Amazon has already rolled out AI-generated subtitles for Crunchyroll anime. I discovered this while watching Last Exile, a show that has already been subtitled and dubbed in English.
It's funny for a second, and then incredibly frustrating after that. Character names are regularly wrong, and sentences get rewritten to have different meanings. Instead of just reading subtitles, you have to mentally evaluate them for errors.
At best, AI generated subtitles should be a last resort.
That's the part that really confuses me. Somebody already did pay for translation from Japanese to English subtitles, then for a voice cast to dub the anime. The original subtitles are nowhere to be found; the closed captions are based on the English language dub.
Already happened last year, both with fansubs and official releases - Nokotan springs to mind. It was indeed a trainwreck. Although having it done real time should also be funny.
Wouldn't be new though, entertainment companies are already exploring AI subtitles; and official anime subtitles can be a trainwreck too.
> Many anime fans were concerned about the low-quality subtitles in The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons' debut episode, leading some to believe that they had been generated by A.I. These subtitles were notoriously awkward -- occasionally to the point of being nonsensical -- and featured numerous grammar issues; Crunchyroll was forced to delete the episode following outrage by fans on social media, with many asking why they didn't pay professionals to do a better job.
IMO this kind of thing is a symptom of so few people knowing multiple languages. It doesn’t take much time in a second language to realize how much of an art translation is. Heck, even if you only know English, reading a few translations of classic literature should make it obvious. I really hope AI doesn’t totally ruin the market for actually decent translations of books, films, and television by making something “good enough” so cheap that nobody gets into the industry anymore.
DeppL's business model is exactly this. The words translated per day increases a lot the past few years, because of it. You let DeepL translate the text, and real Translators use it as a starting point.
DeepL is already pretty good, but it still needs a proper translator for the optimal output. That translator just saves a lot of time not having to translate every word.
It's funny for a second, and then incredibly frustrating after that. Character names are regularly wrong, and sentences get rewritten to have different meanings. Instead of just reading subtitles, you have to mentally evaluate them for errors.
At best, AI generated subtitles should be a last resort.