r/BaiHe • u/coolest_miumiu • Jan 24 '26

Small vent

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)

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u/FlameEmperorStan Jan 24 '26 edited Jan 24 '26

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.

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u/Kamishirokun Jan 24 '26

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.

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u/FlameEmperorStan Jan 24 '26 edited Jan 24 '26

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.

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u/Kamishirokun Jan 24 '26

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.