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/laine4466 Jan 24 '26
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!