The problem with that is that it will only remove the translator's job, not the localizers.
Because Japanese grammar is basically incompatible with being hard translated, especially informally. It will require at minimum some editting to even make the slightest bit of sense, and realistically someone to still compare the original text to what the machine spat out and fill in the gaps.
So we aren't in any better shape with AI, unless you are after pure Hard MTL. Which, if you've read the manga who use that, is basically so fucking garbage that its basically like reading the cliffs notes version of the story. Even if you don't care about the story, you'll still end up with the early Nintendo level translations where outright quests and clues are completely botched into trial/error gameplay.
The California ones, the Asian, Indian, hell even Russian and Middle East ones if they have programs FULLY accept racism in fact it's a core feature.
It's why they'll be more advanced than the western variety, the West is deliberately crippling development by trying to make it use pronouns and other bullshit while the ones outside the bubble are advancing to the point that they could easily do advanced cyberattacks on a whim.
And as much as some people want to be doomers about it, I think it is only a matter of time until a Western AI comes up that was made out of the bubble. Much of what we are dealing with in tech and entertainment is a product of the fact that this was all done in basically two places in California. But tech has already been taking off in other parts of the country with people who were never in the bubble (there are more tech companies in Dallas, TX than Silicon Valley now) and entertainment is slowly doing the same, eventually someone is going to decide they are leaving money on the table.
I wouldn't ever advocate not pursuing it, but I don't see AI making much of a change on the legitimate industry's issues.
Its just extremely unlucky for us all that the one country producing the media everyone wants to consume is the one with the most fucking absurd language. Because if it was Spanish or French cartoons, the AI would already be able to supplant them all.
Unfortunately, that language barrier might've been one of the reasons they aren't infected as badly as say the French and Spanish with leftist ideology.
That and China, if you live in close proximity to China and want to remain independent you have to at least be resistant to subversion.
What do you think a translator does? It's not just replace language A word X with language B word Y. LLMs can translate one grammar to another just fine.
What localizers do is try to replace cultural references that a different region wouldn't understand. Like if someone made a one-off Dr Seuss reference, it might not make sense to a Japanese audience and localizers will substitute that.
Clearly I was in the wrong to assume the professional industry operates similarly to the piracy industry of scanlation, where usually a Jap guy who speaks a little English drops a rough direct translation and then a different guy localizes it into something that sounds readable.
Yep. Fan translations often leave the weird cultural references intact and add a footnote to explain it. Professionals assume that will be a jarring experience and rewrite it.
The problem with that is that it will only remove the translator's job, not the localizers.
Because Japanese grammar is basically incompatible with being hard translated, especially informally. It will require at minimum some editting to even make the slightest bit of sense, and realistically someone to still compare the original text to what the machine spat out and fill in the gaps.
So we aren't in any better shape with AI, unless you are after pure Hard MTL. Which, if you've read the manga who use that, is basically so fucking garbage that its basically like reading the cliffs notes version of the story. Even if you don't care about the story, you'll still end up with the early Nintendo level translations where outright quests and clues are completely botched into trial/error gameplay.
It's still worth advancing the use of AI and trying to see if we can get it to the point it can do the localisers job too fully.
That's how bad current localisers are, that we'd pursue years of development and investment because they couldn't keep ideology out of their work.
The problem is that AI is now being trained by "sensitivity" trainers by all the major tech branches.
While the translations may be close to accurate, it will also be infected by the same sort of "sensibilities" as the typical localisers.
The only reliable AI translators would be open-source ones maintained by pure linguists who have zero propensities for "sensitivity" readings.
The California ones, the Asian, Indian, hell even Russian and Middle East ones if they have programs FULLY accept racism in fact it's a core feature.
It's why they'll be more advanced than the western variety, the West is deliberately crippling development by trying to make it use pronouns and other bullshit while the ones outside the bubble are advancing to the point that they could easily do advanced cyberattacks on a whim.
And as much as some people want to be doomers about it, I think it is only a matter of time until a Western AI comes up that was made out of the bubble. Much of what we are dealing with in tech and entertainment is a product of the fact that this was all done in basically two places in California. But tech has already been taking off in other parts of the country with people who were never in the bubble (there are more tech companies in Dallas, TX than Silicon Valley now) and entertainment is slowly doing the same, eventually someone is going to decide they are leaving money on the table.
I wouldn't ever advocate not pursuing it, but I don't see AI making much of a change on the legitimate industry's issues.
Its just extremely unlucky for us all that the one country producing the media everyone wants to consume is the one with the most fucking absurd language. Because if it was Spanish or French cartoons, the AI would already be able to supplant them all.
Unfortunately, that language barrier might've been one of the reasons they aren't infected as badly as say the French and Spanish with leftist ideology.
That and China, if you live in close proximity to China and want to remain independent you have to at least be resistant to subversion.
What do you think a translator does? It's not just replace language A word X with language B word Y. LLMs can translate one grammar to another just fine.
What localizers do is try to replace cultural references that a different region wouldn't understand. Like if someone made a one-off Dr Seuss reference, it might not make sense to a Japanese audience and localizers will substitute that.
Clearly I was in the wrong to assume the professional industry operates similarly to the piracy industry of scanlation, where usually a Jap guy who speaks a little English drops a rough direct translation and then a different guy localizes it into something that sounds readable.
Yep. Fan translations often leave the weird cultural references intact and add a footnote to explain it. Professionals assume that will be a jarring experience and rewrite it.