All translators should be replaced with ai

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 I agree that there are times you need to make slight changes to make subs sound more natural, and the examples you give are really good

Another example i can think of is "Nantoka" which translates to "Somehow" but is used the same way we'd use "More or less"

But there is a difference between making slight changes for better understanding and completely changing the tone, or worse the meaning, of what is said, something that happens way too often with localization

another example is - one of the most common ways translated texts alter source texts is by explicating things that the source text left implicit. this happens *a lot* in JP-EN TLs due to Japanese being a language that likes its implied words- often resulting in translated texts being longer and containing more information than source texts

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

@bentleys This is what people should understand. While AI subs are not ideal, they are better than these garbage official subs.
@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".

I've seen o'er 2 months of anime and was just in Japan 6 months ago, which would be weird things for one who "hate[s] anime and Japanese people," as you put it. Only thing you ""gatekeepers"" can gatekeep successfully is sanity and logic from your own brains. Myself and plenty of others found the gamergate line to be hilarious and there ain't nothing wrong with that.

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.

@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.

@KittenCuddler honestly while I get the concern of inaccurate translations (see how crunchyroll whitewashed the teacher in dead dead demon's to play around his problematic behaviour) the fact people always use the same scene as an argument helps no argument they try to make

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.

Was watching mono and they localized NEET as "shut-in" this is completely wrong. It should either be left as NEET (the term is literally used in the UK too) or "unemployed". Fact amateurs can spot their mistakes and bad choices shows how bad they are. I still don't think AI is an improvement though, it's not like people can't do a good job.

@traed I remember that Crunchyroll also did this in Onimai. Similar to how "lolicon" is often changed to "predator" or the other p-word.

@KittenCuddler honestly while I get the concern of inaccurate translations (see how crunchyroll whitewashed the teacher in dead dead demon's to play around his problematic behaviour) the fact people always use the same scene as an argument helps no argument they try to make

There are some annoying techbros who want AI to do the writing, the animation, the voices, and the subs lol

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

AI is highly programmable and customizable. If you give it clear instructions, it won’t tend to 'invent' anything on its own.

If you tell it, “Translate literally, maintaining each semantic unit”
(よしよしこんな感じでナチュラルに誘いましょう･･･)

Alright, alright, with this kind of feeling naturally let's invite.

or “Translate it colloquial and fluid”:

Alright! Let's invite them just like this, nice and casual...

The official translation (lost the nuance of "in a natural way"):

Okay! I'll ask him just like that.

The biggest issue, as you can see, is its inability to disambiguate contextual meaning (who it's directed at, the ellipses, emotional state, and the pragmatic intent) due to a lack of broader information, rather than an inherent incapacity to understand or replicate natural language. While it can analyze an entire dialogue and extract clues from there, unlike a human translator, it doesn’t have access to visual cues. It can’t distinguish if the character is yelling in front of an audience or speaking calmly in a bathroom, unless the words themselves imply that, so it can’t adjust and reflect that in the translation.

But it's only a matter of time before AI catches up and can grasp all the little contextual nuances through image analysis.

I'll just keep it brief. They cater to the people that like fairly heavy localization. Which is most of the population even if they won't say it out loud. Especially if you remove the handful of trigger words that piss people off, then pretty much everyone except a very small niche audience is madly in love with localization at that point. I was disappointed to find out myself, but its just too obvious, people don't really want the simple translations and often times the most popular and loved lines in these shows are the most localized lines as well. People's response to localization is just completely different from what they say, and the result is what we have now sadly.

くたばれ

Does your AI translate this pharse

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.

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.

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.