Forum - View topicNEWS: Shogakukan Releases 'Novelous' Light Novel/Manga App Using AI Translation in U.S., Canada
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PipimiOden
 Posts: 208 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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Shogakukan thinks we're stupid, ok got it. |
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DamianSalazar
Posts: 786 |
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These manga publishers (Shogakukan and TO Books) are so greedy they'll outright refuse to pay translators to translate their stuff, they'll stoop so low into using machine translations which are of a worse quality than scanlations.
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I Am Audrey, how are you
Posts: 53 |
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Why, there's already an app with most of Shogakukan's publishings, it's Viz Media
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5609 |
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flop
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OtomeGay
 Posts: 146 |
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Yeah, no. Not supporting this or any AI "translations."
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Cho_Desu
 Posts: 246 |
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Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.
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gorilla491
Posts: 73 |
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Theres things advancing with tech, then there's the artist who have to float around it, yup 100% boycott, this is going to cost jobs
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SHD
Posts: 1760 |
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I more or less gave up trying to use this forum anymore, but I felt the need to comment on this... Note, I'm not advocating the use of AI for translation. I'm trying to point out a few things that I think are important, as someone who works in this industry and is also using AI. Anyway. Point 1: Machine translation and AI translation are completely different things. Yes, technically AI is also a machine, but "machine translation" as an industry term covers something that is similar but fundamentally different, the main difference lying in the "intelligence" part. Generally, machine translation works really well with highly formulaic text like contracts and whatnot, at least when the engine's database is large and well-maintained. Of course it still needs to be fully post-edited by a human for optimal results, but by and large machine translation has its use cases and for those it's pretty good. AI, on the other hand, sucks at formulaic by its very nature, but it's decent at "translating" "free style" texts, if trained and prompted well. I put "translating" in quotes because technically it's not translating, but interpreting (in its own way) the original text and then generating it in a different language - that's what a good translator does, by the way. However, unlike a good translator, AI is not good enough for translating texts more creative than say, a decent commercial. I don't think it'll ever be, unless it gains sentience, simply because it's a machine and doesn't know what it's doing and why. It can fake understanding really well, of course, but as long as it lacks self-awareness and true understanding of the text it's handling it won't be able to "get" a whole lot of literary devices that (most) humans innately understand. Point 2: That being said... even at its worst, something on the level of ChatGPT is going to be great at generating decent texts, insofar as it'll be readable and sound more or less natural (if it's trained and prompted well, of course). Meaning, the quality is not going to be worse than average or below scanlations. Because dear god, the scanlations I've seen. Hell, so SO many translations of anything, fan or otherwise. They're just terrible, and not necessarily because they're mistranslated (often, though! VERY often) or linguistically bad, but simply because the person creating them clearly has zero affinity for translating. They are clearly unable to parse a given block of text as a whole, just go from word to word, sentence to sentence (much like a machine translation engine, very much unlike AI), and the result is a disconnected, unnatural mess. Frankly, even AI would do better than most of these human translators (especially considering the level of writing in most webnovels). I see this very often with, for example, fan translations of lyrics and poetry, where the person translating seems unable to interpret a stanza as a whole, and translates each line as if it was its own separate entity. But it's more and more frequent with book translations as well (at least in my first language), for a great many reasons ranging from translators being underpaid which then dilutes the field; the easy availability of machine translation engines such as DeepL or Google Translate; and publishers trying to further save money by not using editors or not paying them properly either, which again, dilutes the field. And this brings us to... Point 3: COMPLAIN, PEOPLE! FORMALLY! TO THE COMPANIES AND STAKEHOLDERS AND ANYONE AND EVERYONE. Companies think they can get away with things like AI translations or just generally releasing poorly translated books, because quite frankly - they already DO get away with it. Every now and then something really terrible is released such as the subs to that show a few months back, there's some outcry, some steps are taken, and then it all dies down. But most of the time, as long as the text SEEMS halfway decent... nobody complains. (Most don't even notice!) Some people may grumble on forums and social media, but most of them are like "I'm just happy I can read this in my language!" and shell out the money for subpar translations, and companies are like "alright, this works!" It shouldn't work, this shouldn't be the standard. But as long as the customers are seemingly satisfied with subpar products, well... why wouldn't companies continue on this road? So do complain. Even if they release your favorite thing, don't buy it if it's AI translated, and let the whole world know why. If it's human translated, demand your money back if the translation sucks. Demand and reward releases that had been given proper attention and care. And so on. Unless we complain and make a huge noise, they're just going to continue. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7585 Location: Wales |
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Worse than some scanlations. You have to sift through a lot of machine translated slop to find anything translated by anyone with a half decent command of both English and Japanese these days, especially with tools that automate the entire process available. There’s a lot of readers out there who don’t speak English as a first language so don’t care that the translator didn’t either (and was using a machine translation because they didn’t speak any Japanese to boot) and are seemingly even willing to pay to read chapters early on Patreon or scammy aggregator sites using coins to unlock chapters. I can’t even take a look, because this is yet another North America locked app from a Japanese company. I’m also struggling with AI cutting out an entire paid role halving the translation costs. Does using the AI somehow cost half what paying a translator would? Are they still using human editors and are doing a stupid sum where editors and translators get paid the exact same amount per book? |
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SinisterOracle
Posts: 442 |
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People must not use these products and must also complain to Shogakukan and other companies attempting the same with AI and ML to make their voices heard and to put a stop to this practice. That’s the only way to effect change.
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AQuin1904
Posts: 271 |
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Don't know about this specific case, but it's hardly unheard of for a company to claim to use "AI," then hire translators to "proofread" (read: do it over from scratch for half the pay). Agencies used to (and probably still do) pull the same scam by hiring totally unqualified people who work for peanuts and letting an "editor" do all the actual work. |
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Bertram
 Posts: 51 |
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If it means no more censorship, then I'm all for it.
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thekingsdinner
 Posts: 1109 Location: Geertruidenberg, Netherlands |
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Well this is just sad.
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2494 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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A great point from translator Katrina Leonoudakis on BlueSky:
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4661 Location: New York |
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This is ultimately about saving money, nothing more and nothing less. But we know that AI is not accurate enough to be trusted with these sorts of task on this sort of scale. Unless the cost reflects the savings from using AI, which it assuredly will not, the whole thing seems half baked.
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