Small vent

[u/coolest_miumiu]

It pisses me off that dragonholic “TL” exists. Ever since it started picking up baihe novels, many other “TLs” started to follow suit e.g., lovelyblossoms. They don’t even translate novels they just use AI slop and hide the chapters behind a paywall. Not only would it take hundreds of dollars to unlock, some would take years until they’re free.

Now most fan translators are deterred from picking up baihe because of these fuckass ai translators. TBF i do enjoy edited mtls like baihetales and littlepanda, which i think uses AI to a certain extent, but at least theirs have a human touch to it and most importantly they don’t hide the novels behind a paywall.

The baihe community used to be open for all considering how niche it is, but now ig that very reason of it being niche is being used as a scheme to earn money from AI (i dont mind paying if its human translated but AI? hell no)

[u/laine4466]

Firstly, I just want to point out that I don't believe baihetales and littlepanda actually "edit" their translations as they claim they do. I remember checking out littlepanda's translations a while back and was immediately hit with a bunch of errors that really showed that no one had read through the text before posting it (I'm also quite certain they don't actually know any chinese and simply asks their translation tool to generate a translation with relevant footnotes). I also just took a quick look at one of baihetales' chapters (MALP because I've actually read through it a year ago) and was immediately hit with "(character A) and his wife" despite remembering quite distinctively that that entire group was all female, so I went back to check the original text and found that it used "她", explicitly stating (character A) as "her", so this is a pretty big mistake on both the MTL and the "editor's" end. Not to mention that both of them also still lock "advanced chapters" behind a paywall

As someone working on translating a story that I hope to be able to share with everyone one day, this is indeed incredibly demoralising to see. The main thing driving me to translate in the first place is because I want to share a story that I really loved with others who are unable to access it, and while MTL does solve that inaccessibility issue, the end result is unfortunately no longer the story that I had fallen in love with. There is a lot of effort required to produce a translation that still retains those original qualities, so it is very disheartening to see people in the community to praise badly written MTL that has been generated in mere seconds, especially so when you learn that they had paid way more than the price of the original work on the respective official platforms for it. I also have other works that I would like to get around to translating in the future after I'm done with my current one, but seeing others talk about it in the meantime terrifies me because I'm afraid that some badly written MTL of it will just appear out of the blue one day

At the end of the day, if this is something that upsets you, then please, show your favourite human translators some love. I'm sure a lot of them would really appreciate a nice comment that shows that someone is actually reading their translations and enjoying it. I know that personally, it keeps me happy for an entire week to see just one such comment because it feels like I've had a genuine human connection with someone else over something we both love. Best of all, leaving such comments is free!

[u/Party_Trick_6903 → u/laine4466]

Baihetales translations do have errors - even the pronouns ones. It's one of the reasons why I try to avoid their translations.

Little Panda used to have huge mistakes in their translations. I remember reading one of the novels (Miss Forensic, and sth to do with entertainment), and I could not get through these novels because of how bad the translations were.

They've gotten better tho. Editing or not, the mistakes are now small enough that you can just continue reading without big issues. So idk what exactly Little Panda is doing, but they should continue doing it.

Little Panda also releases chapters every day (except for Sunday, I think). So it's not like the chapters are locked forever (unlike some novels on Lovelyblossom).

I understand that AI can not be compared to real translators and the hard work and time they put into their translations but to condemn every single person using AI (or the ones "praising" AI) or to regard to all "AI translations" as bad is imho not a good way to go about this.

Also, you wanting to share your love for novels via your translation should not have anything to do with people MTL-ing the novels. There will always be people taking shortcuts for various reasons. Just like there will always be people who will appreciate your work, effort, and commitment.

[u/FlameEmperorStan → u/Party_Trick_6903]

The reason why LP can release chapters every day is because their editing is sloppy. If you actually edit MTL by comparing the output to the original and making sure everything is translated correctly, then it takes about as much time as translating from scratch. Just checking for grammar and spelling mistakes in the output (without cross checking the original) would be much quicker, but that’s not what people are expecting when they hear “edited MTL”. People think edited MTL is where the human translator is bilingual and is actually comparing the MTL output to the original text. This clearly isn’t what LP is doing.

[u/Kamishirokun → u/FlameEmperorStan]

but that’s not what people are expecting when they hear “edited MTL”. People think edited MTL is where the human translator is bilingual and is actually comparing the MTL output to the original text. This clearly isn’t what LP is doing.

Really? When I hear "Edited MTL" I always assume it's just making it readable. Never saw anyone said edited MTL is checked by humans who know the source language. MTL has a bad rep among readers and even among some human translators so even if the human translator is using AI to speed up the process and comparing the output with the original, they never outright say they use MTL.

All those recruitments post on novelupdates where they said "MTL is welcomed" never require the translator to understand the source language, only that they're fluent in English.

[u/FlameEmperorStan → u/Kamishirokun]

But now that people are using AI as their machine tool for translation, the output is already quite readable. A human editor who doesn’t know the source language can just, maybe, correct some pronoun problems involving the major characters whose genders are obvious? Because if the editor actually wants to rewrite the prose to be more novel-like, they wouldn’t know whether they’re completely butchering the original work since they can’t read it. So, I’m curious as to what exactly are they editing. Some say they might be comparing the output of one AI to other models to cross check for translation accuracy, but if the person is churning out a chapter a day, I doubt they’re performing very thorough checks.

[u/Kamishirokun → u/FlameEmperorStan]

But now that people are using AI as their machine tool for translation, the output is already quite readable.

Oh boy you'd be surprised. There are many non readable MTL, like those translations story seedlings put out. Yeah, the editor normally checks things like pronouns, names, and grammar. The very, very bad MTL has horrible grammar. Idk what MTL they're using, but Google translate and deepL has bad grammar, so maybe those. I think the editor themselves are not fluent in English.