to send it they say "The language already exists and already has a version". Seriously what Amara is doing ? Nothing is working anymore :
- Accents when we are sending a txt files
- Change an url statut in primary
- Copy/paste a text in a transcription
- And now we can't improve a translation !  

You can tell me to edit each line directly on amara but it wouldn't be serious at all. 

Are you aware than someone (or some people) is killing amara ? Because 3 month ago everything was working perfectly. 

2 people have this problem

Verone,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention-- I've documented the steps needed to reproduce this, and sent it to our development team to investigate further. I apologize for the inconvenience this is causing you, and will update you as I learn more about this issue.

Claude-- It sounds like you were able to upload over the Taglog subtitles, is that correct? Yet, when you did, it produced multiple identical revisions? I've listed the steps to reproduce this below, could you help me complete these steps, so that I can send this to our team to be investigated further?

1) User X begins a translation for Taglog and only complete 4 lines
2) User Y downloads this draft, edits it (did you add new translation lines, or just edit existing lines?), and uploads it via "Already have subtitles for this video? You can upload them directly."
3) Result is: three uploads occur, two are blank, one is credited to "retired user", and the original draft by User X is deleted

Let me know if I captured all of the steps, and I'll try to reproduce this and send it to our development team.

Best,
Darren
Hello Verone and Claude, 

We're asking  the developers to fix this issue: all users should have access to uploading drafts, not only team members. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Darren,

Re your list of steps towards reproducing what happened in the Beyoncé - World Humanitarian Day 2012 Campaign Message video: that's not how it happened.
Please re-read my comment and follow the links to the various revisions of the English and Tagalog subtitles. A look at the Activity subsection of the main page for the video might also help you get the sequence right. But as it's perhaps difficult to use these tools for someone who has never participated in a collaborative subtitling:

Re 1: no, Abdel did a complete Tagalog version in the English subtitles and a partial one in the Tagalog subtitles
Re 2: no, I didn't edit Abdel's subs because I don't know Tagalog. I just downloaded the file of the complete Tagalog subs he had made in the English subtitles, and reuploaded it in the Tagalog subtitles.
Re 3: no, there was only one upload: the one that created Revision 3 credited to "retired user"; then the software also created two empty artifacts it called Revision 1 and Revision 2. Yes, it deleted the content of Version 0 created by Abdel.

If you still don't get it, just ask the developers to examine the history of revisions for the English and for the Tagalog subtitles, and in particular revisions 0-3 of the Tagalog subtitles, and the .sbv file of revision 0 as it was before the software tampered with it (attached to my former comment).
This should be enough for them to understand what happened (and how) on August 12 to this video, and to then try to reproduce it.

(This is an updated shorter version of this comment)


I'm adding a screenshot of what Verone describes, but as happened on a video I subtitled:  Max Boublil, J'entends rien!

This impossibility to upload a new version of existing subtitles is really bad. Think of people with a bad internet connection who now cannot work on improving them with a desktop software and just upload them. Even if Amara is not called Universal Subtitles anymore, it's not a reason for excluding them from collaborating.

Please give us back
  • this possibility to upload subtitles in an already existing languages,
and the other features mentioned by Verone:
  • the capacity to choose which video URL gets streamed in the player and to delete dead video URLs
  • the capacity to copypaste a plain transcript instead of having to upload it as .txt

Amara did go back on the absurd 32-character line limit, so please do the same for these new work-hampering innovations.

Curious variation of the uploading a translation problem in the Beyoncé - World Humanitarian Day 2012 Campaign Message video:

Today, abdel.disangcopan mistakenly translated its subs into Tagalog directly in the English subtitles set: a complete translation see their Revision 2. and the attached  Beyoncé_-_Mensahe_ng_Kampanya_para_....en.sbv file.

Then he started a Tagalog subtitle set, where he translated only 4 subtitles: see attached Beyoncé_-_Mensahe_ng_Kampanya_para_....tl.sbv file, which I downloaded from what was then his Revision 0.

I was able to upload the Beyoncé_-_Mensahe_ng_Kampanya_para_....en.sbv file as Tagalog subtitles, however, this single upload produced 3 revisions:

Moreover, this single upload also tampered with Revision 0  by abdel.disangcopan, erasing from it the 4 subs he had made there, and which I had downloaded as the attached  Beyoncé_-_Mensahe_ng_Kampanya_para_....tl.sbv file.

During this single upload, there was a message about a code error being fixed, I  think, but it only flashed for a fraction of a second, so I was unable to properly memorize it. The point is, an upload shouldn't tamper with former revisions at all: collaborative subtitling requires a trustable history of revisions.

Other point: I attempted the upload in spite of the fact that earlier, it was impossible to upload a new version of existing subs (see Verone's and my former posts in this thread), on the off-chance it would work again. But as no one from Amara replied to this thread, I don't know if I was now able to do one - albeit with the described messy result - because someone at Amara removed the block, or because what I uploaded was an .sbv file (and not an .srt one like those that previously got blocked).

So could the Amara tech people announce in this help forum what changes they are about to make to the software, please? Craig Zheng wrote that they would, after the problems caused by the 32-character line limit.
As Marisa Jean Browne explained in her April 25, 2012 reply in the  Tickets v forum discussions? thread, freshdesk forums like this one are segmented into 4 categories: Questions, Ideas, Problems, Announcements. So far, here, only Questions (Amara Questions) and Problems (Help me, please!) have been activated. The Announcements category could be activated for this kind of communication about software changes, couldn't it?



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How come I still receive the "The language already exists and already has a version" message mentioned by Verone in his original post when I try to update subs (1) by upload, whereas podsinprint_test has been able to make 4 revisions by upload for the English subs of Camp Abilities: Love and Forgiveness in Action on Sept. 7?  See the history of the revisions of these English subs. revisions 0 to 3.

Was podsinprint_test able to do it  because Camp Abilities: Love and Forgiveness in Action  is a video added to the Fetzer team, which is moderated with task assignments, and s/he/it did it by using a task?

Now if Amara only confers this possibility for the videos added to its moderated enterprise teams,  but not for normal, not teamed, videos, this is very irritating. It means that the argument that updating by upload was disabled because it created problems with the server is untrue, and that Amara actually decided to reserve this possibility to its enterprise services.

(1) i.e. t the Greek subs for http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/xHZzawTR9MLF/info/long-blank-video-14639/   (for which I had actually asked for the deletion of all subs, btw: see my last comment in Deletion requests). See attached screenshot, dated today, of the "The language already exists and already has a version" message I got.
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