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Apr 26, 3:22 AM
#1

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Jun 2024
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All of these modern translations are localized slop infected with western lingo and slang ai translations are much more faithful and accurate. Here is a post comparing netflix translations of Ranma 1/2 to ai translations https://x.com/linkasobi/status/1842691855722361181

If you look at the post you will notice that the translations are much more accurate and often flow better. Ai translations are the future but most corporations such as netflix will probably keep doing these trash localized translations for propaganda purposes. What do you all think of this?
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Apr 26, 3:53 AM
#2

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Jan 2021
1962
Well AI can be taught to distort as well as a person by corporations. And they don't feel guilt or shame making them essentially unfeeling about what they may distort or change to serve its corporate masters whims.

So AI might not be a hial Mary.
Sometimes it takes a real man to be best girl. Gilgamesh is also chad.

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Apr 26, 4:19 AM
#3

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Sep 2016
16478
Depends on the translator and the AI, they're not all the same.
Apr 26, 4:21 AM
#4

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Apr 2024
1021
Given the state of current translations, AI might just be an improvement. I'm missing the days of popular anime being subbed by three to seven different fansub groups.
Apr 26, 4:30 AM
#5

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Apr 2025
157
@NS2D current fansubbers are all grifters who either wait for Crunchyroll and rip their subs or use MTL. with some exceptions of course.
Apr 26, 4:48 AM
#6

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Jul 2024
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the idea of AI swooping in to automatically translate every manga sounds very tempting, the few hurdles like accuracy are for novice fans to cry about. Even if some translations are Ai hot mess, my razor-sharp understanding of mystery, storytelling, Japanese cultural, and character development make it easy to figure out what is what.
Apr 26, 4:52 AM
#7

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Jul 2013
9467
Forget about AI; it is all a scam. You are severely delusional to believe in the myth of technological progress. NTHE is 100% guranateed to happen. I doubt there will be a single human on Earth within the next 20 to 30 years.
Apr 26, 4:55 AM
#8
lagom
Online
Jan 2009
104778
the goal of automation like ai is to lessen and ultimately replace human workers anyway

i say accelerate it more so that we can finally vote for ubi like negative income tax so that we can all do our hobbies not for money anymore but just for pure passion and entertainment
Apr 26, 4:56 AM
#9

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Oct 2015
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I think it's completely fine to add some more natural sounding phrases instead of being 100% one-to-one terminology.

Because Japanese often has phrases that don't feel very natural if you be very strict about it

sou iwarete mo = even if you say that... (it means I disagree with this)

kirai janai wa = I don't hate it (it means I kinda like it)

sonna mon ka? = is that what this is? (it means like "Is that all you got" depending on context)

and many other that I can't think of at the moment. You shouldn't be too literal.
AuronApr 26, 8:33 AM
Apr 26, 4:58 AM
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Apr 2024
1990
Someone didn't hear about the G-witch dub subtitles, I prefer that once in a while there would be a little unfaithfulness in translation than 0 quality control that somehow turned the name of a character to the N word and didn't even translate gundam right in a gundam show
Apr 26, 5:35 AM
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Thread Cleaned


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Apr 26, 5:40 AM
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@NS2D tell me more about it, I was going to start the anime today, but looks like I might wait. Also, is it hidive?

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Apr 26, 6:04 AM

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The state of current localization is like when you're ordering sushi and getting burger instead because the waiter thinks he knows better.
Apr 26, 6:09 AM

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Sep 2023
435
i think it's impossible to have a normal conversation about translation on the internet.
Apr 26, 6:15 AM

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Reply to Auron
I think it's completely fine to add some more natural sounding phrases instead of being 100% one-to-one terminology.

Because Japanese often has phrases that don't feel very natural if you be very strict about it

sou iwarete mo = even if you say that... (it means I disagree with this)

kirai janai wa = I don't hate it (it means I kinda like it)

sonna mon ka? = is that what this is? (it means like "Is that all you got" depending on context)

and many other that I can't think of at the moment. You shouldn't be too literal.
@Auron
Auron said:
I think it's completely fine to add some more natural sounding phrases instead of being 100% one-to-one terminology.


This is a big topic with a lot of literature about it, but it kind of comes down to this. Translating is a derivative work and some of its characteristics depend on the writer.

Some translators like to preserve synactic elements of the source language, and love "showing off" aspects of how it's different than the target language.

For others, the number one criteria is that a translation should read fluently in the target language. This is how I'd say most pop culture translation outside anime operates, JP-EN stuff being an exception for historic reasons.

I know which one I prefer, but which one is "better" really comes down to taste. The bigger point is that neither of these things actually are the same as the original text.
Apr 26, 6:15 AM

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Jul 2024
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I worked with AI design. It couldn't find an asscheek if you let it use both hands. And you think it is going to be able to translate the subtle nuances between languages at a consistent level? You're dreaming. Translation is a much an art as anything else. It's not something that lends itself to algorithmic analysis. The real issue is money. Producers won't plunk down the dough needed to hire talented translators.
joemaamahApr 26, 1:51 PM
Apr 26, 6:17 AM

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Sep 2023
435
Some Sentai disc translations actually still use TNs, I think. It almost certainly depends on the personal style of whoever got assigned a given show.
Apr 26, 6:29 AM

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anyway Nabokov once said something like "a good translation should have footnotes the size of skyscrapers", and once got so mad at a translation of a Russian novel that he wrote his own translation which had two entire volumes of translator's notes, so i think he would have loved anime
Apr 26, 6:37 AM

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A lot of anime have simple enough language so it wouldn't hurt. But anime with intricate plot, deep world building (sometimes with invented words or languages) or nuanced characters with real feelings would get hurt by the lack of AI accuracy. You're already losing a bit of the original language (translating is betraying as the saying goes) so I'm not sure I'm fond of AI totally replacing translators. From a purely financial perspective, i can see how it appears attractive to people though.
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Apr 26, 6:39 AM

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also isn't one of the big problems with AI that it will sometimes make shit up in order to make it's output sound more like natural English?

which hilariously is the exact thing a lot of people hate about "fluent English"-style translation in the first place
Apr 26, 7:52 AM

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Translation: Painstakingly precise craft where certain texts are constantly being revised across millennia because people are constantly arguing about tone, cultural context, and author intent.

MAL: Lol, some translator pissed me off so get a computer to do it.

I've seen AI translated song lyrics. They not only do not flow well, but they are also full of inaccuracies and made up passages once you look at the actual text.

Also, I appreciate translator notes in a book with an appendix I can read, but when they show up in real time, it's a sign the translator is bad at their job and writes wooden dialogue.

fbjim said:
I think it's impossible to have a normal conversation about translation on the internet.


These conversations are mostly useless and go bad because most people don't actually understand the other language and thus are susceptible to hucksters who claim they alone have the one true translation or judge something by whether it looks or sounds right. If you read the prefaces of iconic historical literature, the translator goes into great detail defending their stylistic choices and pointing out the long arguments people had about certain versions of the text. It's not a job for amateur Dunning-Kruger types on the Internet.
MelodyOfMemoryApr 26, 8:02 AM
Apr 26, 8:14 AM

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Reply to MelodyOfMemory
Translation: Painstakingly precise craft where certain texts are constantly being revised across millennia because people are constantly arguing about tone, cultural context, and author intent.

MAL: Lol, some translator pissed me off so get a computer to do it.

I've seen AI translated song lyrics. They not only do not flow well, but they are also full of inaccuracies and made up passages once you look at the actual text.

Also, I appreciate translator notes in a book with an appendix I can read, but when they show up in real time, it's a sign the translator is bad at their job and writes wooden dialogue.

fbjim said:
I think it's impossible to have a normal conversation about translation on the internet.


These conversations are mostly useless and go bad because most people don't actually understand the other language and thus are susceptible to hucksters who claim they alone have the one true translation or judge something by whether it looks or sounds right. If you read the prefaces of iconic historical literature, the translator goes into great detail defending their stylistic choices and pointing out the long arguments people had about certain versions of the text. It's not a job for amateur Dunning-Kruger types on the Internet.
MelodyOfMemory said:
Also, I appreciate translator notes in a book with an appendix I can read, but when they show up in real time, it's a sign the translator is bad at their job and writes wooden dialogue.


gonna disagree with this, i think it's a legitimate stylistic choice. the funny thing is that i associate things like TNs/footnotes, and translators commentary far more with "serious" translation projects, like translations of literature, rather than pop-culture translation which tends to favor translations which read like natural english.


i think there is a legitimate change in TLs over time, and i think it's due to the prevalence of anime on more mainstream platforms in the last decade-plus. anime TLs historically are a lot different than most pop-culture TL practices, and i think this is because it has an amateur background. the first wave of fansubs were done by enthusiasts who were not in the film industry, and as a result, didn't feel a need to follow film-industry practices of "fluent english" translating. they developed their own standards/practices, and traditions, while nowadays you seem more likely to get someone who translates anime in the same way as someone might translate a french movie into english - by making it sound "english" in syntax and style.
fbjimApr 26, 8:18 AM
Apr 26, 8:20 AM

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Sep 2023
435
by the way here is a really fun academic journal article from 1999 by someone who mostly decries the state of mainstream Hollywood film translation and holds up anime fansubbing as an alternative

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/90898/AbusiveFQ.pdf?sequence=1

("Abusive" in the title is like, "formal experimentation", not the sense of "abusive" we'd read nowadays)
Apr 26, 8:25 AM
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Sep 2022
296
I don't know enough to judge. I don't understand Japanese so I don't know which translation is more accurate. I suspect that the OP doesn't either.

Having said that, I wouldn't trust either Netflix nor AI to do a good job with anything with anything.
Apr 26, 8:29 AM

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Feb 2025
474
Reply to fbjim
MelodyOfMemory said:
Also, I appreciate translator notes in a book with an appendix I can read, but when they show up in real time, it's a sign the translator is bad at their job and writes wooden dialogue.


gonna disagree with this, i think it's a legitimate stylistic choice. the funny thing is that i associate things like TNs/footnotes, and translators commentary far more with "serious" translation projects, like translations of literature, rather than pop-culture translation which tends to favor translations which read like natural english.


i think there is a legitimate change in TLs over time, and i think it's due to the prevalence of anime on more mainstream platforms in the last decade-plus. anime TLs historically are a lot different than most pop-culture TL practices, and i think this is because it has an amateur background. the first wave of fansubs were done by enthusiasts who were not in the film industry, and as a result, didn't feel a need to follow film-industry practices of "fluent english" translating. they developed their own standards/practices, and traditions, while nowadays you seem more likely to get someone who translates anime in the same way as someone might translate a french movie into english - by making it sound "english" in syntax and style.
@fbjim It depends. Serious translation does need notes because a lot of idioms and phrases don't have accessible English equivalents, especially for nonfiction texts which really need to be as accurate as possible. But again, there's an appendix for those. I'm wary of live Translator's Notes because these are often done by amateurs who think Nakama is untranslateable or other nonsense. I have seen professional movie subtitles use these, but they do so rarely. Not spamming them every few minutes like the fansubs of old.

Also, natural English is favoured in literary translations as well because one of the primary purposes is to be understood. I've seen for Dostoevsky an English phrase used in the main text that has its Russian counterpart pointed out in the appendix. People cling to the King James Bible for its poetic value, but that does not necessarily make it the most accurate version.
Apr 26, 8:31 AM

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Sep 2018
13073
With all the terrible localizations now I agree, but I doubt they will stop these political activists from rewriting some politics in the scripts. It is no secret that companies actually get free money for including political talking points in games. I think that is a big reason why the western industry is so slopped. In terms of eroge machine translation is very commonly used so it kind of is becoming more prevalent in many areas. I would take robot translations over a wokalizer anyday.
Apr 26, 8:42 AM
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Oct 2019
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Anyone who actually thinks AI translation would be better is a fucking moron.

There will always be cases where localization is necessary to properly convey the author's intention, because Japanese and English are two very complex, nuanced, and very different languages. AI can not understand any of that nuance or complexity, and it can't tell from context when something should not be translated directly, so with it, you will miss out on important things, including some characters' unique speech quirks.

Besides, the use of slang and "western lingo" (which is a meaningless term that just refers to the English language, which English localization will obviously always include), is not that big of a deal. Outright mistranslations should be the only issue with localization that actually bothers anyone.
Apr 26, 8:50 AM

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435
in a really general sense, one of the big problems with a lot of translation complaints is that they boil down to "i want the source text, but don't want to learn the source language", which is an impossibility.

this does not mean that individual translations can't be critiqued and criticized (though twitter rage-bait of individual lines compared to MTLed lines is probably the worst possible way to do it), but that's not what usually happens. instead it just turns into culture war rage-slop.
Apr 26, 8:53 AM

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Machine Translation (and AI translations as well) are slop and will never fully be able to understand the nuances of the original language as well as a human can. All the AI translations that I have seen are genuine slop with a ton of errors humans would not make
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Apr 26, 9:06 AM

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been saying this. Personally can't wait for these losers to lose their jobs. Even when the corporations switch to fully AI they will still slop it up so the actual future is using AI to sub your own stuff
Apr 26, 9:08 AM

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435
one complaint that i do have nowadays is a technological one - things like overlay text, where written text is translated on-screen, are far less common now. a lot of this is because platforms like Netflix and Amazon outright do not support overlay text in subtitles, so instead, you get the movie-style translation where only a very limited amount of text is translated as a bracketed subtitle.

CR and physical discs at the very least do still support overlay text, though as CR cares less and less about their discs these days, i've seen more and more bare-bones subtitle jobs from CR discs.
Apr 26, 9:10 AM

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435
Reply to ShatteredSans
Anyone who actually thinks AI translation would be better is a fucking moron.

There will always be cases where localization is necessary to properly convey the author's intention, because Japanese and English are two very complex, nuanced, and very different languages. AI can not understand any of that nuance or complexity, and it can't tell from context when something should not be translated directly, so with it, you will miss out on important things, including some characters' unique speech quirks.

Besides, the use of slang and "western lingo" (which is a meaningless term that just refers to the English language, which English localization will obviously always include), is not that big of a deal. Outright mistranslations should be the only issue with localization that actually bothers anyone.
@ShatteredSans using language-model AI is also self-defeating if your goal is accuracy.

one of the major issues of using LMs to do anything where accuracy is a concern (e.g. legal documents) is that they're more concerned with outputting "correct sounding" text than accurate text. in other words, if you ask it to translate, it's more concerned with outputting text that sounds like English than actually translating accurately - sometimes going as far as to make stuff up entirely.

this is almost precisely the type of thing people complain about in translations all the time - that they distort the original meaning in favor of "sounding like English", so I have no idea why people want to move to a tool which would be much *worse* at doing this.
Apr 26, 9:37 AM

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Jun 2017
2951
Pretty naive take. You can tell the AI to do literal translation or to localize heavily, just as you can tell the human translator to do either. If translations are currently being localized it is not because they are made by humans, but because the humans' boss tells them to do it that way. What makes you think that when they replace the monkeys with machines they will do anything different? If the subbing and dubbing companies want localization, they will tell the AI to localize.

Here's a little example of a fable by Phaedrus localized by AI:


Yo, check it, the whole neighborhood was eyeballin' these crazy lit weddings.
And Aesop just jumps right in, like, "Aight, lemme drop some truth on ya."
He's all, "So, peep this, the Sun, right? He was tryna wife up some chick.
But the frogs straight up started blastin' off, screamin' to the heavens."
Jupiter, he's trippin', like, "Word? What's all the racket?"
Then this one frog from the swamp steps up and goes:
"Listen, man, this one dude is already fryin' all our ponds.
We're gonna end up totally parched and kickin' it in the dust.
So what the heck's gonna happen when this dude starts poppin' out little suns?".

(prompt: "now translate it strongly localized for a modern American audience")

Apr 26, 9:44 AM

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Uh oh, what'd I miss? What's the "bad" or "political" word that the unoffendable got offended at this time around? D*versity? W*man? Please tell me we aren't still raging at the "patriarchy" line from Dragon Maid from eight years ago or the (hilarious) gamergate line in Prison School that was over a decade ago.
Apr 26, 9:50 AM

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Fansubs > AI subs >>> These garbage official subs
Apr 26, 10:07 AM

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Oct 2017
3122
Reply to deg
the goal of automation like ai is to lessen and ultimately replace human workers anyway

i say accelerate it more so that we can finally vote for ubi like negative income tax so that we can all do our hobbies not for money anymore but just for pure passion and entertainment
@deg

I mean its one thing to push for this in fields like manufacturing, but in creative based jobs like animation, writing, acting, and translation it is an active threat.
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Apr 26, 10:17 AM

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"I hate this localization, so we should get rid of all localizers" is already a nonsensical take, but going even further with "we should replace all localizers with machines" is even more ridiculous and counter-productive.

"I hate this restaurant, so we should get rid of all chefs." "We should replace all chefs with machines."

Mentally filter out the phrases you don't like, it's not hard. Or find a fansub. Or better yet, learn Japanese. But any of these seems to be too much work for some people.
Apr 26, 10:17 AM
lagom
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Jan 2009
104778
Reply to LSSJ_Gaming
@deg

I mean its one thing to push for this in fields like manufacturing, but in creative based jobs like animation, writing, acting, and translation it is an active threat.
@LSSJ_Gaming there is no stopping artists from still being creative in a future with ubi though art will just not be for profit but for passion only
Apr 26, 10:34 AM

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Oct 2017
3122
Reply to deg
@LSSJ_Gaming there is no stopping artists from still being creative in a future with ubi though art will just not be for profit but for passion only
@deg

the issue is more that the way AI is being used and proposed by a lot of people is in ways that will threaten the arts and cause existential problems to them rather than helping in the areas that it could improve quality of life
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Apr 26, 12:42 PM
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sounds like shit a weeb would say. you want faithful interpretation, you just learn the language yourself. translated adaptations are meant to convert the words, ideas, and sentiments into another language. that often means changing the "original japanese" meaning into a concept that the audience of the translated language will understand.

but if your priority is feeling like you're the approximation of a japanese person, then yeah, having esoteric phrases that make no sense in your native language would be ideal.
Apr 26, 12:56 PM

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9467
We all know AI is a scam. Do you honestly "trust" in it?
Apr 26, 1:05 PM

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651
Reply to bentleys
Fansubs > AI subs >>> These garbage official subs
@bentleys This is what people should understand. While AI subs are not ideal, they are better than these garbage official subs.
KittenCuddler said:
Uh oh, what'd I miss? What's the "bad" or "political" word that the unoffendable got offended at this time around? D*versity? W*man? Please tell me we aren't still raging at the "patriarchy" line from Dragon Maid from eight years ago or the (hilarious) gamergate line in Prison School that was over a decade ago.
@KittenCuddler This is the problem with localizers and their defenders. You all hate anime and Japanese people, so you inject your Western influence into it. This is what we all mean when we call you all tourists. The translation needs to be accurate, not "funnier".
Apr 26, 1:41 PM
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Reply to ForgotEyeWasHere
@bentleys This is what people should understand. While AI subs are not ideal, they are better than these garbage official subs.
KittenCuddler said:
Uh oh, what'd I miss? What's the "bad" or "political" word that the unoffendable got offended at this time around? D*versity? W*man? Please tell me we aren't still raging at the "patriarchy" line from Dragon Maid from eight years ago or the (hilarious) gamergate line in Prison School that was over a decade ago.
@KittenCuddler This is the problem with localizers and their defenders. You all hate anime and Japanese people, so you inject your Western influence into it. This is what we all mean when we call you all tourists. The translation needs to be accurate, not "funnier".
ForgotEyeWasHere said:
This is what we all mean when we call you all tourists.


If you need subs, you're just another tourist. Pot calling kettle black. Level up and learn Japanese if you're the local you make yourself out to be.
Apr 26, 1:46 PM

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Oct 2017
3122
Reply to ForgotEyeWasHere
@bentleys This is what people should understand. While AI subs are not ideal, they are better than these garbage official subs.
KittenCuddler said:
Uh oh, what'd I miss? What's the "bad" or "political" word that the unoffendable got offended at this time around? D*versity? W*man? Please tell me we aren't still raging at the "patriarchy" line from Dragon Maid from eight years ago or the (hilarious) gamergate line in Prison School that was over a decade ago.
@KittenCuddler This is the problem with localizers and their defenders. You all hate anime and Japanese people, so you inject your Western influence into it. This is what we all mean when we call you all tourists. The translation needs to be accurate, not "funnier".
ForgotEyeWasHere said:
You all hate anime and Japanese people, so you inject your Western influence into it.

Literally nobody ever said that, its absurd to call people racist for how they translate media. Most translators on anime projects are fans themselves too you know. Localization is a process inherent in translating media as it needs to read naturally in the target language, and this practice isn't just in JPN->ENG translations it goes in all directions including ENG->JPN.
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Apr 26, 1:49 PM

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You've not seen how bad LLMs can get yet have you? They often do not even get names right. They also do not understand what is literal and what is non literal, what is a joke and what isnt.
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Apr 26, 1:50 PM

Offline
Feb 2025
474
Reply to ForgotEyeWasHere
@bentleys This is what people should understand. While AI subs are not ideal, they are better than these garbage official subs.
KittenCuddler said:
Uh oh, what'd I miss? What's the "bad" or "political" word that the unoffendable got offended at this time around? D*versity? W*man? Please tell me we aren't still raging at the "patriarchy" line from Dragon Maid from eight years ago or the (hilarious) gamergate line in Prison School that was over a decade ago.
@KittenCuddler This is the problem with localizers and their defenders. You all hate anime and Japanese people, so you inject your Western influence into it. This is what we all mean when we call you all tourists. The translation needs to be accurate, not "funnier".
ForgotEyeWasHere said:
You all hate anime and Japanese people, so you inject your Western influence into it.


You're cute. You think anime and Japanese people are the same thing. That's like saying "you all hate Hollywood movies and Americans, so you inject your European influence into it."

Speaking in my capacity as an actual Asian person, your entire schtick is both Orientalist bullshit and incredibly boring.
Apr 26, 2:14 PM
Offline
Sep 2022
296
Reply to fbjim
@ShatteredSans using language-model AI is also self-defeating if your goal is accuracy.

one of the major issues of using LMs to do anything where accuracy is a concern (e.g. legal documents) is that they're more concerned with outputting "correct sounding" text than accurate text. in other words, if you ask it to translate, it's more concerned with outputting text that sounds like English than actually translating accurately - sometimes going as far as to make stuff up entirely.

this is almost precisely the type of thing people complain about in translations all the time - that they distort the original meaning in favor of "sounding like English", so I have no idea why people want to move to a tool which would be much *worse* at doing this.
@fbjim I think a bit part of the problem is over-localisation. (Some) Localisers are not aiming at "English", they are being told to aim at "American kids watching in the family home". Since doing what you're told is how you get paid, they're doing that. An AI given the same order would too.

Older anime translators, I feel, were freer to keep some of the alien-ness of Japanese culture without whitewashing it the way that (for example) the initial DeDeDe dub and sub did, which included the removal of a reference to watching porn as well as a moronic "girl power" cry which was clearly supposed to be "relevant to the audience" but sounded completely wrong.

Mass market brings big money and producers -not paid-a-flat-fee translators - will chase it. If they can avoid offending the American Christians who would still to this day happily burn D&D rulebooks then they can make more money.

The poster who said that the only way to be sure is to use your own locally hosted LLM to do the translation is close to the mark. Really the way to be sure is to lean Japanese, which is what I'm doing at the moment. But, really, the only way to be really really sure is to be born Japanese :)

LLMs are currently somewhere between useless and shite. They make stuff up, they get "facts" wrong, they are based on stolen data, they do not remember their own context well. Only the last of these is showing any progress at the moment.

LLMs have, IMO, pretty well hit the limits of their abilities already because all they are is a good trick. They're not intelligent and they don't understand anything, they're just a clever database system with a lot of flaws, but the flaws are inherent in the trick, they're not flaws of execution which can be fixed by more careful coding or something.

Being able to pull off an illusion of flying above a stage doesn't mean you're one step closer to humans being able to float to work. You just have a clever stage-trick.
Apr 26, 2:34 PM

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Sep 2023
435
Reply to therealnagora
@fbjim I think a bit part of the problem is over-localisation. (Some) Localisers are not aiming at "English", they are being told to aim at "American kids watching in the family home". Since doing what you're told is how you get paid, they're doing that. An AI given the same order would too.

Older anime translators, I feel, were freer to keep some of the alien-ness of Japanese culture without whitewashing it the way that (for example) the initial DeDeDe dub and sub did, which included the removal of a reference to watching porn as well as a moronic "girl power" cry which was clearly supposed to be "relevant to the audience" but sounded completely wrong.

Mass market brings big money and producers -not paid-a-flat-fee translators - will chase it. If they can avoid offending the American Christians who would still to this day happily burn D&D rulebooks then they can make more money.

The poster who said that the only way to be sure is to use your own locally hosted LLM to do the translation is close to the mark. Really the way to be sure is to lean Japanese, which is what I'm doing at the moment. But, really, the only way to be really really sure is to be born Japanese :)

LLMs are currently somewhere between useless and shite. They make stuff up, they get "facts" wrong, they are based on stolen data, they do not remember their own context well. Only the last of these is showing any progress at the moment.

LLMs have, IMO, pretty well hit the limits of their abilities already because all they are is a good trick. They're not intelligent and they don't understand anything, they're just a clever database system with a lot of flaws, but the flaws are inherent in the trick, they're not flaws of execution which can be fixed by more careful coding or something.

Being able to pull off an illusion of flying above a stage doesn't mean you're one step closer to humans being able to float to work. You just have a clever stage-trick.
therealnagora said:
Older anime translators, I feel, were freer to keep some of the alien-ness of Japanese culture without whitewashing it the way that (for example) the initial DeDeDe dub and sub did


i remember hearing an argument on a podcast between two translators when they were asked about their translation pet peeves. the first one said he hated seeing loan-translation a la "it can't be helped"/"that's my line"/"- is what I'd like to say" etc, since he said he associated that with rushed, dry translation projects done on the cheap. the second disagreed and said something like "I like smacking readers in the face with Japanese syntax".

in other words a lot of this is down to personal style. translators are somewhat anonymous, and given the toxicity of translation discourse, I can't blame them, so sometimes people miss how much of translation comes down to the personal style of the translator. sometimes this is affected by external factors (eg a publisher of a game insists a game get an E rating, affecting the text, or a show has to be appropriate for a 9AM broadcast TV slot, etc), and sometimes they have more freedom.

the things that really make discussing it difficult are a) overgeneralization, where specific poor translations are implied to be universal, when this could straight up be because the specific translator sucks, and especially b) conspirational thinking, where literally any complaint about a translation is evidence of an ideological conspiracy against the reader. this also causes a reaction where any translation criticism, no matter how justified, is dismissed as right-wing ragebait. without these, we might have much more readable translation critique
Apr 26, 2:42 PM

Offline
May 2021
4684
MYZIC said:
All of these modern translations are localized slop infected with western lingo and slang ai translations are much more faithful and accurate. Here is a post comparing netflix translations of Ranma 1/2 to ai translations https://x.com/linkasobi/status/1842691855722361181

If you look at the post you will notice that the translations are much more accurate and often flow better. Ai translations are the future but most corporations such as netflix will probably keep doing these trash localized translations for propaganda purposes. What do you all think of this?

What are you talking about?? AI is shit at translating, getting one random phrase right does not prove anything, and neither does picking out the worst of the worst of localizers, Neflix english subs are unwatcheable, but the solution isn't AI, it's to hire actual competent people
Apr 26, 2:49 PM

Offline
Feb 2020
751
They still need revisors, even with AI. Most of other lines are ok by either side, I am an ESL, I see very few personality tones going out.

12/27 is the best example that gets more interesting being literal.
19/27 is a good example of localization vs translation. I had to look two times but I expected the human to do the raw chinese grammar in english, not the AI. Translating the pond name decision looks unimportant, but when you notice translator dillemas come from. A line like: "This is the snow village. It is named like this because it snows here!"
And XX/27 is a good example of why you might like to drop that charming personality on a core character, for full clarity.

I think Localization value is also lost when you view English as the common language/lingua franca versus English AU/SA/CA/GB/US and IndE. It is a matter of taste. Frankly, AI has a big advantage in a show that is a remake, or has wiki's from before airing.
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