[0x_rs]

Machine translation has been a curse for those who enjoy content that's not usually promptly translated and instead sits there for years if not decades. Not uncommon are people asking in broken English how to use certain tools e.g. automated DeepL scripts and releasing their "translations" (or edited machine translations, changing just some of most glaring issues with the text, generally), thus "burning" a release, that is not going to be taken by real translators that require weeks, months of draining work to complete so that context, subtlety and most meaning from the original source is not lost.

It's a race to the bottom. It doesn't sound nice to say, but as things become more accessible it's harder and harder to filter out genuine content from look-alikes, asset flips and low-effort automations, this may be unfamiliar to anybody looking at Steam releases for example. I wonder how it'll turn out for artwork. I want to be optimistic and think of it as an additional tool to artists or people that want to create new things rather than a displacement wave with its significantly smaller costs.

[kmeisthax]

I can concur; there was a scandal within the fan translation scene for PC-98 games when it came out that at least one high-profile "translator" was just lightly-editing machine translated output to sound correct. Problem is, there are all sorts of mistakes you can make in translation that will not sound incorrect at all unless you speak both languages.

I must ask what you mean by "burning" a release, though. If we're talking about fan translations, stuff gets retranslated all the time. And most of the stuff that gets fan translated is far too niche to justify a commercial release to begin with. If something is popular enough to get an official release, the fan translations either get taken down or disappear on their own.