AI Translation is Already Here and...

AI translation definitely feels like fusion energy, always 5-10 years away. And like fusion, some are getting overhyped just because of a few limited, marginally-acceptable results. Ya know, I recently watched the "infamous" Dragon Maid dub for the first time, and to my great surprise, it was not a non-stop Jamie Marchi feminist-theory essay. (For those objecting to the use of a "word I don't like" such as "Patriarchal," consider what kind of a society might be constantly telling overendowed women like Lucoa to cover up and be modest. Could it be... a patriarchal one?) Have all the esteemed good-faith YouTube clickbait artists been deceiving me all along? It's almost as if the supposed trend of "wokealization" is just a bunch of dishonest cherrypicking and outright lies. Like the ridiculous claim of OniMai's subs "erasing all gendered language"; while it happens in some lines, it's left in elsewhere, and even added to the subtitles where it wasn't in the Japanese script at one point.

Also, it bears repeating that some on The Left have lodged complaints about the Dragon Maid dub as well, but you don't see them constantly bringing it up 7 years later (or still using Dragon Maid in YT thumbnail images), let alone looking to burn the industry through the ground via piracy or replace all the translators with AI.



I believe there was a now-deleted post on this thread stating something along the lines that localization issues were "why fansubbing and torrenting are still so important -- people don't go to pirate sites to watch for free, they do it because official services are inadequate." And yet, the translations on torrent downloads and illegal streaming sites are, in nearly all cases for modern/airing anime, exact 1:1 copies of the dreaded official subs.

It's as if the masses believe it's still 2007, and aren't aware that the officially-translated subs they gladly watch without complaint on illegal sites are taken from legal sites, not fan translations. But I can see how those who live in the RevSaysDesu/HeroHei/YellowFlash/Clownfish reactionary echo chamber might think that "official subs" come from some malign and sinister source based on a handful of overexaggerated examples, while seeing nothing wrong with the legal subs they illegally consume. (And I don't say any of this to morally shame piracy. But let's stick to a common and easily-verifiable reality -- that illegal sites rip subs from legal ones -- okay?)

And really, I've seen far more rewrites, trolling, and jokes/memes from fan translations and fan-edits of official subs than I have from actual official subs. But that's a topic for a future thread...



Fun fact: the Netflix/GKids subtitle translations and dub scripts were heavily supervised by Studio khara, so anything in them is the result of what the Japanese creators wanted them to be, not Western "localizers" going rogue and meddling with the content. I looked up the 4 most recent versions, and found this, at ~9:55 in ep 24:



So, the word variously translated as regard/empathy/affection/grace in these lines is not the familiar 恋 / koi, but 好意 / koui. The new version didn't change "love" to "grace" or whatever, they just softened "love" to "like." One could debate that rendering, but it's not an unreasonable choice for teenage characters of any gender combination who haven't known each other all that long.

The line in the original ADV version, which I don't have access to, may have been deliberately tweaked to be a Fly Me to the Moon reference.

A lot of people in this thread seem very angry about localisation but they are only bringing up the same 2 examples over and over again, and it sounds like those were just specific lines too and nowhere close to the entire 4 hours of TV anime. Are those 2 examples the only ones? Are you only parroting what some 60 IQ bottom feeding drama vulture cancer like Asmongold and Keemstar are telling you? Because they make money from telling pepega nerds to be angry? When they probably don't even watch anime? Sad...


By the way, a lot of people are also naively generous about AI in this thread... Machine translation of things like doujins and RPGMaker games have been a thing for at least a decade, and those forms of media generally have quite simple language used and short text length, and yet they are still dogshit. Only slightly less dogshit today than they used to be, but still subpar compared to what an unpaid amateur fan can do. Don't believe me? Go to sadpanda or F95Zone and see for yourself, and ask the users there too what they think of MTL...

@Scorptek Look at that person's profile, pretty obvious it's a person wanking off for OP. "Joined Jan 17 2024".

I think it's because the associations of the word "slave" with chattel slavery in the US history to avoid confusion on what it's about, and so it doesn't have a long name that is hard to remember maybe. Though I don't think a more direct translation for sure would have that problem. Im not even sure the translators are who decide title names or someone higher up does to influence marketability. So I don't think that one is a very clear cut example of anything in particular unless someone behind it explains the rational. It would be something else if they removed "slave" entirely but they didnt.

@traed I personally think it is dumb to remove "slave" from fiction book title because of real life slavery xD Also why there would be confusion, is slavery only tied to US history? It is like when they were focused on changing slave and master in programming terminology. I just used it as "politically correct translation" example kind of deal. I like how Chained Soldier sounds personally but I think it was changed for a silly reason.

Huh talking about titles there are some weird translations for those out there too, do you know any?

Delicious In Dungeon is kind of bad title

Which reminds me: Yen Press incorrectly translated name of one of the characters as Sissel instead of Thistle and instead of fixing it they changed it in official version of The Adventurers Bible. They also assumed he is a girl and were referring to him with wrong pronous for a few volumes but atleast that was later changed. From official english release I would still recommend The Adventurers Bible as outside of the Thistle's name it is very cool collectible with extra info but manga itself I think it is better to get in Japanese and read fan translation instead.

A lot of people in this thread seem very angry about localisation but they are only bringing up the same 2 examples over and over again, and it sounds like those were just specific lines too and nowhere close to the entire 4 hours of TV anime. Are those 2 examples the only ones? Are you only parroting what some 60 IQ bottom feeding drama vulture cancer like Asmongold and Keemstar are telling you? Because they make money from telling pepega nerds to be angry? When they probably don't even watch anime? Sad...


By the way, a lot of people are also naively generous about AI in this thread... Machine translation of things like doujins and RPGMaker games have been a thing for at least a decade, and those forms of media generally have quite simple language used and short text length, and yet they are still dogshit. Only slightly less dogshit today than they used to be, but still subpar compared to what an unpaid amateur fan can do. Don't believe me? Go to sadpanda or F95Zone and see for yourself, and ask the users there too what they think of MTL...

@Scorptek

This is an extremely easy mistake that can happen from any translator (including machine translation) as sometimes it can be hard to trace back the loan word or name from the katakana used if it is supposed to be based on a foreign word. For example, ブルマ (Buruma) from Dragon Ball has always been officially translated as "Bulma", transliterating her name from the phonetics instead of the actual loan word ブルマー which her name came from since they missed the connection to the loan word her name comes from. A more accurate name for her would be "Bloomer". When you look at Thistle's name in Japanese シスル (Shiseru), you can kind of see how it would be easy to lose the loan word their name comes from and translate their name as Sissel instead.

Try this few weeks ago, i just provide name btw and let ai choose who is who and result not too bad even with that lack information/data.


This is the impression from sora about the situation. 2h though.

@Luc36, sorry, I don't really intend to be nitpicky, but there are some problems with your original Japanese text. If you correct those, you might get a better output.

もう約束くせに --> もう・・・約束のくせに (くせ is a noun, so you need の before it)
勇気 (this is a weird way to write the name "Yuki", though)が私達の約束が覚えてない --> 勇気が私達の約束は/を覚えてない (覚える is a transitive verb, so it requires the を particle)
もう一度詳しくしてちゃんと聞いてなさい --> もう一度ちゃんと聞きなさい (not sure what you wanted to say here, but 詳しく right behind ちゃんと feels redundant; also, 聞いてなさい and 聞きなさい are very different, since 聞いてなさい means "keep listening" (present progressive sounds weird here); were you trying to say something like 「覚えてないなら仕方ない。もう一度ちゃんと聞きなさい」: "If you don't remember, it can't be helped. Now listen carefully once more."?)

@Towlie-Towl
you realize a lot of the time western slang is used, its because the character in japanese speaks with slang too right? Great example would be Nagatoro, she speaks with a lot of slang in both english and japanese

@LSSJ_Gaming I thought you are done with me and I am a troll?
Anyways, I would agree if his name wasn't written in romaji in japanese version of The Adventurers Bible as Thistle, which was written by main author aswell. Meaning that english publisher just didnt do their job properly with it, same as with the fact that he is a guy. Well atleast they fixed that last part.

@LSSJ_Gaming yeah I don't think "sup my broskis its [title] time" is accurate still and most slang isn't the same especially nagatoro and skate.

The question is will AI learn prejudice from humans and start denying to use gender neutral pronouns?

The question is will AI learn prejudice from humans and start denying to use gender neutral pronouns?

@Scorptek
It isn't fair to say that they didn't do their job properly as The Adventurer's Bible didn't release in Japan until February 2021, and Thistle's name was revealed in chapter 47 which published in English in October 2019. The information literally was not available to them so they shouldn't be judged for information they literally did not have.

@LSSJ_Gaming What do you mean not avaliable? The basic contact methods were unavaliable? Suddenly Japan and US is gated from any communication? They just couldn't be arsed to do proper job and talk with the source.

@Scorptek
The guidebook wasn't published yet so there was no official spelling available. In translation you sometimes just have to take a guess when you can't get in contact like that and sometimes mistakes will happen, and that's completely fine and normal. We're human after all, we make mistakes occasionally. Sometimes the licensor may have the names already translated the way they want it to be, but sometimes that information is not provided, and the translator will have to make a decision as how to translate a name. This has happened dozens of times in One Piece where the decision the translators made ended up being revealed to be not what Oda intended YEARS later (sometimes even decades later). In One Piece for example, the island ラフテル (rafuteru), was translated as "Raftel" by both Viz and FUNimation. It wasn't until 2020 where Oda wrote out the name as "Laugh Tale", and both the anime dub and the English manga swapped over to using Oda's writing instead of their initial translation, since they literally didn't have the information to realistically determine it was supposed to be "Laugh Tale", and it isn't immediately obvious from just reading the katakana. Translation is a very tricky process and you just gotta take a guess sometimes with things like these, and it isn't really as easy to communicate as you'd think it'd be with language barriers, time zones, and the busy schedules these authors have, as well as the fact that they'd even need the author's personal information in the first place, which a translator really doesn't get. A translator is usually a regular employee or a contractor, it's not like they're an exec that can just call Toei, Oda, or any other author whenever the fuck they want. It's very naive to assume that you can just contact the original author and actually get a response.