Do you think AI can be used to help people translate retro games?
>>12242868Yes
I know it can help play untranslated games as long as you're aware that you're not getting everything and that you're getting mistakes which also happens with human translation
>>12242883At least robots don't translate things incorrectly on purpose
With some amount of games, the issue isn't translating them, but getting the equivalent translated English text to work.
>>12242889Do you think AI can be used to help people hack text injection in retro games?
>>12242889>>12242897>ai translate it but you can't use more than 50 letters
>>12242887How do you know an AIs output isn't on purpose with a logical intent that makes sense to that AI model?
>>12242907If you don't know, LLMs are pretty good at this now. I personally hate AI and don't use it except as I'm stupidly required to by my job, but "translate and reword this phrase so that it's exactly 50 letters" is something I would absolutely try on a modern chatbot. They are not search engines, they are not decision making tools, they are not agents who can do your work for you, but they are pretty good "text transformation machines." And of course that is a low-stakes prompt where the accuracy of the response can easily be judged and regenerated if necessary. >>12242917Because we know what is taking place during "inferencing," and it has nothing to do with "purpose" or intentionality or any internal logic. You might as well ask if the pixels painted on a wall in a video game "intended" to be one color over another. The value is just calculated with linear algebra, nothing else is going on.
>>12242868Never stop scrutinizing. Always trust the AI. Translators, localizers, professional or fan, all must be observed beneath the same lens, and AI finally provides us with an objective way to tell whether something is faithful or bullshit.
>>12242868If by help you mean do all the work while someone that knows nothing about the language "checks for errors" (they can't spot any ones that aren't just fucked English grammar) then yes. If you mean help as in assist even ones that do know the language but don't know every single facet then also yes but we all know the former is how it will go.
Eventually, especially once they can interpret literal usage and colloquial usage. Captions themselves are catching up.
As someone who doesn't look into how the AI thinks or understands the language, how do you know what it spits out isn't censored already? How do you know if they won't do that in the future? There's already heavy censoring with free image generation models.
>>12243093>how do you know what it spits out isn't censored already?It can be. Offensive phrases will sometimes come out less insulting in translation if you use Google Translate. We know this because most people can understand more than one language. Sometimes for my work I have to identify prompts with "safety" issues, which can be in any language, and the advice we've been given is to translate them using multiple online translators (such as DeepL in addition to Google) to make sure that we aren't missing ones with obvious issues that get censored in translation.
>>12242960>when even AI disagrees with youLol. Lmao, even.
>>12243093who cares if it's accurate? it makes trannies mad and puts trannylators out of a job so at the end of the day that's all i care about.
>>12243312>who cares if it's accurate?I agree which is why I support translations that remove problematic themes and outdated language.
>>12242868Anything is better than tranny translators inserting their politics and fetishes in the “””translation””””
Watching monolinguals discuss translation will never not be funny.
>>12242868what tool is being used here?
>>12243345We have such powerful technology at our disposal that it is irrelevant. You don't need to be an expert or know another language anymore to do a quality translation of a video game.
>>12243345AI translation is genuinely useful and can be ran on-device with smaller models. Download LM studio and qwen / gpt-oss-20b and get it to translate things between languages you know. It's not perfect but it's leaps and bounds better than google translate
>>12243396No doubt. That doesn't change the fact that 9 out of 10 people here have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to linguistics, or translation, or the Japanese language.
>>12243345It's pretty obvious that they are because you can't always accurately translate some things to other languages and it can go both ways. Some of it can even be due to cultural things that another culture doesn't even have. I saw a subtitle translation of a part of the movie Men in Black. Originally the line is "Intergalactic kegger". To make it understandable for them it was changed to "Intergalactic karaoke".
>>12242868No. People don't translate retro games.
>>12242868How does it translate okama?
>>12242868Yes, AI TL + someone that cares about the game and writes English well is better than 99% of seamonkey tier TLs
>>12243093You could make a list of offensive terms and phrases, have AI convert it from English to Japanese, then back again, and see what survives.
>>12242868Let me preface this by saying: I'm a software engineer, not a translator. I'm pointing that out now because every time I say this I get dunked on and accused of being a translator.If you just want the game to be playable than it's passable, but AI translations are literal garbage. BUT, human translators always pollute and censor the game, so it's at least better than that. Besides, both official and fan translations have largely been done by machine translation for years now, so you won't really be missing out on anything by having AI do it.But honestly, it's better to just learn Japanese, especially if you're wanting to play story driven games. It's quite remarkable just how much games get changed in translation, even minor changes make things to be drastically different. So if you're one of those people who care about the artists vision or preserving the original version than you should do that. I've been playing games exclusively in Japanese for years now and I genuinely prefer it. Translators suck, whether they're human or machine.
>>12242883first line is wrong. it should be "hello, would you like to rest some more?"konnichiwa literally means today but it's used as hello
>>12243889The first bit is 本日は, not 今日は. So it's definitely "today" rather than "hello." Given that, もう almost certainly means something to the effect of "already" in this case rather than "more," unless the character has already rested that day and is looking to rest again. In other words, the machine translation is semantically accurate. A more natural translation would probably look something like "are you turning in for the day already," or something to that effect.
>>12243889>some morelmao.But it is still wrong even if もう can be "already" (among several other things). It's kind of difficult to capture what it actually feels like in that sentence, so I'd just omit it entirely since there's not really a great all-purpose word that maps to it in English. Something like Spanish strangely enough gets a near 1:1 in "ya" which, more annoyingly still, serves a similarly abstract and difficult to teach word to English speakers.
>>12243921>so I'd just omit it entirely since there's not really a great all-purpose word that maps to it in EnglishNoooo, you're changing the artists original vision! You have to translate it accurately! The translation has to have exactly the same meaning even though the languages and even the speakers mindsets are completely different! Translators suck; learn Japanese like me, a software engineer who is wanting to play story drivel games.
>>12243307kekaroo
>>12243307Yeah ok whatever but the AI can clearly tell some retard is LARPing as Ted Woolsey and pussyfooting around what is clearly a dick joke.
>>12242960>Never stop scrutinizing. Always trust the AI.How do you write these two sentences back to back without realizing you're fucking retarded?
>>12243093You don't. Even the ones specifically trained to translate, like modern Google and DeepL, will "localize" as that makes it easier to read for the target language. DeepL even has a knack for dropping text it doesn't quite follow without telling you. "Regular" AIs that don't use their internet functionality to just request a translation will just make shit up. That doesn't factor in mistakes made by the OCR which is likely to happen unless you can hook the text or are just translating a script.You can definitely get through a game and follow the plot to an extent these days, but details will get messy and kanji only names are generally ruined unless it happens to put the reading (if provided) in memory and understands that it is the reading for the name, you can filter it to the correct result though. Ultimately the output tends to be bad (even for a "literal" translation), but that's generally how "literal" translations of very different languages go. It's more of a linguistics things, not a consumer product thing. The benefit of this is that you can be the lolcalizer and make it heckin' based within limits. It's not like they'll fact check your chudlation.
>>12242868Yes, the results won't be great, but it will give you a reasonably good literal translation that might be acceptable in an unofficial patch.Keep it out of commercial releases though.
>>12243872>I'm a software engineerBut of course you are sweaty
yet nobody is doing it because some trannylators are keeping projects hostage
>>12242868Whilst yes, I do feel that you need to disclaim that the translation work would be an amateur rush job and only useful to help navigate a foreign work at the earliest stages and highest levels.Not every game can have the luxury of a well co-ordinated and researched translation project, by someone fluent in both languages.To actually bake the work into a ROM though, might not be necessary.Retroarch has on-the-fly AI translation services, OCR on phones has been capable of scanning text and providing a likely translation for a long time now.Anbernic's upcoming RG477V touts an AI-powered real-time translation feature, which probably just means that it has an NPU that can run a lightweight model to do that specific task.NPUs are becoming more commonplace in hardware that lets you run AI features locally, without needing to pay out the ass for an Nvidia GPU with shitloads of CUDA cores and VRAM.
>>12244207No one is doing it because they are lazy and/or incompetent, not because some retard called dibs on a translation 20 years ago. The tools, documents and ROMs have been there for years. Them shittalking you in their private discords isn't going to affect you in the slightest unless you are the same type of attention whore as they are.NEETs will just hook it up to ChudGPT via OCR or text extraction and play it that way, no need to lrn2code.
>>12242956>"translate and reword this phrase so that it's exactly 50 letters" is something I would absolutely try on a modern chatbot.gtp is horrible at generating a specific character/ word count. It struggles to even alphebetize a list.
>>12242960>Never stop scrutinizing.>Always trust the AI.That's some 1984 levels of doublethink.The only way to know for absolute certain if something has been translated correctly or not is to be fluent in both languages.
>>12242868no. the translation part is better handled by humans and the hard part (actually hacking the ROM) it can't do at all.
>>12242907What retro games have this limitation?
>>12243982It can but it I fed a line from Vagrant Story to an AI once and I had to lead it into recognizing why the translation was bad. It even admitted the dialogue was effectively rewritten and it still sucked of the translation team at one point.
>>12244494>I detect jewish meddling. Here's why that's a good thing:
>>12242868It does stuff like put "isn't it" at the end of sentences when english people don't talk like that. There are some bad translations out there that you wouldn't know are missing important parts of the conversation, actually AI can be better than a poor manual job. One example is Phantasy Star Story of Mio, its an older translation that is missing some stuff like descriptions and things. Kind of not fair since they wouldn't have had the resources we have today and it let people experience the game, they may have even done the same thing back in the day too if they brought it over.
>>12244506Kind of yeah.
>>12244523Yes, that is what AI is: a jew that lies to you. From the people who brought you Talmudvision!
>>12242868It can't be worse than the NU seen ITT
>>12244515>when english people don't talk like that.Not an argument. Translate exactly what it says.
>>12244736You can't. Every translation is an approximation because language develop independently. Japanese can't be defined in terms of english.
Indians are fucking pussies.
>>12244786imagine being such an impotent assmad underage incel.
>>12244471I mean if you cannot fit your translation within that one text box you'd need to prompt another text box or hope there's room within a conversation to offload excess up essential text into a later text box.
>>12244761This is looooooooocalizer cope.Thankfully, more modern translators are understanding that you can sidestep a lot of the bullshit through clever use of alternative means. The recent dating sim comes to mind where 2 characters say good morning to each other, one more politely than the other.>Character A: "Good morning.">Character B: "Good morning. (Politely)"So yes, you absolutely don't have to approximate, when you can literally just explain what's going on so the reader can understand it.
>>12245510Are there various phrases for the same thing in Japanese with varying politeness, and where is that politeness coming from? In a sense of language and culture. I don't live in Japan, and I don't know Japanese, I'm curious about this.
>>12244019The fact that one of those screenshots translates Pocket Monsters to Pokémon is proof alone that it incorporates some amount of what people would call a "localization."
>>12245510That's only played out that way because it's a cultural thing that basically doesn't exist to EN speakers. Even the solution presented(which isn't bad considering it's tough to solve) doesn't perfectly capture the japanese.
>>12245524I don't think that counts. Even the official youtube channel is ポケモン公式YouTubeチャンネル. Using the official abbreviation isn't a master class in localization.>Are there various phrases for the same thing in Japanese with varying politenessAre you an alien>Give me the salt>Could you pass the salt
>>12245510Kek, that doesn't explain this:>>12245528 at all. You literally need a side annotation that breaks to flow of the visual novel or game to even explain it. There isn't a translation for something like this. The only thing that is similar is calling people by their last name and then getting them to correct themselves by calling them by their first name. Kids don't do that, teens don't do that, it would be in a professional environment. Even then it isn't even as widely applicable as a saying as "Good morning". Maybe if it was:>Good morning Mia>Good morning Mrs. JamesonBut then that is a localization and not the exact text because they didn't mention names in the original Japanese language. Also while slightly getting the point driven in English, people still don't talk like that in English.
>>12245515>>12245528The solution presented is an actual SOLUTION to the problem.The amusing part is how many loooooocalizers it's brought out of the woodwork who want to claim it's an affront to translation, when it's quite literally the opposite. They would claim that you should simply rewrite the sentence to make one speaker sound "more polite" than the other, but that inherently produces a difference from the written text, while "Good morning. (Politely)" LITERALLY says EXACTLY what and how the speaker is saying it. It is *gasp* TRANSLATION, which makes localizers shit and piss themselves.Let's take something like やつ/奴 as a "rude" way of calling somebody.>"Those assholes/jerks/meanies/incels/guys/people are coming to attack!">"Those people (rude) are coming to attack!"You fundamentally change the tone, delivery, and subsequently the reader's interpretation of the sentence by rewriting it with a wholly different word. You put TRUST in the reader by explaining it to them plainly and allowing them to reach their own conclusion in the same way the original readers of the Japanese did. It's that simple.
>>12245545>people still don't talk like that in English.Not relevant to the discussion. Translation necessarily produces output that "doesn't sound like (natural way of speaking [Language])." It is precisely when something reads too naturally, smoothly, or cleverly that you should hear the alarm bells going off in your head when engaging with any translated piece of media.
>>12245546How is "Good morning" inherently not already polite in English and how can it become (polite)r?
>>12245549It's in English, it doesn't read like English.
>>12245546やつ isn't just for people. You can't just treat it as (people but rude).
>>12245557>Is it so easy to use, this magic thing (rude)?>...If you believe the ancient folklore.There, it is literal, clean, and perfect.
>>12242868Good for the absolute bare minimum.
>>12245573I take the absolute bare minimum over "modernized for current year sensibilities."
>>12245576Most translations aren't like that quit being a fag
>>12245573We aren't even getting that from professional offerings anymore, let alone fans. Professional translations and localizations of video games can't even be discussed in the same breath as the worst video game translations of the 1990s. It's one thing to talk about the scum at the bottom of the pond, but the shit we see nowadays is an insult to pond scum. So yeah, AI is the "bare minimum" which is still somehow eating better than we have for decades.
>>12245559That's not rude. Whose he being rude to? The concept of magic?
>>12245580I mean, it's more common for translators to have poor reading comprehension than for them to be politically motivated, but poor comprehension is just as bad as political changes.
>>12245586>whoseYou're lucky I'll even waste this post on you.He is being openly dismissive and doubtful of this thing called "magic", so yes, he is being rude toward it. Otherwise he'd have called it something like というもの rather than the more curt ってヤツ. You can tell he doesn't think highly of something which sounds to him like bullshit.
>>12245592>whoseIt's a regional dialect.
>>12245594Actually I should respond more seriously.>openly dismissive and doubtful of this thing called "magicNot really. In the full conversation it's about these things called grimoires that could allow regular people to use magic. He's not doubtful of magic, he's doubtful of the mythical grimoire that would enable the easy use of magic. And it's clearly moreso ignorance than actual doubt. I don't get rude from this. It just seems like he's unfamiliar with magic and grimoires because they're not common.
>>12245594What region?
>>12242868A.I. is our only hope for unbiased translation.
>>12242868i honestly don't think there will be many limits to what AI can do once true AI exists.I think it'd be cool if it re-built retro games but allowed them to be played and experienced in VR or augmented reality.
>>12245680Bias is not the most pressing issue with translation. For every bias change there's dozens of basic grammar/comprehension errors and tons of cut content.
>>12242868Yes and it should be, modders and fans should be embracing the technology wholesale>But muh translatorsThey weren't even paid to begin with, nothing stopping them from continuing to translate as a hobby
still waiting for tom to do ps1 smt 2 and if
>>12245546That's utter garbage. Do you think you can write like that if you wrote a story in English? Translation zealots don't even know English.
>>12245758>Do you think you can write like that if you wrote a story in English?We aren't talking about "writing a story in English" because that suggests that the story is born from and written in English from its inception.We are discussing works born from and written in Japanese, being re-rendered in English. What you claim to be some "rule" about how English ought to sound does not apply here. A translation should seek to tell the reader what a message says and how it says it, and that method does so far more effectively than choosing an arbitrary "near-equivalent" word that can alter the meaning of the message.
How long have translators supposedly been on the ropes due to AI now. Years? Feels like it. Longest 2 weeks of my life.
>>12245592You honestly sound incredibly green, like you just started learning a month ago because I feel you've read that やつ is rude but have no actual experience hearing people use it. Yes it's not as "polite" as もの but you're blowing it way out of proportion in this example, more accurately you're thinking that just because he used やつ means he has some "fuck magic" mindset. If I were to mimic you:>I haven't seen any dead lights but I did see one (rude) flickeringAh yes now I the reader knows that エステル has a notable disdain for flickering lights and what they represent: slacking on the job. This highlights her diligent nature.
>>12245778>What you claim to be some "rule" about how English ought to sound does not apply hereIt does apply because it's being made for English. >and that method does so far more effectivelyIt doesn't because in English there isn't a gradation in the politeness in a single phrase unless the author describes the tone. When describing the tone it isn't (rude) (polite), they describe that the character raises their voice, or looks down sheepishly with a more hushed voice. Good morning as a phrase is a polite one. How is adding (politely) good? That insists that saying "Good morning" isn't generally a polite phrase in English. If you don't think it is a polite phrase then you shouldn't be translating it into English in the first place because you don't comprehend the language and culture behind it. "Trying" to get the more "accurate" Japanese translation degrades the language it's translating it to by having inconsistencies from how the language is actually spoken.>We aren't talking about "writing a story in English" because that suggests that the story is born from and written in English from its inceptionBut you are putting it into the English language. These half measures don't work, and they suddenly don't start working here.>than choosing an arbitraryI don't think they're choosing arbitrary words. They weigh the word choices against one another between what actually sounds like English and the original text.
Yeah probably
Believe it or not, sometimes it's possible to translate things literally to a fault.
Third worlders are desperately trying to make $3/day off of machine translating manga and it's still fucking awful why the fuck do you think video games will be better
>>12248257I honestly would play machine translated roms, better understand half of it than nothing at all
>>12242868I hope for the day you put a rom in some program and it translates automatically
>>12242868>reference imageApps like luna translator and Textractor do exactly that (and also show deepl translation) and have been around for years now. This is just a shill AI thread.
>>12251839I don't see anything on your image translating anaything
>>12251839>texthookertell me more. from what i'm reading it looks like this reads text directly from a game engine, but how did you get it to work with the emulator?
>>12245354>only argument is "no u"lol lmao
>>12251218I hope for the day every bandwagoner too lazy and stupid to play the games they need to because the youtube told they they do is cast into the lake of fire.
>>12251957imagine not knowing what words mean
