Support NeoGAF

[Gambit2483]

Human speech and language include many nuances, including cultural differences and subtleties, something an A.I. will almost never be able to faithfully translate.

This is horrible idea if true.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Thread title seems misleading - he's saying he's open to the idea, not that they're looking to go down that road or something more concrete. And he acknowledges that it would have to be supervised by actual humans.

Frankly, I think we're fine. NIS is doing a good job, and there's already been a lot of effort to streamline the process and get us the accelerated release schedule we have today. Why rock the boat for little to no gain?

 

[NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt]

I guarantee you, you’d still have a small army of weebs asking for your head on social media if you put that in the final game.
Some people are fiercely particular about translations from a language they don’t even understand. They’d rather have a completely literal translation than a good one.

That's what I want though

 

[Gambit2483]

Thread title seems misleading - he's saying he's open to the idea, not that they're looking to go down that road or something more concrete. And he acknowledges that it would have to be supervised by actual humans.

Frankly, I think we're fine. NIS is doing a good job, and there's already been a lot of effort to streamline the process and get us the accelerated release schedule we have today. Why rock the boat for little to no gain?

I honestly don't even like them bringing up the idea. Sure A.I. can help us in many ways but when it comes to replacing something that only a human can truly produce is where I draw the line. Hopefully they are just thinking aloud at this point..

 

[YeulEmeralda]

If AI can just put one of these purple haired "translators" out of a job that's a win.

 

[PonyStation4]

Human speech and language include many nuances, including cultural differences and subtleties, something an A.I. will almost never be able to faithfully translate.

This is horrible idea if true.

You say this as if regular translators at NISA do. AI engines given context of the story and the characters personality do a far better job than professional translators.

 

[Kataploom]

You'll still need people to review the work done and make "sensible changes", so no, this is not a solution, work ethics is

 

[Kataploom]

You realize professional translation is rarely literal, especially from a language like Japanese?

The examples some of you give about "literal translations" are pretty weird tho, we're not asking, for example, that a text that says "sono neko wa akai desu" to be put as "that cat red be", it's retarded intellectual dishonest, we're asking for putting exactly the same than characters say without any fanfiction like "it's because there the culture is different so the character might be interpreted like this because of that and that other thing and culture and you wouldn't understand so I changed it this way because that's the right way to make it feel like a japanese person would and whatever". Just put the goddamn text as is, that's it, we're even asking people to work less, ffs.

 

[Killer8]

Why are people acting as if this will make anything less woke? Like the developer says, AI will translate a first draft of the script to save time which will then get touch ups by a professional - and at that stage will be subject to any of the changes that person chooses to make. No company is just going to run it through AI and ship it. You also still have localization testers to contend with who will flag up all sorts of shit as 'potentially problematic'.

 

[Shake Your Rump]

Look down at your keyboard. If your "w", "o", "k", and "e" keys are showing more wear than others, please evaluate how you are spending your time online.

Also, everyone should watch/listen to this first hand account from someone who has been localizing games for 30 years:

 

[Gambit2483]

You say this as if regular translators at NISA do. AI engines given context of the story and the characters personality do a far better job than professional translators.

And your proof of this? I mean asides from just pulling it out of your ass.

edit: I'm not unaware of the bad actors out there, but that's more of a case of "wrong hires", than "A.I. is better than humans"

 

[Kataploom]

I'm fine with this. If they go this way it will be better in the long run and we won't get agenda fueled English Translations. These LOLcalizers can go fuck off finally

Speaking of which, I remember in tales of arise, the scene where they were returning in the ship before going to Rena, there was a moment that the girls talked each other about their feelings and when they finished, Law called them asking what they were doing and Rinwell said something like "Let's go back, I don't want them to think we're doing something weird"... Yet the subtitles said "... I don't want the guys to think they're in charge"

 

[yazenov]

The translator thinks the script sucked for the original material, so he decided to change it instead. Yeah, nobody gives a fuck about your writing skills.

 

[Three]

What makes people think 'agendas' or political correctness can't be programmed into ML translation algorithms? They are already.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

And your proof of this? I mean asides from just pulling it out of your ass.

edit: I'm not unaware of the bad actors out there, but that's more of a case of "wrong hires", than "A.I. is better than humans"

Exactly this.

It's the same with writing. People claiming that an AI can write as well as a human don't realize that they aren't hiring good writers but the bottom of the barrel, precisely so they can replace them with AI without dropping their awful quality.

The problem with localization is that bad actors and activists have taken over the field, so some companies have to resort to AI just to avoid having their games sabotaged.

 

[yazenov]

What makes people think 'agendas' or political correctness can't be programmed into ML translation algorithms? They are already.

I say let the market decide on which one they prefer.

For me, faster translation and cheaper options for the publishers is a win in my book. If both options are trash then at least these idiots will be out of jobs. let them do their own scripts or material and lets see how well it will sell. And at least ill get the game faster than before.

 

[KloetenQuetsche]

Uhhhh.... AI

 

[Unknown Soldier]

What makes people think 'agendas' or political correctness can't be programmed into ML translation algorithms? They are already.

We know but there will always be a market for non-woke chatbots, that's one reason we have a choice between things like Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok

 

[mèx]

LOLcalizers? That's a clever one dude! I wouldn't be too surprised if the Kai no Kiseki Clouded Leopard PC release includes some form of ML/AI translation for English when it eventually comes to Steam next year.

This is actually a good point. Publishers like Clouded Leopard might be enticed to use AI to expand the audience of their products, and in this specific case, start to partially eat NISA's lunch.

While the majority of people is going to wait for a proper translation, for some people a mechanical translation is better than waiting 1+ years to play a game.
Some people played Zero/Azure with the pre-Geofront patch, so...

 

[JunkerWoland]

Unless this results in either Japanese or Asia-region releases with English-text (but no ENG voice) options, I don't see this making much difference. While the various issues aren't exclusive to this process, most of the damage in modern English-translated, Japanese-pop media is done when the initial-translated script is rewritten for the English dub, which is especially true for video games. If employing AI simply means getting a translated script to NISA--or whoever--faster, then this won't help clean-up any the problems some have with many Japanese localizations; the lost jobs also wouldn't be much on the side of localizers, but rather the people who do crank-out those initial, raw translations.

For now, I'm only see this as a cost-savings measure for Falcom and probably not an answer to any criticisms I have with the English-localized text in their games.

 

[ap_puff]

ehhhhhh MTL is still terrible right now, can't wait to have broken and incomprehensible texts in my jRPGs

 

[YeulEmeralda]

The translator thinks the script sucked for the original material, so he decided to change it instead. Yeah, nobody gives a fuck about your writing skills.

Nobody would dare to do this with a book or Netflix show. But videogame translation gets the lowest of respect- and budget to be fair.

 

[Magister]

You want to get rid of translators entirely? I'm sorry, what? I translate shit myself for a living and I can tell you one thing: AI translations are utter shit when it comes to translating fiction or even video games.

Sure, if I have a simple enough text, AI saves me time and effort, but that does not mean that proofreading isn't necessary.

One company gave me the task to evaluate AI translation of a video game text into my language and the results were terrible. It contained lots of nonsensical phrases and words. AI especially has problems with distinction. In the text, AI translated a tank (military vehicle) into a fuel tank. There was also a more hilarious mistranslation example involving puppy warriors in the same military-themed video game text, but I don't exactly remember it.

I was actually trained in movie translation, with some video game localisation courses here and there. I can say for sure that the human touch is necessary, unless you want to produce soulless, robotic translations that tend to be inaccurate due to AI hallucinations. Yes, proofreaders are needed and in many cases AI can create more work than traditional translation for said proofreaders. But if you eliminate the human element entirely, you end up with trash translations.

I tell you this since these days my job is basically proofreading AI translations.

That's all.