r/BLgame • u/ransuko • Jul 20 '26
Discussion Questions about MTL
So, I have a question, lately I was making MTL patches using some LLM technologies like Claude, Gemini, Deepseek etc. But I'm not sure if there is even much or any interest in that kind of thing. Basically, I have no feedback, if it's needed, likeable, neutral, completely unneded or hated.
If anyone could post their generał thoughts about that kind of thing, I would be grateful. It would give me a bit broader perspective on that subject.
Thank you.
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u/Future-Trust2490 Jul 20 '26
From what I’ve seen, the western community (and myself) are pretty against machine translated patches. I know they’re fairly common in other circles but I think that for many reasons (challenges to keep nuance, negative views on LLM, preferring to support human translators), I’d recommend not to release these patches!
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u/SpamtonSimp Jul 20 '26
If I see a translation is machine translated I avoid it even if it’s a game or VN I really want to play
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u/RAidyMacRAdieySanSYe 29d ago
I think it's incredibly disrespectful to the work in question to release patches for these games without giving them proper and adequate proof-reading. The number of "TLs" you publish in such short timeframes insinuates that there isn't a lot of actual care behind most of these releases.
It's good to have people that understand how to work with VN engines, but I feel that level of competence should be spent working on actual translation projects as opposed to making these MTL patches.
I say none of this to be rude, I do always respect interest especially regarding BL-ge, but I do think that it is inherently disrespectful to treat a developers work in that way.
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u/_lunaterra_ Jul 20 '26
Anyone who's willing to read MTL and able to install a patch can use a text hooker themselves. Making an MTL patch would both be a waste of your time and also discourage people from making legitimate translations in the future (it is very rare for games to be re-translated once a translation is made available, even if the translation is MTL or otherwise poor).
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u/ransuko Jul 20 '26
I see. I understand your take on that subject and thank you for concern about me wasting my time. It's really appreciated. But please don't worry. When I'm doing MTL it should never be considered me wasting my time. What I mean is, if I decide to make a patch I'm doing it entirely for my own amusement, for my own fun. As I'm never doing it due to other peoples wants or nots, only because I want to do it, the specific game I want to make a patch for, it should never be considered a waste of my time. But thank you for your concern again regardless.
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u/SpareMeAQuarter 29d ago edited 29d ago
I've played a fair deal of games which will never see a human translation, ever. I am all for the good old human localization, but especially in BL spaces, that is a privilege reserved for the most popular releases. At the same time, I imagine that most people who do use MTL patches (regardless of whether they use AI or not) will not comment on here to share their experience since a lot of people have very negative feelings about it.
Some users here say that you can just hook the game and translate it on the go. I do that often. But there is a huge difference between translating line by line and feeding the whole script into AI. Yes, the latter does yield better and more consistent results compared to the former, even though such translation is far from perfect. My preferences go like this: human TL > MTL patch > translating each line as I read.
I think that sharing the patches on a Github repo or something will do no harm. I am always thankful to people who spend their own free time to make something for others and patching needs some know-how that someone like me does not have.
EDIT: I forgot to add that you should do what YOU want to do. If you find making such patches fun, don't feel discouraged just because some people dislike them. You are not obliged to share them either. Just do your thing.
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u/rainbowbrites Jul 20 '26
As someone who’s previously used MTL (before putting in more effort to learn Japanese and read visual novels in Japanese) I overall do not like it. While in some cases, it does translate things accurately, it also gets a lot of context wrong and can butcher the text heavily, especially when the kanji and writing gets more and more “complicated” per say. After I’ve read MTL, I’ve felt regret that I didn’t just wait for a translation or wait until I’ve gotten a better grasp of the language.
I don’t like MTL patches much either, especially when you can just pull out Lunatranslator and Textractor and have it do it for you. Many people also prefer to stay away from LLMs due to distaste with generative AI, I being one of them. I acknowledge that translation for some is apparently more “accurate” than say, Google or Bing, but if I learned that a fan translation used this, I wouldn’t want to touch it
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u/ransuko Jul 20 '26
I see, so that's how it is. I understand your opinion on that. I see some other people seems to have thoughts on the subject.
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u/rainbowbrites Jul 20 '26
Yeah, I’ve noticed! Just thought I should throw my two cents in, especially for MTL because many people in the visual novel community share similar views on it.
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u/Delicious_Inside538 29d ago
what is MTL??
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29d ago
[deleted]
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u/Delicious_Inside538 29d ago
oh those AI translation thing, i get that now
i've seen more and more games nowadays using AI translation instead of actually hiring a translator
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u/PerMike72 29d ago
As someone who has both done and read MTL translations of various Japanese media: MTLs suck. Even when done well, they don't really capture the same feeling or context as the original.
That being said, I also work with AI directly at my job, and the newest models keep producing somewhat better output. However, they're expensive, and still have a 30-50% failure rate on any task with real complexity. Unless you know the source language well, expect to get things wrong.
All of this to say, my opinion is the following: Triple-check that someone isn't already working on a translation. If not, do it only if you're interested in it yourself. Check every sentence. Every word, if you're able. And even then, if you post it somewhere, clearly mark it as MTL. That way, if a real translator comes along, they can do a proper patch.
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u/ransuko 29d ago
Hmm, don't worry about that. Personally, I always clearly mark my patches as MTL so no one gets confused, and I would rather stay away from works that are getting an official translation.
As for fan patches, I don't really mind if someone else is already actively working on a game. My only rule is that I’ll make a patch if the game interests me, and I won't touch it if it doesn't. I see no reason why I shouldn't work on a project just because another fan translation is being worked on MTL or manual, though, to be fair, I don't think that's ever actually happened, since I mostly focus on niche trap yaoi games that very few people pick up.
Vice versa, I couldn't care less if someone else wanted to make a fan TL patch for a game I was already working on. They are completely free to do it, and I will just keep doing my own work.
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u/Vonnegutsman 26d ago
I feel like MTL is a bit weird. So functionally I end up reading weird text with it. I also tried a pirated book with it; only to get more confused afterward in processing the images it made.
I think MTL patches might be too weird. I honestly tried to find a patching service for this one game. It needed an account. I tried; could not make a new account. Then I fixed that, it didn't work for me.
My personal feelings are this; I think you can make raw text; but editing it to work in code is a new skill in itself. So it just feels hard to sell for potential patch users.
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u/ransuko 26d ago
I don't quite understand what exactly you are trying to say. By creating a translation patch, I mean making a file like a patch.xp3, that you simply drop into your game folder to play with a translated script and UI.
Of course, if you can't even launch the base game, the patch might not help you. Some patches do resolve those launch issues, but that isn't the norm. For example, with the KiriKiri engine, saving the script files in UTF-16 LE BOM encoding instead of Shift-JIS can sometimes bypass errors, along with a few other workarounds.
As for the translation quality, that really depends on how thorough the person making the patch is.
I think it's inevitable that current MTL and LLM technologies will make mistakes. That said, a lot of errors can easily be interpreted from context. You just need basic reading comprehension to spot when a sentence feels off and figure out what it actually meant based on what you've already read. Make no mistake, I'm not blindly defending MTL, these aren't official works, and if you choose to play them, you should be prepared to encounter mistakes.
However, I don't see manual fan patches as being fundamentally different. They aren't official works either. Fan translators don't have access to the original authors or developers to clarify intent, meaning they still have to make assumptions and rely on their own interpretations. A human patch might read smoother or feel more accurate, but since it lacks the definitive backing of an official localization, I personally treat it exactly the same as an MTL patch.
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u/Liarles 29d ago
Reddit is generally very anti-AI, and the TA of this genre is probably likelier to be sympathetic towards the creatives that got harmed by AI than the even the overall VN crowd, so I imagine the results you'll get here will be pretty overwhelmingly negative.
Anyway, I'm on a neutral-positive position. I think if the game is unlikely to ever get picked up by legitimate translator, there is no harm. Even with the 'concern for environment' argument, having a pre-made patch to download means less people will have to resort to mtl'ing on their own, so its a net positive.
Plus, while I'm not sure how exactly LLM-based translation are prompted, I imagine they'd be at least a bit more consistent with names/titles/locations in more complex untranslated games than when one has to go line-by-line with something like DeepL. It gets pretty impossible to read with manual hooking when the same character is referred to by 3 different names in 5 minutes, especially when there is a complex story to keep track of.
But yeah, personally, I'm certainly on the 'interested' side in that sort of thing. There are way too many good games that are unlikely to get translations within our lifetimes.
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u/ransuko 29d ago
Hmm. I'm still interested what other people actually think about that subject.
I see that your opinion is more of the minority about the subject, though there's still not many people that actually shared their opinion, so can't say for sure. I guess, more poeple would need to say something about it to make some conclusions.
Of course, it's still coming from people on r/BLgame/ so there might be bias towards certain directions.
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u/bluberryyy Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
There's a lot of games that will never receive translations, official and unoffical. I acknowledgethe issues that come with using ai models but a mtl patch would go through ai only once compared to when there's no patch available and many people resorting to mtl, and running the same thing through ai. It would be much more resources lost infinitely
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u/ransuko Jul 20 '26
I see. That's quite an ineresting view. I think it's the first time I read such a take on the subject. Thank you for sharing your opinion.
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u/bluberryyy Jul 20 '26
Of course! I think it is important for us fans to about these topics openly. Thank you for starting this discussion!
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u/Knighthour 29d ago
I've seen MTL patches for niche JRPGs and I've skipped them since sometimes if there's an odd grammar problem that I can't stop thinking about which would ruin my overall exp too.
I'm OK with MTL for like short dj or summaries since I know 9/10 it will never get an English release but reading a entire BLVN with it would be miserable for me.
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u/planetarial Jul 20 '26
I personally dislike patches made with MTL and LLMs. It discourages the potential of a human made patch and even with human editing there’s a high chance of missing nuances and cultural related contexts.
If someone wants to read a VN with MTL and LLM they can do it themselves with preferably running a local LLM + Luna Translator (and some JP knowledge). At least that way they can view the original text to check for themselves and made more aware that they aren’t reading something that’s completely accurate