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YouTube No Translation

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Re: YouTube No Translation

#141

Post by matsemann »

janfoeh wrote: post #136
matsemann wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have this problem with apps in my native language. I have my phone set to en,no because I prefer the English version over some bad auto-translated crap where some apps try to translate stuff. But then when I download a Norwegian app, then it prefers to use some badly maintained English translation instead, but here I would of course prefer the native version. Can't win.

And it would be _so, so, easy_. Make reasonable assumptions or provide good defaults. Make them overrideable. Make user settings stick. I have the same problem, by the way — my phone is in English, which means I get to enjoy Apples hilarious English pronunciation of German street names while navigating.

Yeah, I think apps just should have a sorted list (/tiers) of languages they support, and pick whatever first has a match in the user preferences. If the app supports two languages equally well, then choose the one first in the user's preference list.

So for me having no,en (in the future where this works I would dare to have no first):

  app is in english, has auto translated norwegian: choose english
  app is in norwegian, has auto translated english: choose norwegian
  app is in norwegian and english equally: choose norwegian
  app is in french, has english translation: choose english

Re: YouTube No Translation

#142

Post by cdrini »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #131
cdrini wrote: post #118

Oof a lot of hate for this feature. I agree more configuration would be nice, but at the same time, this is absolute science fiction come to life. Even for people who speak multiple languages: let's say you speak English, German, and French. That means you understand about 25%[1] of other people on the planet. That's 75% of videos which you would otherwise _never see or understand_. This feature is for people who _do…

Of course I would understand the other 75%. Automatic subtitles have been a thing for ages and they have the benefit of not cutting out all personality and humor in the video. If I watch a foreign language movie I always prefer subtitles with original audio (and those are usually dubbed by human, professional dubbers, so much higher quality). Why would I treat YT any differently?

+1 for subtitles. I do think that subtitles don't gain the same level of traction; and people complain about auto-translated subtitles as well (and auto-subtitles on their own!). I think auto-dubbing might be more successful at allowing folks from smaller languages/communities the opportunity to gain audiences outside of those smaller languages/communities.

The main difference between youtube and foreign language films is most creators on youtube don't have a budget for professional dubbers, so you either only watch big creators who do have that budget, or you have to compromise.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#144

Post by klausa »

hn8726 wrote: post #93
easyThrowaway wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I could excuse them (or reddit for the matter) if their translations were in any capacity decent or at least understandable. In reality most of the time they're plain italian or french word salads. Their automatic audio translations engine could be easily renamed "Mechanical Italian Brainrot Generator". It feels like they did not even test the feature before pushing it to production.

Reddit's one is crazy, I didn't know it exists until I was researching some tax laws in my country. I saw a Reddit thread in my language and it took me a while to realize it's a US-centric subreddit just automatically translated. Translating content about US laws makes 0 sense!

I mean, there are people living in the US, who are subject to the taxation there that don’t speak English.

As someone who also lives in a country where I don’t speak the language (and certainly not well enough to understand tax law); having that content translated is potentially useful IFF it’s clearly labeled as such.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#145

Post by GolDDranks »

cdrini wrote: post #118

Oof a lot of hate for this feature. I agree more configuration would be nice, but at the same time, this is absolute science fiction come to life. Even for people who speak multiple languages: let's say you speak English, German, and French. That means you understand about 25%[1] of other people on the planet. That's 75% of videos which you would otherwise _never see or understand_. This feature is for people who _do…

While I agree that good automatic translations are great, the fact that the current unconfigurable mess that doesn't even respect the user's settings (neither the settings of their Google Account nor the settings of their browser), makes it a grating experience to multilinguals, who are believed to be the majority in the world.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#146

Post by ozim »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #103
ozim wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think statistics show that multilingual users are minority enough and most likely people who understand "help" or "guess" quit as soon when they see anything else so they don't consume the content. So YT doesn't care.

>I think statistics show that multilingual users are minority enough I think that depends on the country. And maybe region of the country. At any rate I can turn off subtitles in my YouTube - can other people not do that?

They are doing automated voice over now and automated translation of video titles.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#147

Post by pjc50 »

mslansn wrote: post #78
simongray wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... 20% is not really a lot. It's probably a lot closer to 100% in most countries of the world.

Is it? That doesn’t sound right.

Depends. English first language countries remain mostly monolingual. But the rest divides into:

- educated people are expected to learn English in school and end up consuming English media anyway (where you'd expect >50% multilingual, but not everyone)

- country has many official languages (many people are multilingual, but not necessarily in English; e.g. India, Indonesia, possibly China)

- country has literacy problems (not so many left now, maybe in sub-Saharan Africa)

- proud monoglots of a language that isn't English: Japan, France (but even here a lot of people consume English media anyway)

Re: YouTube No Translation

#148

Post by dagw »

anal_reactor wrote: post #109
rdtsc wrote: post #8

It's surprising how hostile youtube is to multilingual users. Probably all in some attempt to show off their translation capability or to improve the experience for users who may want to access content in a language they don't speak? Or it's just as dumb as this was on some product managers "designed and implemented" line to get promoted? But, surely someone sane there has to realize there is a large number of users…

Average user is not multilingual. Target group is average user. End of story.

Most sources I can find claim that around 60% of the world's population is multilingual. I suspect that the number of internet users that are multilingual is probably pretty close to that.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#149

Post by notpushkin »

anal_reactor wrote: post #109
rdtsc wrote: post #8

It's surprising how hostile youtube is to multilingual users. Probably all in some attempt to show off their translation capability or to improve the experience for users who may want to access content in a language they don't speak? Or it's just as dumb as this was on some product managers "designed and implemented" line to get promoted? But, surely someone sane there has to realize there is a large number of users…

Average user is not multilingual. Target group is average user. End of story.

> Average user is not multilingual.

[citation needed]

Re: YouTube No Translation

#150

Post by edarchis »

as pointed out by @addandsubtract, I misunderstood the extension, it's about audio translation, not just titles. Sorry about that.

If you're using DeArrow, there is an option to disable those translations.

DeArrow is from the same team as SponsorBlock, it removes the clickbait thumbnails and titles with more descriptive ones. It makes the experience sooo much better. https://dearrow.ajay.app/

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