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Touma55
Joined: 22 May 2021
Posts: 239
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 Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 2:25 pm
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It is all we really have to get the opinions of both sides in large numbers though.
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aereus
Joined: 08 Jun 2010
Posts: 576
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 2:27 pm
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| hitokiriizo wrote: | | Exactly my point. AI translations done in Japan with strict rules of conduct, will end this nonsense. With technology and the internet there's ZERO reason to hire dubious westerners for anything these days, everything can be done in house with strict guidelines. |
You do realize there is a long history of Japan releasing games censored/edited overseas, if they feel it will be more fitting for the market (whether that perception is correct or not). Probably most famously how Nintendo sprite swapped a game called Doki Doki Panic to be released as Super Mario Bros 2 in the US and Europe, because they felt the real SMB2 would be "too hard for Western players".
I wouldn't have much faith in Japanese companies not censoring stuff either.
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Wack Sage
Joined: 11 Nov 2023
Posts: 38
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 2:34 pm
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| flamemasterelan wrote: | | My dude, I named the owner. Not the users. But if you're curious about the users, it's well documented that Elon's takeover of Twitter coincided with a sharp rise in hate speech on the platform, and that Elon personally boosts far right accounts, conspiracy theories, etc.
Twitter shouldn't have been taken as indicative of reality before Elon's takeover, and it's even less reliable after. |
I'm not 100% sure the people trying to have at least somewhat of a nuanced take on this really appreciate posts like these popping up and insisting that anyone disagreeing with them must be some rabid political extremist. It's not exactly doing anything to dispel the 'political agenda' rumors if all you can do is look at this issue as some kind of weird "far right" issue and think you're fighting some imaginary enemy. Speaking out against bad translations is not hate speech. I don't see how any of this has anything to do with the topic other than you trying to discredit people who feel differently from you. Not everyone in life who disagrees with you is also conveniently your sworn political enemy who keeps popping up in your life.
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aereus
Joined: 08 Jun 2010
Posts: 576
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 2:35 pm
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| Traptrix Lover wrote: | | I feel like this argument loses weight when you realize a lot of translators are on social media and openly brag about changing things because they want to and act very condescending to people who criticize them. |
I guarantee you it's a tiny fraction of the total number of translators involved in the industry. There is a lot of confirmation bias going on, and also only the ones that have an agenda are gonna be out there making noise, so it will seem like more than it is. Kinda like how people complain about COD or FIFA or Madden and then everyone buys it anyways. Or stats show only 3% of players spend any money on F2P games, but they drive all the revenue and therefore get the majority of focus from developers.
Translation isn't some shadowy cabal: Anyone can study enough to do it. And translators are hired/contracted by companies, so the end product is in their hands. If they're all openly bragging on social media about this, do you think the companies that hire them aren't aware? Do you think their editors are powerless to change or reject what they wrote if they disagree? It's simply not realistic.
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flamemasterelan
Joined: 17 Apr 2022
Posts: 486
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 2:42 pm
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| Touma55 wrote: | | It is all we really have to get the opinons of both sides in large numbers though. |
No, it isn't. It's an irrelevant discussion point. It has 10% of the daily users that Facebook has, and it's even worse because you can pay a monthly fee to boost your opinion above anyone else's. Arguing that Twitter should be taken seriously is the most clueless thing you can do.
| aereus wrote: | | You do realize there is a long history of Japan releasing games censored/edited overseas, if they feel it will be more fitting for the market (whether that perception is correct or not). Probably most famously how Nintendo sprite swapped a game called Doki Doki Panic to be released as Super Mario Bros 2 in the US and Europe, because they felt the real SMB2 would be "too hard for Western players".
I wouldn't have much faith in Japanese companies not censoring stuff either. |
The "too hard" thing is a myth. Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels was mostly passed over because it was considered too similar to the first game and wouldn't sell very well in America. The difficulty contributed to that, but it's mostly just the fact that it was a direct rehash of the first game except now there are poison mushrooms and you can play as a slippery Mario.
A better example would be, say...the One Piece manga. In which Whitebeard's Jolly Roger was a skull in front of a manji, which was changed for the anime and subsequent merch releases into a cross. Oda continued to use the manji until he was directly ordered by Shueisha to censor his art by changing it to the bone cross that they had developed for the anime. Ironically, Viz's English printings of these volumes include the manji intact with an editor's note about the difference between it and the swastika. So it was the Japanese companies that did the censorship, while the American translators were intent on keeping true to Oda's vision.
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aereus
Joined: 08 Jun 2010
Posts: 576
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 2:46 pm
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| Zoltan Kakler wrote: | | It's always the most egregious and blatantly obviously translations that take you immediately out of a series that get criticized, like seeing the words 'mansplaining' or Twitch slang popping up.
Like, you don't even need to know Japanese to know that mansplaining was not what a character said because it's a Japanese anime and the likelihood of anime actually talking about something like that is as close to 0 as you can get. |
I think the problem is two separate issues are being conflated as one here: What you're explaining are legitimately inaccurate translations meant to substitute the translator's intent (and agenda in some cases) with the original author's. That is wrong, and should not be happening. I agree that term wouldn't come up. Versus what I'm talking about is making a genuine effort to convey the author's intent into another language.
I think it would be a disservice to the original authors and detriment to the fandom to not keep the two things separate. As one is clearly wrong, whereas the other is simply a disagreement in opinion over what is essentially as much an art as it is a science. There are often no perfect choices/answers.
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Touma55
Joined: 22 May 2021
Posts: 239
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 2:53 pm
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| flamemasterelan wrote: | | No, it isn't. It's an irrelevant discussion point. It has 10% of the daily users that Facebook has, and it's even worse because you can pay a monthly fee to boost your opinion above anyone else's. Arguing that Twitter should be taken seriously is the most clueless thing you can do. |
You calling me clueless is very funny. I think I am done talking to you.
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flamemasterelan
Joined: 17 Apr 2022
Posts: 486
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 2:53 pm
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| Wack Sage wrote: | | Speaking out against bad translations is not hate speech. I don't see how any of this has anything to do with the topic other than you trying to discredit people who feel differently from you. Not everyone in life who disagrees with you is also conveniently your sworn political enemy who keeps popping up in your life. |
If you can't see why Twitter being a biased and unrepresentative source of information is important when people bring up Twitter as evidence, then I can't help you, man. You can feel free to have your nuanced discussions by discussing your thoughts and your opinions, there's no need to point at a social media site to say "people are happy about this."
Last edited by flamemasterelan on Fri Dec 22, 2023 3:00 pm; edited 1 time in total
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yuna49
Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 2:58 pm
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Chise and Elias have no clue what you all are talking about here. And I bet they would prefer to be translated by humans or fairies.
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aereus
Joined: 08 Jun 2010
Posts: 576
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 3:03 pm
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| Nigel Planter wrote: | | Initially people were saying this was an insult to Kore Yamazaki's work, but she has since come out endorsing this decision and saying she feels it's the correct step to take in combating pirates and unofficial translations and having her work enjoyed by more people around the world... |
Then the industry is truly lost if this becomes the norm. Because it's a race to the bottom trying to out-compete speedsubbers. She doesn't understand the translation process and that it doesn't save any time to TL QC an MTL if you are committed to a quality/accurate translation.
They have the ability to send the overseas licensees advance copies ahead of the street date of the manga: If a licensee is behind on releasing chapters, it means they aren't willing to dedicate the resources necessary to making that happen, or the series doesn't have high enough sales to justify that expense. At that point, you are trading artistic integrity for money, as you're on the same footing as speedsubbers: As long as the words read like grammatically correct English, it's fine right? Who cares if it's wrong.
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flamemasterelan
Joined: 17 Apr 2022
Posts: 486
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 3:09 pm
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Honestly, the best anti-piracy measure was hinted at pages ago when someone brought up how Viz manages to pay their translators to do weekly releases of over 20 series. The Viz Manga and Shonen Jump apps in the US are 2-3 dollars a month, give the first and last three chapters of every manga for free, and still pay their living translators to do weekly releases. Machine translation isn't the answer, investing in infrastructure is. I would gladly pay even double that for access to Square Enix's manga, for example.
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Blanchimont
Joined: 25 Feb 2012
Posts: 3531
Location: Finland
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 4:12 pm
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| flamemasterelan wrote: | | No, it isn't. It's an irrelevant discussion point. It has 10% of the daily users that Facebook has, and it's even worse because you can pay a monthly fee to boost your opinion above anyone else's. Arguing that Twitter should be taken seriously is the most clueless thing you can do. |
That's an unfair comparison, Facebook being the largest behemoth is of course going to dwarf most other social media. Garbage site as X/Twitter may be nowadays after Elon took over, 400 million active daily users and contrary to your claim still hosting folks of all walks of life, hardly matches your unflattering description of it a few of your posts back... And it's actually roughly 13% not 10, if we go by one of the smaller estimates.
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Gem-Bug
Joined: 10 Nov 2018
Posts: 1278
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 4:23 pm
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flamemasterelan
Joined: 17 Apr 2022
Posts: 486
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 5:16 pm
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This was brought up a bit earlier, but it disappoints me, yeah. Like I said, the best way to combat piracy is to make things easily available and fairly priced. Not to sacrifice quality for speed. Viz has the best model for this, IMO, and I wouldn't mind subscribing to another service - even at a higher price point. Instead, we get microtransactions and in-app currency just to temporarily unlock chapters.
| Blanchimont wrote: | | That's an unfair comparison, Facebook being the largest behemoth is of course going to dwarf most other social media. Garbage site as X/Twitter may be nowadays after Elon took over, 400 million active daily users and contrary to your claim still hosting folks of all walks of life, hardly matches your unflattering description of it a few of your posts back... And it's actually roughly 13% not 10, if we go by one of the smaller estimates. |
I'm not going for exact math here, I'm illustrating a point. Facebook has been considered "dying" for years and its daily active users is still almost 10x larger than Twitter's. Twitter's userbase has always been small, and it's always been a problem with people putting too much importance on the response something gets from Twitter. Twitter isn't large enough to be considered an accurate representation of any group. And for the record, I wouldn't look at Facebook for that either. Just make your own arguments, don't point at people who agree with you.
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Avec ou Nous
Joined: 17 Feb 2023
Posts: 137
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Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2023 7:17 pm
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| yuna49 wrote: | | Chise and Elias have no clue what you all are talking about here. And I bet they would prefer to be translated by humans or fairies. |
Chise and Elias are fictional characters who most likely have no feelings on this issue at all. But if they did, they would probably echo the author's feelings since she's the one who writes them. And the author seems to be in support of this decision going off her own words. I guess you could coin the motto "Chise and Elias say AI is cool!" or whatever people on social media like to do with fictional characters making statements on real world issues.
I myself will wait to see what happens with this. I feel like AI has become a boogeyman among certain groups of people who view it as automatically bad and it's always interesting to see Japan be far more open minded about emerging technology compared to the English speaking part of the internet. I doubt it'll be perfect, but then human translation is not perfect either. If nothing else you can rule out intentional malice if a machine makes a mistake compared to a human.
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