The start of our crowdfunding campaign to finance subbers has naturally led to a lot of questions from you. This is why I’ve put together a list of FAQ and hope that everyone will get a better understanding of the whole project now. 🙂

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FAQ

1. The Purpose of Our Campaign

I can wait for subs. Why should I support you?

Our goal is not to provide subtitles faster than others, but to provide subtitles for dramas that otherwise wouldn’t be subbed at all.

There are volunteers out there who sub for free. Why should I donate money?

There are always a few truly amazing people who will write subs simply out of love for the drama. However, those cases are rare and we can’t expect that the whole mass of Cdramas will be subbed in this way. Our big goal is to have subtitles for every available Cdrama on Youtube at some point. If we’ll ever get there will depend on how much support we will get.
Furthermore, some people would love to write subtitles, but can’t because they don’t have enough free time. They’re for example students who have side jobs in order to be able to finance their studies. If we can offer them some money, we make it possible for them to commit their time to subbing.

Why don’t you ask the production and streaming companies who upload the Cdramas onto Youtube to pay for the subbers?

If the production and streaming companies would absolutely have wanted to have subs on their dramas, they would have already long ago hired subbers themselves, just like how Dramafever does. That they don’t seem to care too much about the subs has led us to start the crowdfunding campaign in the first place. I believe it will be more effective to take it into our own hands and realize our dream to have subs for all Cdramas with the help of all fans.
Nonetheless, I’ve reached out to the companies and hope that they will decide to support us as well.

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2. Payment Methods

I want to donate but I don’t have a PayPal account. Can I still donate?

Yes! You don’t need to have a PayPal account yet in order to be able to donate, you can simply click on “continue” shown in the screenshot below and use your credit card or bank account.

I want to donate but the currency of my country isn’t $USD. What to do?

You can still donate in $USD. The amount will be automatically exchanged by your bank. Here an example:
Let’s say your currency is Euros. If you donate $10 USD, your bank will automatically exchange the sum to 8,43€ (according to the exchange rate on the day I wrote this FAQ) and wire 8,43€ to us. You can use free currency converters on the web like Themoneyconverter to see how much a certain sum of dollars would be in your currency.

I’d like to donate money on a monthly base, just like how I’m subscribing to Viki or Dramafever and paying them monthly. Is this possible without the hassle of having to click on the donation button every month?

We will be very happy if you chose to support us on a regular base. This can help us make it possible to continue subbing long-time. 🙂
You can click on the box shown in the screenshot below and the sum you enter will be automatically wired to us monthly. If you want to cancel it later, you can do so in your PayPal account.

Can I wire the money directly to you instead of using PayPal?

Yes. Please send an email to alice@cdramabase.com and I will let you know the bank details.

Why don’t you use platforms like Gofundme to collect the money?

Cdrama fans are spread everywhere around the world. We obviously want to make it possible for everyone, no matter in which country you live, to be able to donate, and platforms like Gofundme are limited to certain countries only. PayPal Donations is the most international option we have. And there’s another big plus: it also offers diverse payment options, while you can only use your credit card if you make donations on Gofundme, and not everybody has a credit card.

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3. Subbing Projects

How will you decide which dramas you’ll sub?

We think that the donators should decide which dramas we’ll sub, in order to thank them for their support.

Can I name you a drama as donator and you will start subbing it?

It is unfortunately impossible to consider the wishes of every single donator. Try to compare it to Viki or Dramafever: You can decide to subscribe to them and pay them monthly, you can request dramas, but you won’t know which dramas they’ll bring to you in the end.
However, there is still our special offer. If you decide to donate the sum given in our special offer, we will start subbing the drama of your wishes immediately!

How will the wishes of the donators be considered?

After giving it a lot of thought what the best way would be, I have decided that we will proceed as follows: Once we can foresee that we will soon be able to start the next subbing project, all donators will get a mail, asking which drama they’re interested in the most. Every donator can name one drama from the list of available titles that he wishes to see with subs the most. Your vote will count as much as you donated till the date of the poll (several single donations or monthly donations will be summed up), so if you donated 30$ till then, to give an example, your vote will count x30, like 30 votes. In the end, the drama with the most votes will be chosen.

Why did you introduce the special offer?

There are two main reasons. First of all, we want to thank donators who decide to donate huge sums by letting them chose the drama we’ll sub. And secondly, we want to give fans who are really desperate for a certain drama a realistic chance to get the drama they want.
The sums stated in our special offer are still by far not enough to cover the costs for a whole drama. But I still think that fans who show us such big support should be reimbursed, and thus introduced this offer. We will make it possible to finish subbing the whole drama then, no matter what it takes. The special offer is only for private persons though, not for companies.

How much do you need to cover the costs for subbing a whole drama?

It is hard to say how much subbing a whole drama would cost us in general. It depends on the number of episodes the drama has, and also on how difficult to translate it is. Generally, we’ll need at least a few hundred dollars for a whole drama, or even up to 2000 dollar for a long drama that is difficult to translate.

What if you take on other subbing projects simultaneously? Will it take longer to complete each one then?

We will only start other subbing projects simultaneously if we will have received enough donations so that we can cover the costs to complete all of them, or if someone donates the sum in our special offer. If we take on more projects simultaneously, we will recruit more subbers, so the time the “old” project(s) will need to be completed will be the same.

I want to have a drama subbed that isn’t on Youtube. Can you upload it yourselves and sub it?

We unfortunately can’t do that since this would be an illegal action. We don’t have the rights to the videos.

Can you create sub files for dramas that aren’t on Youtube and share them with us?

We unfortunately can’t do that either. This is actually a point many fans don’t seem to know, the rights to create subtitles are with the video owner, which means with the production companies. Without their consent, creating subtitles, and even more so spreading them on the net (even if you don’t intend to monetize them), is illegal.
When video uploaders on Youtube activate the function to add subtitles, they’re automatically giving us their consent. And the subtitles will not be owned by us, even though we create them, but by the video uploader.

FAQ last updated: 2017-12-01