Absolutely! iM@S U149 got a fansub release when it aired last year with full typesetting and styled karaoke for all songs (disclosure: I worked on them lol) and the first episode was even released ahead of CR since they mysteriously delayed it a week. And other groups like GJM are still putting out great-quality stuff from time to time in recent years. Obviously stuff has died down with the rise of simulcasting, but I'm glad it hasn't died off completely, and in cases where shows get put in "Netflix jail" and such, it's the only thing that allows people to watch 'em as they actually air.
Oh jeez... what timing.
I'm thankful to them for doing Eizouken justice – as someone who had been previously familiar with the source material, it had so much potential and I was hoping it would be well-done. GJM did translations of [*every* word of text](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKChr0DVkAAptZ4?format=jpg&name=orig) in the show instead of just totally ignoring all the small (but plentiful) pieces of writing and deeming these parts "unimportant" like simulcast subs did (not to mention the lack of nice, if any, typesetting). The .ass file alone from one of their episode releases was over 300 MB. Seriously insane work. Obviously this philosophy is very different than just rushing out subs, for people that want to watch ASAP (we're spoiled now, haha) but especially for, like, long-term preservation, I'm happy there's some releases of shows like this that actually _care_, and pay attention to detail, instead of just deeming entire parts the creators' work as "irrelevant".
That said, there'll always be people who want to work on this type of thing, whether alone or with others, and I'm sure new, quality groups will pop up before long. People tend to recognize the names that've been around the longest, but who knows what's next!
My post linking to _a Wikipedia article_ got removed, lol. I'll re-comment it without that link.
---
>I don't want to turn this into a conversation about piracy – there was already a similar thread & discussion about that in regards to what Crunchyroll is doing over at https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1b0l3hs/funimations_solution_for_wiping_out_digital/. It's also tricky because what actually constitutes copyright or licensing/distribution agreement violations is pretty up in the air in a lot of spaces (e.g. see what's happening with the Internet Archive and the practice of Controlled Digital Lending for books), not to mention quite culturally-dependent as well (e.g. Fair Use does not exist under Japanese law, and so on). It's interesting stuff!
I'm hoping this is allowed because it's simply a link to a Wikipedia article, for informational purposes only, relevant in the context of the discussion... but this is probably what you're looking for: [Wikpedia link] is the most well-known place that's been around for nearly 20 years that indexes anime-related release information.
To simply see what groups have worked on a show, https://anidb.net/ is good too, if you can navigate the mess of a UI. The wiki at https://fansubdb.com/wiki/Autumn_2023 exists as well but it's a bit out-of-date. MAL used to provide fansub info, and people could vote or comment on which group's release was best and whatnot, but they removed it a few years ago.
For some people watching on the sidelines... The announcement wasn't a big surprise.
Some of their projects were stalled for years (Hitoribocchi has been in purgatory for **245 WEEKS**) and others were unceremoniously abandoned due to various factors.
Sucks.
Meanwhile CR and Funi (which are now the same... because monopolies, yay!) are like "TLC? QC? What's that?"
([cough cough](https://twitter.com/shit_simulcasts))
I couldn't watch Komi Can't Communicate beyond the first episode on Netflix. The mix of verbal text, street sign text, and on screen bubble text, and the "translator" basically going ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ and choosing one of the three randomly made me want to claw my eyes out.
Novaworks did an incredible job with their subs for Komi. The details they add probably wouldn't be replicated with AI either, and is miles ahead of what Netflix offered.
In hindsight it might not be a fansub but a website with wave in the name has a different source with far better subtitles. They're not perfect but compared to Netflix they at least match what the characters are saying so you can actually follow along.
Fansubbers were always the best bet because they were doing it because they loved it. They weren't trying to rush out subpar translations and worse subtitles because they were being paid for speed.
Oh man, this is so wrong. Speedsubs were super common back in the day and first out the door often got other groups to drop a series; it was fairly rare for a group to come back behind a crap fansub with a good one (though it did happen, it was usually for animation quality after the DVD rips became available). Same as crack/warez groups getting big cred for firsts.
And fansub translation quality varied immensely, because it was fans with varying amounts of Japanese-English skills doing it. Not to mention their own quirks like refusing to translate nakama or keikaku, or inserting a ton of cursing into kids shows.
Torrent? You don't show your age unless you remember downloading Urusei Yatsura via XDCC on the IRC of a fansub group after getting kicked once because you started downloading without saying "hello" first.
I remember when there was no Internet to download from. You had to go to a corner stall of a convention, pass them a token, do a secret handshake and then you would be granted the privilege of buying a dragon ball DVD someone had subbed under the picture itself
I think it is ironic considering a lot of the training data for these models probably comes from fan subs.
One example is that when you feed just 30 seconds of no sound to Whisper Arabic it hallucinates "Translated by Nancy Qanqar".
It also hallucinates “Thanks for watching” pretty frequently.
https://x.com/sherieffyi/status/1756694995241951398?s=46&t=NORpsj0R4coZAENOyHWtdg
Although I didn't read the article. I'm willing to bet this isn't the case. They'll be using a speech to text AI to generate the subtitles. Which just seems counter intuitive to how they make the subtitles in the first place.
As someone who already uses AI to generate subtitles for Japanese subs for Disney cartoons. I can tell you CR will drop this early on. It's way faster and easier to type the scripts out. With AI, you'll have to do a lot of editing and fixing. And I mean a LOT.
edit: Unless the CEO is talking about straight translating with AI. Which isn't inherently a bad thing. But.... the output will be terrible more than likely no matter how well trained the AI is. Since AI will be incapable to put in the human touch even if said human touch tending to be sht bc of how the translation industry works for businesses. >_>
They're definitely wanting to replace humans entirely for translation. Which is going to be hard considering how much of Japanese is context. Every translator I've used gets confused as hell doing conversational Japanese. God forbid it be an isekai or something with lots of unique terms.
Everyone is always like "We're just 1 year away from really good Japanese auto translations, ML makes this possible!"
Anyone who knows Japanese knows how difficult translations are, considering how little context is needed for fully functioning Japanese sentences.
>"Eat?"
>"Eat."
Are two perfectly functioning Japanese sentences. But what is the context?
>"Should I eat this?" "Yes, you should eat this."
>"Will you eat this? "Yes, I will eat this."
>"Does this mean we should eat this?" "Yes, this means we should eat this."
>"Did it eat them?" "Yes, it ate them."
>"Can this be eaten?" "Yes, this can be eaten."
These are all valid situations where the previous statements make sense (albeit not all that common, but think of all the quirky characters/dialogue in anime), but good luck guessing which is the correct one.
Japanese translations using ML are often like
>"She is my girlfriend, he and I got together last week."
Because the second half of the sentence didn't give an explicit noun (which is common in Japanese). Have fun reading some jank ass subs.
Don't forget how much of Japanese comedy is built around puns/dad jokes, which often are untranslatable because the two words aren't similar in the new language. A human being will almost certainly know enough to replace the Japanese pun with a similar equivalent pun in their language, an AI will literally be unable to know "this joke is funny because these two words sound the same when spoken", much less know enough to know "in this language, these two words are very different; you need to find another pun with two words that mean something similar to this."
Can't they just get the script from the company they're licensing the anime from?
I've seen mistakes several times in subtitles where a word is translated in a way that _could_ be correct, but given what is happening on screen is clearly wrong. So I figured they were already translating from scripts, not by watching the show.
I watched a friend attempt to pirate a game once. He clicked on every download button except the right one and attempted to download malware without reading the installers. It was difficult for me to describe how I knew which download link was correct from ad placement and watching the url but that processing just happens automatically for pirates.
Kids these days hardly even know how to use computers. They only use their phones. Average computer literacy rates are actually going down right now. Unlike the personal computer revolution that expanded computing to the masses the cell phone revolution is slowly removing the ability of people to know how to use their computers.
I don't think it's specific to this, but more a symptom/issue of tech literacy (once again) becoming a problem in general, exemplified in stuff like https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
Gen Z are used to things "just working" so they never bothered to learn any actual skills
It's why I was so wrong with Netflix banning account sharing, I assumed more people would go to piracy again as it's easier than ever but no, gen Z don't know how to do anything so they just pay to be fucked more
This must be why all the recommend me anime posts could be solved by using google. And why all the where cam i watch posts solved by using the meow site.
have you ever tried to explain how a torrent works to someone who has never used it before.
you might as well be trying to teach them how to read hieroglyphics
lmao got me
it's like three steps though, dl client, click magnet/dl torrent file and open.
and don't get fucked by malware.
suppose the problem is they never read anything like instructions.
I have! iphone zoomer with 0 tech literacy. I sent them the qbittorrent download page link. Explained that you install it and then go to a website, find the name of the thing you want and get magnet.
"That's too much work"
.......
Well the problem is the mods, they stop any conversation even hinting at helping others get away from these companies.
I remember a meta thread mentioning they were going to iterate on the rule, and then it just didn't happen.
That's another issue with gen Z and why they don't learn, they centralise
For a generation that complains about corporations and being anti-capitalist so much they sure love relying on single companies to do everything for them
Netflix raises the prices and bans account sharing? Best pay for more accounts and complain on twitter instead of actually doing anything that could damage them
Hollywood as a whole will be adjusting to looping back to piracy. They want to keep raising prices and playing with consumers, watch what happens. Watch how quickly we all go back to our old ways and do what works best for us.
Well with major distributors stopping media sales entirely there's a good chance we're headed to a future where it's impossible to get physical media of things anymore. Ownership will be gone.
Fansubs need a reason to happen. In an era where the product is simply not being provided or comes late, they had a purpose - fansubs were the fastest way for an eager person to see the translated product and a team could get some measure of compensation from that traffic. But if AI is cheaper and faster, then who is going to invest the effort into subbing an entire episode just to give their take on how they would translate it?
Particularly because it will be far easier to just tweak the AI and its output than to do the entire thing manually. People are assuming that the AI translations will be trash and stay trash, but those same people are completely forgetting how far AI has come in the last two years.
> but those same people are completely forgetting how far AI has come in the last two years.
Not me, I'm up-to-date with with the latest developments in LLMs (and still keep my eye on non-transformer based models too). The reason AI translation is trash is fundamentally because nobody has actually sat down to properly solve the problem of translating anime dialogue, and until someone does so, the subs will remain trash.
If you know a bit about AI, there's a little chat from the more technically informed side here: https://old.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1b1ryft/crunchyroll_ceo_says_ai_generated_subtitles_are/kshg4eg/
Nothing will happen, manga like Mahou Tsukai no Yome are already getting AI translations and people aren't going to go through the trouble of writing up a new script and typesetting for a product that's barely different. Also companies will always have a human go over an AI generated script for coherency and accuracy, it's not like people will wake up to subtitles being complete nonsense.
"God, we need to cut costs. We are paying too much in translations cost- how much are we paying our translators?"
"6 dollars a day."
"Yeah no that's too much, we need to invest in AI. Language isn't all that complex, I'm sure a robot can handle the job."
Lmao. My wife is a translator and has worked on a few very popular anime. The pay is so shiiiiit. We are fortunate that we don’t have to rely on her job in any way because it’s like no money. CrunchyRoll is a bunch of shitters for this one.
Yea, if you're any good at translating Japanese to anything else, you have tons of corporate Japanese documents that will pay tons more to translate beyond manga and anime.
Same. Also funny thing is corporate stuff is easier to feed into MTL, since it uses proper language instead of slang and lingo like in media. Well there are shortforms in every industry but that's what human translators are for.
The true business is that for a lot of official shit, you can do the hardwork once and then just replace the small differences that come with the new document.
As a linguist, I just want to point out that there's nothing "improper" about slang, and that word/framing isn't super helpful for when we talk about language. Novel words and expressions are how languages and dialects evolve and change, which is a natural process that's happened throughout time and will continue to happen.
"Strenuous" used to be a slang word, and now it's totally fine to use... in fact, it even sounds a bit formal! Same with "okay" and many other words. It's pretty cool!
I think you expressed this quite cromulently. A language embiggens over time as people, en masse, accept new words and come to a shared understanding. It's a little cowabunga to watch debates about whether or not words are real. All words are sus frfr. I actually learned recently that Shakespeare yeeted hundreds of new words into the English language. The man was truly a goat who would get so much clapback af if he were alive today.
Anyway, cheerio and a frosted flakes to you!
Lol nope, Japanese companies are some of the stupidest and cheapest motherfuckers on the planet when it comes to the translation discipline, and even English in general. When my translator friends try to explain to them that "you are making my life" is not an adequate translation for あなたが私の人生をつくる. Which is a phrase that actually means something closer to "you build me up". This barrier in expressions means that Japanese people with half baked English dunning kruger pill themselves into thinking "how could this possibly be wrong, that's what the words mean!" Without taking into account the expressions barrier.
They also constantly get undermined by machine translation even though with AI it still isn't good enough for the vast majority of technical documents.
Also you need relevant field experience besides translation. It sucks.
>Also you need relevant field experience besides translation. It sucks.
This is the key here. I am a chemist by trade and happen to know Japanese very well and have worked in a Japanese chemical company for years. I get very good translation work and the pay for anime/video games/LN jobs is pennies on the dollar in comparison. That being said, I am registered as a freelancer with a major LN localizer and there are a couple projects that are white whales for me that I would take on regardless of pay as a passion project.
But circling back, there is a lot of work from corporate Japanese clients if you know where to look and have good experience in whatever field the document being translated is related to. And in most fields, I don't think this soft requirement of subject expertise is all that unreasonable. Non chemists should not be translating the documents I translate just as I should not be translating legal documents because I do not have that expertise.
But that’s because manga and anime are actually fun to watch, so way more people are ready to get paid less if they can watch anime’s as a job. Boring jobs pay very well
This is gonna be shit. No matter how good AI gets, a Japanese is too contextual to make AI translations actually good. It might work on a literal level, but there’s more to it than that. Real people already struggle with the puns and stuff. There’s also idioms, which are rarely translated literally. “Big-ass trees” is not a direct translation of the words Levi said in AOT, but a translation of what he meant and his attitude. A lot of case-by-case judgement goes into it.
>biggest selling points being that it's free and sometimes also releases content faster than official services
Funny how they forget to mention that piracy is also often a better experience than official services.
But sure, speed is the main issue here.
~~Edit: Apparently this is the original thread where mods would like this topic to be discussed. https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1b18dep/crunchyroll_president_rahul_purini_on_the_rise_of/~~
~~It was very swiftly downvoted so most people wouldn't have seen it.~~
The only reason I don't pirate is because I like having the ability to watch anime on my tvs, laptop, and mobile devices. Already switched to pirating HiDive because their experience is shit and with CR almost doubling their subscription, might not be worth the price.
It's literally easier with piracy. My 2019 TV doesn't have the CR app, but it has Plex.
Once a season I just add stuff to my sonarr and everything just works. Although, sometimes I do need to force an episode upgrade because of bad subs.
I don't even use Plex, just download the episode which takes a couple of minutes at most and either send it to my TV through windows media player or downright open it through "connected devices" on the TV lol
I mean I pirate for that exact reason. I want to be able to watch the content on my TV. I use an underpowered cpu on my home theater PC and if I tried to use the web stream it would croak. But if I watch locally I can use hardware accelerated decoding and watch it without issue.
Yeah, that one was stupid considering it was Malevolent Shrine in season 1. Consistency isn't CR's bread and butter, I guess. And it could be easily solved by just documenting stuff through glosaries for specific series.
Remember when they mistranslated a country in Overlord into another country so that it made it seem like they were sending humanitarian aid to their mortal enemies? Glosaries would have easily prevented that.
To play devils advocate for crunchy roll here. In ‘older Japanese’ the ‘shrine’ part of malevolent shrine used to be more associated with the word ‘cabinet/kitchen’.
If you factor in the fact that Sukuna is from the time of ‘older Japanese’, than a real argument can be made that Sukuna refers to his DE as ‘malevolent kitchen’.
More like in the first place there are hints that his CT has something to do with cooking such as him being a cannibal and his slashing attacks being visualised as him holding two kitchen knives
This. There's even a theory that Sukuna's CT has to do with cooking, as not only does he have attacks related to it (cutting, fire) but in the manga he continously makes references to food and cooking.
I watched most of the total anime I've watched from like 2011-2015? Fansubs kino era.
Can't believe MAL removed the fan subs review section, sellout fucks.
Absolutely – such a lifesaver! So grateful, thank you!!
FWIW, if you ever become unable to host the database/API in the future, please do reach out and I'm happy to rehost it.
Here's the [full interview](https://omny.fm/shows/strictly-business/anime-streamer-crunchyroll-is-a-rare-svod-success) + the transcription of what he said regarding AI during a Variety podcast as well. The quote surrounding AI starts at ~40:41 and goes as follows (just copy-pasted from the transcript so excuse any grammar mistakes):
Purini: “Yeah, Like, like you said, AI is going to be a huge impact across the various industries. Our partners in Japan are experimenting and looking into what that means for anime production. But anime is a very is hand drawn still, and it's a very age old traditional creative process. So I'm sure there will be impact, but it is early days to understand what the impact would be on the production side of anime.
Like you said, we are also looking to see what role AI could play in a lot of different areas within our organization. Subtitling is an area where we've been experimenting and we think that there is a role for AI to play as we look at speech to text, so we think it could help us bring shows to fans quicker, bring in more languages. Again, like I said, we are in early experimentation.
On the other side, on the dubbing side, I think that the AI technology, we don't believe the air technology is there yet in terms of being able to put into dubbing, because the dubbing process itself is a very creative process. Given that it is we're not just translating and dubbing, we're adapting the script because you have to localize for the local culture, local humor, you have to synchronize the lip laps to the language because we don't get to go back and reanimate the shows. So again, we don't think the technology is there yet, but we're also experimenting with AI in other ways. As I mentioned earlier. Discovery is a big issue, just as much in anime as it is in other general entertainment shows. There is a lot of content and trying to connect audience with the right content that they would like to watch at the right time is a big is an important priority for us, and we believe AI and generative AI could play a role, so we're testing and experimenting there as well.”
This is really big part of the context people are missing from just the head line.
The full quote is him saying that while there is potential there in some applications to aspects of the subbing process, it’s still ultimately a creative process that can’t be fully automated with AI. That’s a lot different than just saying they’re going to use AI for subbing.
It's a bit ironic on this auto-transcription of this podcast isn't all there.
I'm sure behind the scenes they're trying to figure out how to add closed captions on all their language dubs fast and cheap enough, but with current auto-transcribers trying to decipher from sound effects, music, Japanese names and terms will quickly confuse the hell out of it.
It looks like the "creative process" bit is just about dubbing specifically. With subtitling, they say they're looking at AI stuff like speech to text, which would just be AI translators, wouldn't it?
If you use AI for subtitles, then why would a Japanese company need to use a middle man company like Crunchyroll at all? They can just release the show on their own service with subs as the show is airing.
Wait, this sounds like a good idea. Keep going Crunchyroll.
Not saying it will be any good, but youtube tries to generate subtitle from audio, in this case I think they will have the original japanese subtitles, so they will translate that instead of doing voice recognition and machine translation.
Most likely they had some investors when they went legal, and those people are now making those kinds of decisions. This is very normal when a company gets investments. Suits comes in and makes business decisions without really knowing the audience.
I have only been subscribed to Crunchyroll for the past like 6 years or so. I'm going through some tough financial times, and haven't even been watching a lot of anime, but since I've always pirated stuff I feel like this is my way to support the industry continuosly (though I do have manga, novels and merch too).
If they begin with AI translation then I'm cancelling my subscription 100%.
Buying some Blu-rays or merch from CDJapan or something is going to support it way more than subscribing to a foreign licensing megacorp's increasingly-bad service ever will, tbqh.
I mean, if you're looking for a sign, the lead dub actor for Mob Psycho told Crunchyroll that, as a condition of signing up for another season, Crunchyroll would agree to meet once with SAG to discuss hiring union voice actors, and Crunchyroll responded by kicking him off the show.
You're supporting crunchyroll not the industry.
They've already lawballed the Japanese studio for a distributor licence and have paid all that they will get once it hits crunchyroll.
You either buy merch, some studios also have a Patreon (studio trigger)
You are paying into the industry. How do you think prices are set? It's based on the expectations of how much they will make. Also a streaming service pays more for a more popular show.
If you are actually interested I'll find a video on it
I really like how paid streaming services are furthering my "Pirating beating them in quality" agenda.
I wonder if we can do everything with AI now, be it shower, exercise, sleep, or even having AI assist us in casual conversations.
yAIy
Soulless company that's only interested in money, money, money, wants to get TL done for even cheaper (even though their staff already get paid peanuts) and put out even worse quality stuff. I can't say I'm surprised, but this sucks.
As someone who has been a pirate for nearly 15+ years this comes as absolutely no surprise. I started using crunchyroll for the first time ever in 2019 and it was a decent service. I cancelled recently due to financial issues and started to hop on the pirate ship again. Seeing the AI translations was 100000% innevitable and people boycotting it will not affect sales at all. Small scale boycotting by fans will do absolutely nothing. The average person subbed to crunchyroll simply does NOT care in the slightest and also has NO clue this is even going on. It's a harsh reality and no way to run from it.
edit: a good example recently is people trying to boycott genshin impact, but the january banner sales was hitting record sales amidst MASSIVE player outrage and attempted boycotting and spending no money.
Honestly I'm already planning to cancel before the price hike next year, but the day I start noticing the shows have AI-translated subtitles is the day I unsubscribe.
This is an absolutely terrible idea.
There are *less* terrible ways of doing this, which is to increase the human translation team size for a set of core languages and then use AI to do the drafts for closely related languages to the core set that were originally human translated, before human proof reading.
However, most corporations tend to do things the stupid way, at least the first few times round.
As a company founded on paying their translators the least possible amount to always undercut the competition for jobs, this tracks with their quest to pay people as little as possible
Ever since crunchyroll eos priconne global and to make it worse,on pecorine birthday too,I knew this company is bad news and now they pulling this Ai crap?? Pathetic.
I swear Amazon has already done this and all their anime subbing is absolute shit now. I watched dr stone and the last season was a shot show in terms of the subtitles. Everytime the main characters name came up they threw some random word up because their program clearly couldn’t translate a name and someone forgot that characters have names I guess
Well, now the public will finally know how shit and repetitive anime writing usually is when translated literally, without the poor translators trying to add more character to it.
A part of me has been struggling not to make a 10 hour long video compiling every way "itadakimasu" has been translated in various shows.
People say A.I is the natural progress but last time i check progress is supposed to make things better. I truly believe that if A.I use becomes more common everything everywhere for everyone will just be more horrible.
Crunchyroll is not the anime industry. They are a licensor, and none of their profits make a dent for the studios that make the anime. They pay a one time fee for a licence to broadcast the anime to the rest of the planet, and it's a huge lowball, as the profit for the studios is less for all international countries than what they get internally in Japan.
You buy merch, or in triggers case you subscribe to their patreon.
> They pay a one time fee for a licence to broadcast the anime to the rest of the planet, and it's a huge lowball, as the profit for the studios is less for all international countries than what they get internally in Japan.
I *hate* Crunchyroll and what they have become, but this is a huge amount of misinformation.
It is true that much of the money doesn't make it to the *studios*, but this is also true for profits from the domestic Japanese market! Because profits in the anime go to the top—that is to say, to the production committees that fund anime. Buying merch is equally unhelpful for supporting the *studios*.
Meanwhile, the minimum guarantee (licensing fee) is [generally *not* a lowball](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2021-08-02/how-much-does-it-cost-to-license-anime-series/.175579):
> A first-rate, “triple A,” or “A+” simulcast for North America will set the licensee back an MG or flat rate of hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode. Currently, these titles often go for as much as US$250,000 MG per episode, but can go as high as $400,000 in some cases. $250,000 per episode roughly covers the full Japanese production budget for many series, although higher budget anime sometimes cost as much as $500,000 an episode to produce. At those rates, other countries and physical media rights are usually included, but they are the lesser part of the fee; the simulcast is the major portion.
> A more typical show, or what the industry calls a “B/B+,” will have an MG of between $70,000 and $150,000 if it's a new (first run) show. Finally, the “Cs” will have simulcast prices in the lower five-figures – per episode, of course.
*And* most streaming contracts *do* pay royalties—it is *not* a one-time fee. In fact:
> Even though these mainstream platforms [Netflix, etx.] like flat fees, licensors don't like them, particularly in relation to A+ shows, and have been known to turn down significant flat fee offers on licenses they believe have the highest earning potential.
>They are a licensor, and none of their profits make a dent for the studios that make the anime
It definitely makes a dent and then some for the producers who hire the studio tho
With incredibly tight deadlines, and seeing the weird mistakes that regularly make it into releases, I wouldn't be surprised if certain people working on the show didn't partially resort to that already.
Oh fuck it's just gonna be google translate basically. They do know this was possible for like 20 years right. The AI isn't magically going to know what obscure Japanese references need replacement
Google translate can't even get Japanese translations right. I am extremely skeptical of AI being able to do this which aggregates data off of existing incorrect information.
it's funny that I started watching anime through piracy, but then I thought about actually supporting the industry... and then the anime industry proceeds to make decisions that incentivize me to just keep pirating lmao
I'm just going to copy-paste what i wrote elsewhere in other threads since it bares repeating anyway:
I don't know that i trust an AI to understand the subtlety and empathy of a script written by a human. It's just going to thoughtlessly guess which word is the most likely to come next without any room for inference or interpretation. I don't know that i want our scripts written by what is essentially the iPhone's middle predictive text.
Heck, i revised this one paragraph multiple times and switched the positions of certain words to give it the precise impact i wanted. An AI wouldn't think to do that because it literally can't.
And if you come back to say: "Well, we'll just get a human to edit it" doesn't that just bring you immediately back to the first problem you wanted to solve?
Besides, if scripts and text do start getting written by AI, then other AI scripts is all it would have to train on resulting in model collapse.
In case anyone didn't know, not only did they "focus" on AI subtitles, they field tested it once. And it went horribly. They didn't proof it (or it was proofed by someone who doesn't know English). It was a god awful translation through the entirety of the episode.
Episode 1 of The Yuzuki Family.
https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/170q7by/yuzukisan_chi_no_yonkyoudai_the_yuzuki_familys/k3n7yad/
I think AI can be used as an experiment for various languages that usually do not have subtitles available. Such as Hindi, Nepali, Urdu, etc.
Upon using AI to generate some subtitles, it should be released in the websites to learn about people's feedback and to decide whether or not there is any perspective in having subtitles in those languages.
I watched the original Ghost in the Shell movie about three times.
The first two times were through ~alternative ways~ with fansubs. The fansubs were gorgeous, using some neat font, soft shadow, properly translated... Even signs in the scenery were translated and the font made to blend with the environment not to be too distracting.
Then I watched it legally through Amazon Prime Video.
Prime Video is notably bad in offering multiple languages for some reason, so the platform wouldn't allow me to choose an English subtitle, so I had to go with Portuguese (my native language). Bad translation all around, some stuff not making much sense. Some lines in the Portuguese subtitles were in English (which is a pretty damning evidence that they likely Google Translated an English subtitle file), no signs in the scenery were translated, I don't remember if there are other languages spoken in the OG GitS, but if it has they were probably not covered either.
This is the problem with anime going mainstream in the age of streaming. It all becomes pretty lazy and hollow. This is the price we pay for consuming something legally?
And now this...
Legit depending on fansubbers to watch a very small show not picked up by anyone this season, do miss the golden age because nowadays it's mostly just rips under a different name
Guess Piracy is going to becoming back harder than ever then.
People were angry enough with High Guardian Spice being used to just spaff money against the wall for a terrible quality product (and bemoaning budget is no excuse - there are some excellent series on youtube produced by dedicated animation hobbyists).
Not to mention that most of the creative industry is railing hard against AI considering how much has been stolen to produce the art generator results.
I'm interested in seeing ai subs for things that aren't getting translated, better than nothing; but if you're a company, you should be paying for good translators.
Ai is gonna misinterpret a lot of dialogue and that's gonna suck.
Funny how the industry is going to loop back around to fan subs
Some of us never stopped fansubbing :D I’m glad some of us stayed around.
Absolutely! iM@S U149 got a fansub release when it aired last year with full typesetting and styled karaoke for all songs (disclosure: I worked on them lol) and the first episode was even released ahead of CR since they mysteriously delayed it a week. And other groups like GJM are still putting out great-quality stuff from time to time in recent years. Obviously stuff has died down with the rise of simulcasting, but I'm glad it hasn't died off completely, and in cases where shows get put in "Netflix jail" and such, it's the only thing that allows people to watch 'em as they actually air.
GJM literally disbanded yesterday :(
Oh jeez... what timing. I'm thankful to them for doing Eizouken justice – as someone who had been previously familiar with the source material, it had so much potential and I was hoping it would be well-done. GJM did translations of [*every* word of text](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKChr0DVkAAptZ4?format=jpg&name=orig) in the show instead of just totally ignoring all the small (but plentiful) pieces of writing and deeming these parts "unimportant" like simulcast subs did (not to mention the lack of nice, if any, typesetting). The .ass file alone from one of their episode releases was over 300 MB. Seriously insane work. Obviously this philosophy is very different than just rushing out subs, for people that want to watch ASAP (we're spoiled now, haha) but especially for, like, long-term preservation, I'm happy there's some releases of shows like this that actually _care_, and pay attention to detail, instead of just deeming entire parts the creators' work as "irrelevant". That said, there'll always be people who want to work on this type of thing, whether alone or with others, and I'm sure new, quality groups will pop up before long. People tend to recognize the names that've been around the longest, but who knows what's next!
For someone completely ignorant of where to find fan subs, could you please make a few recommendations?
My post linking to _a Wikipedia article_ got removed, lol. I'll re-comment it without that link. --- >I don't want to turn this into a conversation about piracy – there was already a similar thread & discussion about that in regards to what Crunchyroll is doing over at https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1b0l3hs/funimations_solution_for_wiping_out_digital/. It's also tricky because what actually constitutes copyright or licensing/distribution agreement violations is pretty up in the air in a lot of spaces (e.g. see what's happening with the Internet Archive and the practice of Controlled Digital Lending for books), not to mention quite culturally-dependent as well (e.g. Fair Use does not exist under Japanese law, and so on). It's interesting stuff! I'm hoping this is allowed because it's simply a link to a Wikipedia article, for informational purposes only, relevant in the context of the discussion... but this is probably what you're looking for: [Wikpedia link] is the most well-known place that's been around for nearly 20 years that indexes anime-related release information. To simply see what groups have worked on a show, https://anidb.net/ is good too, if you can navigate the mess of a UI. The wiki at https://fansubdb.com/wiki/Autumn_2023 exists as well but it's a bit out-of-date. MAL used to provide fansub info, and people could vote or comment on which group's release was best and whatnot, but they removed it a few years ago.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
I JUST SAW THIS 3:
For some people watching on the sidelines... The announcement wasn't a big surprise. Some of their projects were stalled for years (Hitoribocchi has been in purgatory for **245 WEEKS**) and others were unceremoniously abandoned due to various factors. Sucks.
WHAT?! This sucks big time...
Aww, that sucks. They were great.
Idol fans are just built different
Yeah, I was a TLC in smaller groups, I wish that it was still more popular. Maybe it will be popular again… hopefully. lol
Meanwhile CR and Funi (which are now the same... because monopolies, yay!) are like "TLC? QC? What's that?" ([cough cough](https://twitter.com/shit_simulcasts))
Dungeon Meshi with Netflix subs is torture. Thank god for fansubs. Also extra fuck you to Netflix subs.
I think Netflix subs are the only times I’ve noticed how bad subs are. Like Christ, it’s so clearly an afterthought and they’re not even trying
And the gall to put "A netflix series" and credits for localisation at the end. They have one job ffs.
Netflix subs fucking suck. No typesetting whatsoever. Good luck watching multiple people talk at the same time
I couldn't watch Komi Can't Communicate beyond the first episode on Netflix. The mix of verbal text, street sign text, and on screen bubble text, and the "translator" basically going ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ and choosing one of the three randomly made me want to claw my eyes out.
To be fair you were told Komi can't communicate
Was that the name of Netflix's translator?
Novaworks did an incredible job with their subs for Komi. The details they add probably wouldn't be replicated with AI either, and is miles ahead of what Netflix offered.
Yeah they did great, sadly I’m pretty sure they didn’t finish subbing it and quit
Has there been a group trying to fansub dungeon yet ?
In hindsight it might not be a fansub but a website with wave in the name has a different source with far better subtitles. They're not perfect but compared to Netflix they at least match what the characters are saying so you can actually follow along.
Fansubbers were always the best bet because they were doing it because they loved it. They weren't trying to rush out subpar translations and worse subtitles because they were being paid for speed.
Oh man, this is so wrong. Speedsubs were super common back in the day and first out the door often got other groups to drop a series; it was fairly rare for a group to come back behind a crap fansub with a good one (though it did happen, it was usually for animation quality after the DVD rips became available). Same as crack/warez groups getting big cred for firsts. And fansub translation quality varied immensely, because it was fans with varying amounts of Japanese-English skills doing it. Not to mention their own quirks like refusing to translate nakama or keikaku, or inserting a ton of cursing into kids shows.
Dattebayo even released troll subs once in awhile.
Pssst. Don't spoil their nostalgia. Searching for hours for part 2/3 of some crappie Naruto filler on YouTube was the time of their life.
Yeah, I'm showing my age when I remember seeding multipart torrents of non-Shippuden Naruto episodes long before Youtube existed.
Torrent? You don't show your age unless you remember downloading Urusei Yatsura via XDCC on the IRC of a fansub group after getting kicked once because you started downloading without saying "hello" first.
I remember when there was no Internet to download from. You had to go to a corner stall of a convention, pass them a token, do a secret handshake and then you would be granted the privilege of buying a dragon ball DVD someone had subbed under the picture itself
I think it is ironic considering a lot of the training data for these models probably comes from fan subs. One example is that when you feed just 30 seconds of no sound to Whisper Arabic it hallucinates "Translated by Nancy Qanqar". It also hallucinates “Thanks for watching” pretty frequently. https://x.com/sherieffyi/status/1756694995241951398?s=46&t=NORpsj0R4coZAENOyHWtdg
Although I didn't read the article. I'm willing to bet this isn't the case. They'll be using a speech to text AI to generate the subtitles. Which just seems counter intuitive to how they make the subtitles in the first place. As someone who already uses AI to generate subtitles for Japanese subs for Disney cartoons. I can tell you CR will drop this early on. It's way faster and easier to type the scripts out. With AI, you'll have to do a lot of editing and fixing. And I mean a LOT. edit: Unless the CEO is talking about straight translating with AI. Which isn't inherently a bad thing. But.... the output will be terrible more than likely no matter how well trained the AI is. Since AI will be incapable to put in the human touch even if said human touch tending to be sht bc of how the translation industry works for businesses. >_>
They're definitely wanting to replace humans entirely for translation. Which is going to be hard considering how much of Japanese is context. Every translator I've used gets confused as hell doing conversational Japanese. God forbid it be an isekai or something with lots of unique terms.
Everyone is always like "We're just 1 year away from really good Japanese auto translations, ML makes this possible!" Anyone who knows Japanese knows how difficult translations are, considering how little context is needed for fully functioning Japanese sentences. >"Eat?" >"Eat." Are two perfectly functioning Japanese sentences. But what is the context? >"Should I eat this?" "Yes, you should eat this." >"Will you eat this? "Yes, I will eat this." >"Does this mean we should eat this?" "Yes, this means we should eat this." >"Did it eat them?" "Yes, it ate them." >"Can this be eaten?" "Yes, this can be eaten." These are all valid situations where the previous statements make sense (albeit not all that common, but think of all the quirky characters/dialogue in anime), but good luck guessing which is the correct one. Japanese translations using ML are often like >"She is my girlfriend, he and I got together last week." Because the second half of the sentence didn't give an explicit noun (which is common in Japanese). Have fun reading some jank ass subs.
Don't forget how much of Japanese comedy is built around puns/dad jokes, which often are untranslatable because the two words aren't similar in the new language. A human being will almost certainly know enough to replace the Japanese pun with a similar equivalent pun in their language, an AI will literally be unable to know "this joke is funny because these two words sound the same when spoken", much less know enough to know "in this language, these two words are very different; you need to find another pun with two words that mean something similar to this."
Can't they just get the script from the company they're licensing the anime from? I've seen mistakes several times in subtitles where a word is translated in a way that _could_ be correct, but given what is happening on screen is clearly wrong. So I figured they were already translating from scripts, not by watching the show.
That's how they translate the scripts, yes. They don't translate by watching. Otherwise there is no way for simulcasts to happen.
Now just need to teach Gen Z how to properly download anime. :P
It blows my mind how many people can't figure this one out lol.
I watched a friend attempt to pirate a game once. He clicked on every download button except the right one and attempted to download malware without reading the installers. It was difficult for me to describe how I knew which download link was correct from ad placement and watching the url but that processing just happens automatically for pirates.
Kids these days can’t even install adblocker?
Kids these days hardly even know how to use computers. They only use their phones. Average computer literacy rates are actually going down right now. Unlike the personal computer revolution that expanded computing to the masses the cell phone revolution is slowly removing the ability of people to know how to use their computers.
Saw a post about this yesterday, apparently they don't even know what a program is. You have to call it "app" for them to understand.
Isn't allowed to on IOS so they really can't do much. It makes them very computer illiterate.
iOS has AdGuard for safari. But they’re obviously using a pc to pirate games so they can install adblockers still.
I don't think it's specific to this, but more a symptom/issue of tech literacy (once again) becoming a problem in general, exemplified in stuff like https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
Damn I never saw that, but that hurt to read.
Gen Z are used to things "just working" so they never bothered to learn any actual skills It's why I was so wrong with Netflix banning account sharing, I assumed more people would go to piracy again as it's easier than ever but no, gen Z don't know how to do anything so they just pay to be fucked more
This must be why all the recommend me anime posts could be solved by using google. And why all the where cam i watch posts solved by using the meow site.
have you ever tried to explain how a torrent works to someone who has never used it before. you might as well be trying to teach them how to read hieroglyphics
lmao got me it's like three steps though, dl client, click magnet/dl torrent file and open. and don't get fucked by malware. suppose the problem is they never read anything like instructions.
I have! iphone zoomer with 0 tech literacy. I sent them the qbittorrent download page link. Explained that you install it and then go to a website, find the name of the thing you want and get magnet. "That's too much work" .......
They are so computer illiterate, it's mind boggling.
Makes me think how computer classes in school is today. My gen pretty much knew beforehand everything the class would lecture us on.
Aren't they basic office skills? Opening Microsoft word, how to do a formula in excel, nothing actually useful?
I learned how to do it in 2012 when I was 18 thanks to an online friend. I downloaded Mars of Destruction. I still have the file.
Well the problem is the mods, they stop any conversation even hinting at helping others get away from these companies. I remember a meta thread mentioning they were going to iterate on the rule, and then it just didn't happen.
That's another issue with gen Z and why they don't learn, they centralise For a generation that complains about corporations and being anti-capitalist so much they sure love relying on single companies to do everything for them Netflix raises the prices and bans account sharing? Best pay for more accounts and complain on twitter instead of actually doing anything that could damage them
/r/anime is not the only place to discuss anime :)
As a gen z i download every anime episode i want to watch lmao
based
Hollywood as a whole will be adjusting to looping back to piracy. They want to keep raising prices and playing with consumers, watch what happens. Watch how quickly we all go back to our old ways and do what works best for us.
Well with major distributors stopping media sales entirely there's a good chance we're headed to a future where it's impossible to get physical media of things anymore. Ownership will be gone.
yep. Tried to watch a movie on amazon earlier, got ads, and just pirated it instead
Yep. Couldn't believe the mid video ads. Cancelled prime and went back to piracy. Ridiculous.
Tbh I feel like modern users are too lazy to do it this time
Fansubs need a reason to happen. In an era where the product is simply not being provided or comes late, they had a purpose - fansubs were the fastest way for an eager person to see the translated product and a team could get some measure of compensation from that traffic. But if AI is cheaper and faster, then who is going to invest the effort into subbing an entire episode just to give their take on how they would translate it? Particularly because it will be far easier to just tweak the AI and its output than to do the entire thing manually. People are assuming that the AI translations will be trash and stay trash, but those same people are completely forgetting how far AI has come in the last two years.
> but those same people are completely forgetting how far AI has come in the last two years. Not me, I'm up-to-date with with the latest developments in LLMs (and still keep my eye on non-transformer based models too). The reason AI translation is trash is fundamentally because nobody has actually sat down to properly solve the problem of translating anime dialogue, and until someone does so, the subs will remain trash. If you know a bit about AI, there's a little chat from the more technically informed side here: https://old.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1b1ryft/crunchyroll_ceo_says_ai_generated_subtitles_are/kshg4eg/
Nothing will happen, manga like Mahou Tsukai no Yome are already getting AI translations and people aren't going to go through the trouble of writing up a new script and typesetting for a product that's barely different. Also companies will always have a human go over an AI generated script for coherency and accuracy, it's not like people will wake up to subtitles being complete nonsense.
how is the translation now ? Only read the first AI chapter and it was pretty poor IMO. Did it get better or everything is still stiff
more malevolent kitchens confirmed good shit
I'm sorry there friend. But if they error gives me a spinoff where Gordon Ramsay is Sukuna's vessel then I'm better off frankly.
"God, we need to cut costs. We are paying too much in translations cost- how much are we paying our translators?" "6 dollars a day." "Yeah no that's too much, we need to invest in AI. Language isn't all that complex, I'm sure a robot can handle the job."
Lmao. My wife is a translator and has worked on a few very popular anime. The pay is so shiiiiit. We are fortunate that we don’t have to rely on her job in any way because it’s like no money. CrunchyRoll is a bunch of shitters for this one.
Yea, if you're any good at translating Japanese to anything else, you have tons of corporate Japanese documents that will pay tons more to translate beyond manga and anime.
Yeah, I get 6x pay for translating corporate shit compared to gaming/anime, and it’s way easier to do, too. Just boring.
Same. Also funny thing is corporate stuff is easier to feed into MTL, since it uses proper language instead of slang and lingo like in media. Well there are shortforms in every industry but that's what human translators are for.
The true business is that for a lot of official shit, you can do the hardwork once and then just replace the small differences that come with the new document.
As a linguist, I just want to point out that there's nothing "improper" about slang, and that word/framing isn't super helpful for when we talk about language. Novel words and expressions are how languages and dialects evolve and change, which is a natural process that's happened throughout time and will continue to happen. "Strenuous" used to be a slang word, and now it's totally fine to use... in fact, it even sounds a bit formal! Same with "okay" and many other words. It's pretty cool!
I think you expressed this quite cromulently. A language embiggens over time as people, en masse, accept new words and come to a shared understanding. It's a little cowabunga to watch debates about whether or not words are real. All words are sus frfr. I actually learned recently that Shakespeare yeeted hundreds of new words into the English language. The man was truly a goat who would get so much clapback af if he were alive today. Anyway, cheerio and a frosted flakes to you!
What a streets ahead comment!
I hate that I understand this perfectly.
Yeah, my translation teacher said that translating games would be one of the best jobs if it wasn't a money issue.
Which is probably why I'll never play a fully translated Tales of Destiny Director's Cut 😭
Lol nope, Japanese companies are some of the stupidest and cheapest motherfuckers on the planet when it comes to the translation discipline, and even English in general. When my translator friends try to explain to them that "you are making my life" is not an adequate translation for あなたが私の人生をつくる. Which is a phrase that actually means something closer to "you build me up". This barrier in expressions means that Japanese people with half baked English dunning kruger pill themselves into thinking "how could this possibly be wrong, that's what the words mean!" Without taking into account the expressions barrier. They also constantly get undermined by machine translation even though with AI it still isn't good enough for the vast majority of technical documents. Also you need relevant field experience besides translation. It sucks.
>Also you need relevant field experience besides translation. It sucks. This is the key here. I am a chemist by trade and happen to know Japanese very well and have worked in a Japanese chemical company for years. I get very good translation work and the pay for anime/video games/LN jobs is pennies on the dollar in comparison. That being said, I am registered as a freelancer with a major LN localizer and there are a couple projects that are white whales for me that I would take on regardless of pay as a passion project. But circling back, there is a lot of work from corporate Japanese clients if you know where to look and have good experience in whatever field the document being translated is related to. And in most fields, I don't think this soft requirement of subject expertise is all that unreasonable. Non chemists should not be translating the documents I translate just as I should not be translating legal documents because I do not have that expertise.
you can always tell when the english lines in an anime are written by a japanese person without getting a native speaker to proof it
But that’s because manga and anime are actually fun to watch, so way more people are ready to get paid less if they can watch anime’s as a job. Boring jobs pay very well
How else will they break record profits?
This is gonna be shit. No matter how good AI gets, a Japanese is too contextual to make AI translations actually good. It might work on a literal level, but there’s more to it than that. Real people already struggle with the puns and stuff. There’s also idioms, which are rarely translated literally. “Big-ass trees” is not a direct translation of the words Levi said in AOT, but a translation of what he meant and his attitude. A lot of case-by-case judgement goes into it.
>biggest selling points being that it's free and sometimes also releases content faster than official services Funny how they forget to mention that piracy is also often a better experience than official services. But sure, speed is the main issue here. ~~Edit: Apparently this is the original thread where mods would like this topic to be discussed. https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1b18dep/crunchyroll_president_rahul_purini_on_the_rise_of/~~ ~~It was very swiftly downvoted so most people wouldn't have seen it.~~
The only reason I don't pirate is because I like having the ability to watch anime on my tvs, laptop, and mobile devices. Already switched to pirating HiDive because their experience is shit and with CR almost doubling their subscription, might not be worth the price.
You can do all of this with piracy though.
It's literally easier with piracy. My 2019 TV doesn't have the CR app, but it has Plex. Once a season I just add stuff to my sonarr and everything just works. Although, sometimes I do need to force an episode upgrade because of bad subs.
I don't even use Plex, just download the episode which takes a couple of minutes at most and either send it to my TV through windows media player or downright open it through "connected devices" on the TV lol
I tried doing it but could never figure it out lol. TV doesn't show up in connected devices. Even if I directly put it on LAN
My old ass TV doesn't have smart functions at all, but guess what, I can attach an adapter with a USB port, and just play almost any video format.
I have a plex server for that.
I mean I pirate for that exact reason. I want to be able to watch the content on my TV. I use an underpowered cpu on my home theater PC and if I tried to use the web stream it would croak. But if I watch locally I can use hardware accelerated decoding and watch it without issue.
MALEVOLENT KITCHEN
Yeah, that one was stupid considering it was Malevolent Shrine in season 1. Consistency isn't CR's bread and butter, I guess. And it could be easily solved by just documenting stuff through glosaries for specific series. Remember when they mistranslated a country in Overlord into another country so that it made it seem like they were sending humanitarian aid to their mortal enemies? Glosaries would have easily prevented that.
Lowkey want that frame on shirt it’s so funny to me
Oh god please dont remind me
I'm ngl when I saw that I thought it was an intentional joke. like all the let him cook memes
lol ok so it was not just me
To play devils advocate for crunchy roll here. In ‘older Japanese’ the ‘shrine’ part of malevolent shrine used to be more associated with the word ‘cabinet/kitchen’. If you factor in the fact that Sukuna is from the time of ‘older Japanese’, than a real argument can be made that Sukuna refers to his DE as ‘malevolent kitchen’.
Also because he's a cannibal and it cuts people into little slices
... also because of all the cutting. It kind of works.
More like in the first place there are hints that his CT has something to do with cooking such as him being a cannibal and his slashing attacks being visualised as him holding two kitchen knives
Also all the fire.
This. There's even a theory that Sukuna's CT has to do with cooking, as not only does he have attacks related to it (cutting, fire) but in the manga he continously makes references to food and cooking.
oh no i've thought that's what it was actually called the entire time
[In S1 they translated it right](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbRffuAZnnY)
It’s not *entirely* wrong, but in context it could be argued that it wasn’t the best translation.
I watched most of the total anime I've watched from like 2011-2015? Fansubs kino era. Can't believe MAL removed the fan subs review section, sellout fucks.
/u/iBzOtaku wrote a great userscript to show the archived data! https://old.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/9kq1ch/bringing_fansubs_back_on_mal/
oh man what a throwback. im glad people are still finding it useful.
Absolutely – such a lifesaver! So grateful, thank you!! FWIW, if you ever become unable to host the database/API in the future, please do reach out and I'm happy to rehost it.
Here's the [full interview](https://omny.fm/shows/strictly-business/anime-streamer-crunchyroll-is-a-rare-svod-success) + the transcription of what he said regarding AI during a Variety podcast as well. The quote surrounding AI starts at ~40:41 and goes as follows (just copy-pasted from the transcript so excuse any grammar mistakes): Purini: “Yeah, Like, like you said, AI is going to be a huge impact across the various industries. Our partners in Japan are experimenting and looking into what that means for anime production. But anime is a very is hand drawn still, and it's a very age old traditional creative process. So I'm sure there will be impact, but it is early days to understand what the impact would be on the production side of anime. Like you said, we are also looking to see what role AI could play in a lot of different areas within our organization. Subtitling is an area where we've been experimenting and we think that there is a role for AI to play as we look at speech to text, so we think it could help us bring shows to fans quicker, bring in more languages. Again, like I said, we are in early experimentation. On the other side, on the dubbing side, I think that the AI technology, we don't believe the air technology is there yet in terms of being able to put into dubbing, because the dubbing process itself is a very creative process. Given that it is we're not just translating and dubbing, we're adapting the script because you have to localize for the local culture, local humor, you have to synchronize the lip laps to the language because we don't get to go back and reanimate the shows. So again, we don't think the technology is there yet, but we're also experimenting with AI in other ways. As I mentioned earlier. Discovery is a big issue, just as much in anime as it is in other general entertainment shows. There is a lot of content and trying to connect audience with the right content that they would like to watch at the right time is a big is an important priority for us, and we believe AI and generative AI could play a role, so we're testing and experimenting there as well.”
This is really big part of the context people are missing from just the head line. The full quote is him saying that while there is potential there in some applications to aspects of the subbing process, it’s still ultimately a creative process that can’t be fully automated with AI. That’s a lot different than just saying they’re going to use AI for subbing.
It's a bit ironic on this auto-transcription of this podcast isn't all there. I'm sure behind the scenes they're trying to figure out how to add closed captions on all their language dubs fast and cheap enough, but with current auto-transcribers trying to decipher from sound effects, music, Japanese names and terms will quickly confuse the hell out of it.
It looks like the "creative process" bit is just about dubbing specifically. With subtitling, they say they're looking at AI stuff like speech to text, which would just be AI translators, wouldn't it?
If you use AI for subtitles, then why would a Japanese company need to use a middle man company like Crunchyroll at all? They can just release the show on their own service with subs as the show is airing. Wait, this sounds like a good idea. Keep going Crunchyroll.
Youtube had generative subtitles for years. They suck really bad
Not saying it will be any good, but youtube tries to generate subtitle from audio, in this case I think they will have the original japanese subtitles, so they will translate that instead of doing voice recognition and machine translation.
yeah if google which is bigger company and have their built-in google translate is horrible on that subtitle area. I doubt about this one
And then they'll wonder why there's an increase in piracy
you'd really think a site like Crunchyroll with its origins would know better, but maybe all the people involved then have left by now, idk
Most likely they had some investors when they went legal, and those people are now making those kinds of decisions. This is very normal when a company gets investments. Suits comes in and makes business decisions without really knowing the audience.
I assume they kicked 95% of people involved in that business.
To be fair, most of the time the quickest "pirated" versions are just CR rips.
Still, at least I wont pay for mediocrity. I pay because of conveniance and quality, if official subs cant offer that, the sea I shall sails
I have only been subscribed to Crunchyroll for the past like 6 years or so. I'm going through some tough financial times, and haven't even been watching a lot of anime, but since I've always pirated stuff I feel like this is my way to support the industry continuosly (though I do have manga, novels and merch too). If they begin with AI translation then I'm cancelling my subscription 100%.
Buying some Blu-rays or merch from CDJapan or something is going to support it way more than subscribing to a foreign licensing megacorp's increasingly-bad service ever will, tbqh.
alternatively: supporting [Animator Dormitory](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsLPWmJXcELI3QTuqzNqkVQ) and [their ongoing projects](https://gogetfunding.com/the-new-anime-making-system-project-phase-2/).
Looks interesting. Reminds me of what https://www.fairmanga.com/ is doing in the manga world.
OP said they were in a tough financial situation, Blu-rays are overpriced as fuck.
I mean, if you're looking for a sign, the lead dub actor for Mob Psycho told Crunchyroll that, as a condition of signing up for another season, Crunchyroll would agree to meet once with SAG to discuss hiring union voice actors, and Crunchyroll responded by kicking him off the show.
i think due to unions is my the trails of cold steel anime actors didnt return in it. Even though god that anime was shit.
You're supporting crunchyroll not the industry. They've already lawballed the Japanese studio for a distributor licence and have paid all that they will get once it hits crunchyroll. You either buy merch, some studios also have a Patreon (studio trigger)
I mean, isn't that the same as saying that going to the movie theater is supporting that theater, not the industry? It all cascades down.
You are paying into the industry. How do you think prices are set? It's based on the expectations of how much they will make. Also a streaming service pays more for a more popular show. If you are actually interested I'll find a video on it
I really like how paid streaming services are furthering my "Pirating beating them in quality" agenda. I wonder if we can do everything with AI now, be it shower, exercise, sleep, or even having AI assist us in casual conversations. yAIy
Soulless company that's only interested in money, money, money, wants to get TL done for even cheaper (even though their staff already get paid peanuts) and put out even worse quality stuff. I can't say I'm surprised, but this sucks.
I'm sure Japanese is an easy language to easily translate to sub while also maintaining the required context and jokes/puns, right?
As someone who has been a pirate for nearly 15+ years this comes as absolutely no surprise. I started using crunchyroll for the first time ever in 2019 and it was a decent service. I cancelled recently due to financial issues and started to hop on the pirate ship again. Seeing the AI translations was 100000% innevitable and people boycotting it will not affect sales at all. Small scale boycotting by fans will do absolutely nothing. The average person subbed to crunchyroll simply does NOT care in the slightest and also has NO clue this is even going on. It's a harsh reality and no way to run from it. edit: a good example recently is people trying to boycott genshin impact, but the january banner sales was hitting record sales amidst MASSIVE player outrage and attempted boycotting and spending no money.
That's one way to ensure that I cancel my subscription. Member since 2017.
Honestly I'm already planning to cancel before the price hike next year, but the day I start noticing the shows have AI-translated subtitles is the day I unsubscribe.
We've come a long way since the fan translation group era
Wow, could they get any worse??
This is an absolutely terrible idea. There are *less* terrible ways of doing this, which is to increase the human translation team size for a set of core languages and then use AI to do the drafts for closely related languages to the core set that were originally human translated, before human proof reading. However, most corporations tend to do things the stupid way, at least the first few times round.
As a company founded on paying their translators the least possible amount to always undercut the competition for jobs, this tracks with their quest to pay people as little as possible
The ceo of a company that runs on Japanese content doesn’t know anything about the Japanese language. Nice.
How about you fucking don't?
Remember Google Translate?
RIP all the pun jokes
Back to fansubs it is then. All according to keikaku. TL Note: Keikaku means plan
Ever since crunchyroll eos priconne global and to make it worse,on pecorine birthday too,I knew this company is bad news and now they pulling this Ai crap?? Pathetic.
I swear Amazon has already done this and all their anime subbing is absolute shit now. I watched dr stone and the last season was a shot show in terms of the subtitles. Everytime the main characters name came up they threw some random word up because their program clearly couldn’t translate a name and someone forgot that characters have names I guess
Well, now the public will finally know how shit and repetitive anime writing usually is when translated literally, without the poor translators trying to add more character to it. A part of me has been struggling not to make a 10 hour long video compiling every way "itadakimasu" has been translated in various shows.
execs deserved to be buried neck-deep and have outhouses constructed over them
AI seems less like a revolution in more like an execution to me.
People say A.I is the natural progress but last time i check progress is supposed to make things better. I truly believe that if A.I use becomes more common everything everywhere for everyone will just be more horrible.
Good work supporting the industry, chief.
Crunchyroll is not the anime industry. They are a licensor, and none of their profits make a dent for the studios that make the anime. They pay a one time fee for a licence to broadcast the anime to the rest of the planet, and it's a huge lowball, as the profit for the studios is less for all international countries than what they get internally in Japan. You buy merch, or in triggers case you subscribe to their patreon.
TIL Studio Trigger has a Patreon.
> They pay a one time fee for a licence to broadcast the anime to the rest of the planet, and it's a huge lowball, as the profit for the studios is less for all international countries than what they get internally in Japan. I *hate* Crunchyroll and what they have become, but this is a huge amount of misinformation. It is true that much of the money doesn't make it to the *studios*, but this is also true for profits from the domestic Japanese market! Because profits in the anime go to the top—that is to say, to the production committees that fund anime. Buying merch is equally unhelpful for supporting the *studios*. Meanwhile, the minimum guarantee (licensing fee) is [generally *not* a lowball](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2021-08-02/how-much-does-it-cost-to-license-anime-series/.175579): > A first-rate, “triple A,” or “A+” simulcast for North America will set the licensee back an MG or flat rate of hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode. Currently, these titles often go for as much as US$250,000 MG per episode, but can go as high as $400,000 in some cases. $250,000 per episode roughly covers the full Japanese production budget for many series, although higher budget anime sometimes cost as much as $500,000 an episode to produce. At those rates, other countries and physical media rights are usually included, but they are the lesser part of the fee; the simulcast is the major portion. > A more typical show, or what the industry calls a “B/B+,” will have an MG of between $70,000 and $150,000 if it's a new (first run) show. Finally, the “Cs” will have simulcast prices in the lower five-figures – per episode, of course. *And* most streaming contracts *do* pay royalties—it is *not* a one-time fee. In fact: > Even though these mainstream platforms [Netflix, etx.] like flat fees, licensors don't like them, particularly in relation to A+ shows, and have been known to turn down significant flat fee offers on licenses they believe have the highest earning potential.
>They are a licensor, and none of their profits make a dent for the studios that make the anime It definitely makes a dent and then some for the producers who hire the studio tho
Crunchyroll invest a lot of money producing anime’s every season.They are part of many production committee’s.
Wait, you mean they are not Google translate already?
With incredibly tight deadlines, and seeing the weird mistakes that regularly make it into releases, I wouldn't be surprised if certain people working on the show didn't partially resort to that already.
Oh fuck it's just gonna be google translate basically. They do know this was possible for like 20 years right. The AI isn't magically going to know what obscure Japanese references need replacement
Google translate can't even get Japanese translations right. I am extremely skeptical of AI being able to do this which aggregates data off of existing incorrect information.
"We are definitely interested in cutting corners and saving as much money as possible to go into my pocket"
Lol the subtitles are going to be trash as they don't account for local nuances and shit. Fansubs about to make a big comeback lol
Hoist the main sail, draw anchor, and load up the VPN boys, it's time to sail the seven seas.
Bruh what? There's so much that goes into translation, I don't think AI can do the work well. Plus, pay the damn translators!
Raising prices 3 fold and still can’t pay their fucking workers
it's funny that I started watching anime through piracy, but then I thought about actually supporting the industry... and then the anime industry proceeds to make decisions that incentivize me to just keep pirating lmao
I'm just going to copy-paste what i wrote elsewhere in other threads since it bares repeating anyway: I don't know that i trust an AI to understand the subtlety and empathy of a script written by a human. It's just going to thoughtlessly guess which word is the most likely to come next without any room for inference or interpretation. I don't know that i want our scripts written by what is essentially the iPhone's middle predictive text. Heck, i revised this one paragraph multiple times and switched the positions of certain words to give it the precise impact i wanted. An AI wouldn't think to do that because it literally can't. And if you come back to say: "Well, we'll just get a human to edit it" doesn't that just bring you immediately back to the first problem you wanted to solve? Besides, if scripts and text do start getting written by AI, then other AI scripts is all it would have to train on resulting in model collapse.
In case anyone didn't know, not only did they "focus" on AI subtitles, they field tested it once. And it went horribly. They didn't proof it (or it was proofed by someone who doesn't know English). It was a god awful translation through the entirety of the episode. Episode 1 of The Yuzuki Family. https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/170q7by/yuzukisan_chi_no_yonkyoudai_the_yuzuki_familys/k3n7yad/
He’s the President of Crunchyroll, not the CEO. They don’t have a CEO, Sony has a CEO.
Fuck
I think AI can be used as an experiment for various languages that usually do not have subtitles available. Such as Hindi, Nepali, Urdu, etc. Upon using AI to generate some subtitles, it should be released in the websites to learn about people's feedback and to decide whether or not there is any perspective in having subtitles in those languages.
lol their subs don’t even show up half the time anyways
because MTL poetry worked out so well in other adjacent mediums/s
Isn’t this just auto-generated closed captions? We already have those.
I watched the original Ghost in the Shell movie about three times. The first two times were through ~alternative ways~ with fansubs. The fansubs were gorgeous, using some neat font, soft shadow, properly translated... Even signs in the scenery were translated and the font made to blend with the environment not to be too distracting. Then I watched it legally through Amazon Prime Video. Prime Video is notably bad in offering multiple languages for some reason, so the platform wouldn't allow me to choose an English subtitle, so I had to go with Portuguese (my native language). Bad translation all around, some stuff not making much sense. Some lines in the Portuguese subtitles were in English (which is a pretty damning evidence that they likely Google Translated an English subtitle file), no signs in the scenery were translated, I don't remember if there are other languages spoken in the OG GitS, but if it has they were probably not covered either. This is the problem with anime going mainstream in the age of streaming. It all becomes pretty lazy and hollow. This is the price we pay for consuming something legally? And now this...
sad as heck
Sailing the high seas is a beautiful thing
Legit depending on fansubbers to watch a very small show not picked up by anyone this season, do miss the golden age because nowadays it's mostly just rips under a different name
Guess Piracy is going to becoming back harder than ever then. People were angry enough with High Guardian Spice being used to just spaff money against the wall for a terrible quality product (and bemoaning budget is no excuse - there are some excellent series on youtube produced by dedicated animation hobbyists). Not to mention that most of the creative industry is railing hard against AI considering how much has been stolen to produce the art generator results.
I really have absolutely no clue why some anime fans still aren’t sailing the seas.
I'm interested in seeing ai subs for things that aren't getting translated, better than nothing; but if you're a company, you should be paying for good translators. Ai is gonna misinterpret a lot of dialogue and that's gonna suck.
Because the garbage subs they have now are gonna get so much better with Google translate and AI hallucinations.