@randahl Counter example. I work with someone who has #dyslexia to the point of needing screen readers and similar tools. For them subtitles are very hard work if usable at all and awful AI voices are a huge accessibility win.

It's not so cut and dry as you portray it but simply turning it on for everyone rather than letting a user select having it translated at them is definitely not the right way to treat content owners or make it clear what is content and what is #accessibility

@randahl I am frantically searching for the option go turn this off. Not only do they translate without asking but the artificial voices are just plain horrible and the intonation has nothing to do with the original. It‘s unbearable!

@randahl Yes, watching things in the original language has helped me with every language I've ever learned.

Science fiction features perfect translation tech, but now, with companies trying to force their definitely-imperfect tech on us, it really hit home what's lost by that interface.

You lose true intimacy: there is always a third party between you and the person you're talking to. Not to mention the changes and growth that come from learning other tongues.

@randahl
Keep them poor and dump....the best way to stay in power.

@randahl agree on the profit motive, but I think this also shows how Big Tech just fundamentally misunderstands culture.

To YT, the fact that I don't speak German is an inefficiency in data transmission. So they 'fix' it with auto translate. Because the original content is just data to them. Not a context and culturally embedded artefact.

All of #LLM is the same. It misunderstands art and text as simply output, rather than a dialogue between creator and audience.

@randahl I absolutely *hate* this "feature"!!!

@randahl

As a creator on YouTube you have to deal with it or switch to PeerTube where YOU are the owner of your content. As a consumer you can obtain an Open Source frontend on F- Droid as for example New Pipe, Pipe Pipe, etc. There you can easily switch the AI translation off.

@randahl That's not entirely true. YouTube isn't that bad. In my case, it was different. Even though some of my family spoke French at home, I didn't want to learn. I thought the French were arrogant. Only the French songs I discovered on YouTube as a child convinced me that French was great and had something special. As a result, France is now my second home. Seriously stupid YouTube 😁

@randahl
Yeah, it's REALLY confusing watching a vid about ICE thugs and they speak german.🤨😬

@randahl I grew up in germany where everything was dubbed. It is a market large enough that this is basically "normal". Mostly that dubbing has relatively good translations and good voice actors, so there's not much to complain about.

Until one listens to the original voices. When DVDs came around, I switched to original (at least for english) and never went back.

I'm glad I did.

YouTube does has OK translations/dub at best. I'm reasonably sure, many will discover how to switch on their own.

@randahl

I don't even like dubs much when they're done by humans. I mean, occasionally, you get a good one. But most are inferior to the original, and I'd rather just use the subtitles. You can still hear the inflection, even if the language is unfamiliar.

At least you can still turn off the dubbing on YouTube.

And there's PeerTube. Miles to go to be a serious competitor, but it's where I publish now.

@randahl if it was 1999 someone would already write a book about how to configure your YouTube so it's not total shit.

@randahl
And these translations are mainly something between not precise and wrong.
I watch danish series with subtitles and after without again. That helps much to learn the language.

@randahl
I can not stress enough how much i hate this feature!

And it is such a hassle ro turn this dumbfuck off.
I want to hear and see videos and websites in the language they were made in and if i need a translation, i want to turn it on activly myself.

I am so triggeres by this artificial and dumb sounding voice with bad translation of something.

And if a video is embedded somewhere, you can't even turn this shit off.

I.hate.it.so.much!

@randahl At first I thought it to be a satire. The German voice was so soulless that I was sure someone was doing a persiflage of an auto-translation. But it was not …

@randahl Do any of you use peertube or NewPipe?

@randahl On the flip side, subtitles on foreign films and tv-shows also helped us learn foreign languages. When I grew up, Norwegian children's shows on Swedish public service TV – like the amazing adventures of Brødrene Dahl – were subtitled. Today, they're dubbed, and the kids miss out on learning listening comprehension and vocabulary in another Scandi language.

@randahl I learned French from Asterix and English from the Flintstones. It was a simpler, better time, my friend.

@randahl also, no one told me how to turn the effing thing off 😤😤😤

@randahl

I costumized my youtube with several browser addons

- one to see the dislikes again.
- I turned off the shorts
- more than just 3 suggested clips next to each other (6 in my case, but it depends on the monitor how many you like)
- adblocker (ublock origin) to avoid the ads
- and of course I turned off all autotranslation shit

@randahl And their automagic translation are supershit anyway

@randahl Videodownloader is an app that at least on Linux, and if you avoid using the browser plugin, seems to bypass all that junk. So far. Also bypasses ads.

@randahl

When most decisions affecting our lives are made by corporations and elected officials are not compelled to do what they promised to voters, haw high so we score on a range of 1 to 10 as a #democracy?

@randahl Wonder how many people learn language because they are interested from childhood.
English cartoons what made me easy to learn language as well as videogames afterwards. Russian is my go to language,family one. Yet I never properly learned Romanian and barely passed exams.
Being government language and poor teachers attitude to struggling kid led me to hate it.
I didn't find content in russian to enjoy YouTube so having russian locale didn't bother me.
Now YT forces me without prompting

@randahl I am still looking for the switch in YouTube to disable this nonsense.

@randahl Since I'm fluent in eight languages and proficient in a few others, I hope this is offswitchable. Else I guess I'll just have to instruct my VPN to disguise me as a native.

@randahl I've seen people complaining about it dubbing stuff into the local language based on their location, even though they understand the original language of the video just fine and are happy to watch content in that language rather than have it badly dubbed. Some have resorted to using a VPN to get it to stop, and then have to switch back to their real location to avoid the dubbing going the other way! Must be infuriating.

@randahl I’ve had a similar experience, but it seems that many people aren’t really interested in learning another language. I live in a Portuguese-speaking country, and there are so few good content creators compared to those in English that I’d rather focus on making information more accessible than trying to force people to learn English. As for myself, I use a script to disable auto translation.

@randahl Everything on YouTube has captions now; almost all are incorrect. Bad enough that names of people & places are misspelled; I've seen "get" transcribed as "dick." Not hard to imagine this could get somebody shot.

@randahl I hear you, it won't be goof for many people.

The other side: in Hungary, almost no-one speaks one word of another language. The governemt controls the press and TV, making opposition almost Impossible. On subjects like the war in Ukraine, the influence of Russia on the Hungarian government or the EU, most people depend on the regular news and thus hear what the government wants them to hear.

Auto-translate will make that a lot harder for the government.

@randahl you can turn the auto translation off as user, but you need a PC for it. Doesn't work from mobile phones.
And I hate all of that.

@randahl I worry the same thing about music. AI's ability to make music and our propensity to want quick fixes and instant grattification do not healthy, productive bedfellows make.

@randahl It's worse. I'm German. They translate a German speaking weather man into abysmal English for me. *snort*
Gets even better though: when I'm in Germany and watch something from abroad, they use a German artificial language to narrate English subtitles. So wrong pronunciation and emphasis - completely unintelligible - and the only way to stop that is watching logged in with allowed location tracking... because where I am now determines my linguistic ability. Puh-lease! Peertube ftw.

@randahl what is good though, is that I can watch english-speaking videos on youtube and get them auto-texted, so I actually understand all that is being said. It's easy to lose some words due to certain dialects, inarticulate speak or background noise. Obvious faults in the autotext is usually no problem, the context show you if some texted word is wrong. With auto-text, it's more likely I actually get everything.

@randahl In Germany this is usual since decenniae. All Film are synchronized in German. Even the Italien opera texts of Verdi and Puccini were performed in a translated version.

@randahl Only imperial subjects think unifying everything is a good idea.

@randahl one of my coworkers learned Spanish by watching Spanish soap operas

@randahl This reminds me of the scene in Star Trek Discovery where the auto translation breaks and the ship is thrown into disarray as nobody can talk to each other or read their workstations- except Saru, who goes around turning things off and talking to people because he was the only one to bother learning languages.

@randahl

I have a personal limitation: I'm unable to learn other languages beyond English, at least in the absence of immersion and being compelled to learn. I tried to learn a couple and failed. I have no explanation, only the observation and a wild theory.

So, for myself, I am relieved if not glad that those translations exist. I've been using similar resources like opensubtitles.org for many years.

@randahl
That depends on what language Youtube decides you speak.

I hate Danish UI translations, so I have my OS, browser, etc. set to English. Yet sometimes when watching a video from an English-speaking Youtuber, I get it translated to German.

@randahl

I hate that "feature" with a passion. Listening to other languages is such an American-centric "problem"...

@randahl i don’t think it should be turned on automatically, but I think on balance this is a good feature. This is accessibility. It’s great to say you learned Swedish, but you didn’t do it right away. If this feature lets me enjoy a Swedish video, that’s a good thing.

@randahl As a multilingual it's also terribly annoying that since it's impossible to tell them what languages I speak (at least browsers with built-in translator features can be told "never translate German or Hungarian"), it just assumes I *only* speak the language I have set as my UI.

There are countries where people much more often use English UIs because most software never come in native — doesn't mean they'd want their native tongue dubbed into robo-English...

Also, where's the profit?

@randahl
I don't even understand the benefit they expect to get from this - it is utterly terrible to begin with.

@randahl
Oh yes, very annoying!
You want to watch something on its original language to catch all whats usually lost on translation. Do anybody knows how to turn off that annoying translation?

Maybe we should boost DailyMotion

@randahl
Why does #YouTube want to add new, translated audio tracks to videos when what we need, #subtitles (or #captions), is so much easier to implement? They don't make sense.

@randahl And for willingly turning the people into dumb*sses…

@randahl start boycotting YT

@randahl And on the viewer side, the settings are hard to find, too. I don't want fake voices. I would rather watch entire TV shows with subtitles than autodubbed nonsense.

The "fun" thing, the auto-translated subtitles often are much better than the AI translation for the narration.

My channel is no longer on YouTube. I make less money this way but I couldn't bear it anymore... Still watching YT though if I can get though the AI slop onslaught to find the videos...

@randahl I get why you learnt Swedish. Not even Danish children understand danish.

/Skåning