The Buzz Over AI Translators

Well, if Tony Stark is Doctor Doom now, someone has to be Iron Man.

Using Artificial Intelligence, or AI, to make art is a very controversial thing at the moment. I think it could help with references or a quick image for a post or something, but the odds of replacing real artists with AI are low given the problems. There have been talk about AI scripts, but most of them are pretty obvious and kind of silly.

The current debate is over localization of anime and manga. A few Japanese publishers in manga and “light novels” have opted to have the translation done through an AI program. Not surprisingly, human localizers are ripping mad. It’s their jobs, after all, but they also claim it will ruin the artistic integrity of the original work.

A statement that elicits laughter from anime fans, especially the purists, who will point out that their translations of late has done exactly that, altering the work not for the local culture but the local perspective, aka “modern audiences”. This is one area where the fans may actually be in favor of AI over humans given some changes made by English localizers that were overt changes done for sociopolitical reasons rather than cultural differences between Japan and the West. So who’s right here?

On the business end there are certainly good reasons for doing this. The one they’re probably most interested in is the cost, but at the same time they’re not eliminating humans entirely. The editor still has to make sure the translated dialog makes sense. While even Google Translator has improved over the years, there are still grammatical differences between Japanese and English that don’t exist, for example, between French and English or German and English. Early fan translations show you how more poetic the dialog comes off with a literal translation. The editor also has to make sure gags work between the two languages. Rhyming puns in Japanese don’t come off the same way in English, as the two words won’t rhyme in the same language.

For example, according to an old fan translation of the anime Beast Wars The Second, one of the Maximals/Cybertrons turns into a squid, and there’s a joke about squid being cool because the Japanese words for “squid” and “cool” sound the same. That joke would have to be reworked in English to elicit the same response from an English-speaking audience. Other references make sense to someone who live in or studies the culture of Japan but not to anyone else, and sometimes shoving in an explanation isn’t a viable option, while at other times a necessity. You have to balance that out for the sake of the readers.

This is where the localizers say the art can be ruined. Even if the dialog can be better translated, computers don’t know what a human audience wants in a given reason. Cultural translations is probably the hardest part of the job…and this is where they’re failing. Where in the past Sailor Moon‘s TV dubbers were chastised by anime purists for turning gay characters into women or “cousins”, now they take a simple crossdresser and assume they’re gay, trans, or both in the name of being an “ally” to a bunch of  activist stereotypes claiming to speak for their cultural group. Tomboys are no longer straight girls, if they’re girls at all, in essence making the same translation alteration they complained about with the TV version of Sailor Moon. It’s still misgendering and that’s supposed to be a bad thing.

The cultural revisions don’t end there. If the translator finds a joke going against their likes, and you mostly hear about this in anime and video games, they’ll change it and the editor will be none the wiser. Bilingual fans on the other hand will totally notice the difference and put it out on the internet, either as trivia or being one of the voices opposed to this alteration. Meanwhile, they’ll happily putting references about “smashing the patriarchy” or “gamergate” that wasn’t in the original text. (I don’t think Japan even cares about Gamergate. At least not until recently amid the whole Assassin’s Creed: Shadows debacle.) Basically, they’re inserting their own political and social viewpoints into the translation, taking the original meaning out in favor of their own…and outright bragging about it on TwitterX as a badge of honor. Even a gay trans anime purist who doesn’t make up in the morning saying “what gay trans thing can I do today” is going to tell them off, but they’re so obsessed with their ally status they’ll attack them along with the other purists and anyone right of far left.

So the AI should have a more accurate translation, which makes both fans and the manga/novel writers who are getting sick of seeing their work mistranslated happy, and the editor just has to do some minor dialog and cultural fixes, along with guessing where the story is going to go or risk contradicting a plan by the writer a few chapters down the line. As for that other reason, it’s speed. The goal is simultaneous releases of the manga chapters and light novels in both the East and West. AI speeds up the process since it doesn’t need sleep, food, and bathroom breaks, just the occasional update and reboot. Is it fair to the human workers? Usually I’d say “no”, and I’m not even one of those people who are upset by those self checkout registers. I still prefer to use a human cashier in case there’s a problem, and I’ve been a cashier before so I relate to them, but if you’re in a hurry and are satisfied that there is a human there to help if something’s amiss, feel free.

In this case, however, the human translators who have misused their position to push their causes have hurt their own argument. You don’t get to complain that the AI will immediately be guilty of the same thing you’re doing while bragging about why you’re doing it. Now the editors will get a more accurate translation to what the creator envisions and just have to compensate for the grammar and cultural barriers instead of ensuring more barriers weren’t put up because they assume every crossdressing character is trans even if that’s not the case for that character. (I remember when crossdressing was considered weird but not an indication that a man wanted to be a woman necessarily, while tomboys were just girls who preferred statistically boy activities and fashion senses. Too bad the fashion industry never capitalized on that by find out why they preferred those outfits and tried to make more masculine dresses and until recently women’s sports jerzees. What would a masculine dress look like? Beats me, you’ve seen what my characters’ outfits look like. Do you think I know anything about fashion?)

So is this use of AI a positive? It just might be for the creators and the fans. As long as the localizers aren’t doing their jobs properly it’s the best option for the company overall if they actually want people to buy their products rather than pirating it online for a proper translation that the audience can still follow. You don’t claim fealty to the source material when you’re worldview supplants the creator’s.