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YouTube No Translation

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Re: YouTube No Translation

#161

Post by addandsubtract »

masswerk wrote: post #140
rtpg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand how this got rolled out. Surely there are _loads_ of multilingual people working at YouTube. How is there not at least an option to flag multiple languages that you speak? At least the audio translation I can turn off. I do not know how to get the actual title of a video or its description. It's so frustrating that I've ended up just changing my UI language from English to another language so that…

> How is there not at least an option… Haven't we learned in the last 15 years or so that options are bad for users? ;-) Moreover, watching videos in a foreign language with subtitles in that same language used to be a popular tool for learning languages. Clearly, the proliferation of language skills is a serious danger to the market for AI generated instant translations and must be stopped at all costs.

Google knows which languages we speak... right? Surely...

Also, advertisers get that option, because they're the only users YT cares about.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#162

Post by magicalhippo »

phantomathkg wrote: post #28
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…

i18n and l10n are something that I have seen a company done right. It is easy developer to assume: If your IP is coming from country X, you must want the content to be served in language X. No, there are tourist from country Z, long term resident who prefer language A and people from country X want to learn language B. - If your browser Accept-Language say X,Y, then you must want all the content to be served in X. No…

Windows took a nosedive with recent Windows releases, due to the "apps".

Oh, you're using Norwegian keyboard layout? Well surely you want Norwegian display text to go with that.

Oh, you're using US keyboard layout? Well surely you'll want US date and time formatting to go with that, along with the display text.

All the while ignoring the setting that's been there for ages and worked reasonably well.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#163

Post by dagw »

mdavid626 wrote: post #66

Standard American thing - thinking everyone speaks only one language, and that language being the language of the country you live in.

Except both the head of YouTube and literally the CEO of Google are of Indian decent, have lived in India, and as such are almost certainly multilingual. Plus the fact that Google attracts developers from all of the world probably means very many developers at both Google and YouTube are multilingual. They obviously know how the world looks like, and still decided to do this.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#164

Post by martiuk »

The worst part of this so-called “feature” is when very diligent creators from non-English-speaking countries already present in English language. But YouTube just assumes it's in their native language, so you have this horrible AI voiceover by default instead of their voice or VO artist that they use.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#165

Post by dagw »

oc1 wrote: post #17

So Google assumes that its user only speaks one language and needs translation for everything else. Is this the educational standard in America?

Is this the educational standard in America?

Even if it is, Google is itself is very international and multilingual, including the literal head of YouTube. They obviously know what the world looks like, and decided to do this anyway.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#166

Post by noirscape »

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.

Same here with Dutch: you could pretty much watch i18n degrade real time by observing the quality of the dutch translations for all major sites and tech products over the years.

Back in the 2000s, dutch wasn't very common but it usually was pretty good (my understanding is that one of the things that helped is that everyone followed the Microsoft style guide for dutch translations?)

Nowadays you get overly literal translations (meaning some form of MTL), translations that don't care for the length of the text (so it gets cut off with ... at the end for interface buttons) and so on and so forth. It all just reeks of automatic translation with little care put into the presentation. This is pretty much a universal experience across every single system I've ever used and why I usually just set all my devices to English. - It's simply not worth it to deal with the botched translations to try and figure out what was actually meant.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#167

Post by chartered_stack »

matsemann wrote: post #122
chartered_stack wrote: post #31

I actually appreciate the YouTube's auto-translate feature a lot because it allows me to search through videos in languages I don't know but still like to view videos and listen to videos in. For example, I listen to a lot of city pop and anime title songs on YouTube and a lot of them have titles in Japanese only. I absolutely would not find it as easy as I do to search through this content and listen to the music if…

But you're arguing for auto-translation of a language you don't speak . The problem is when it does it for a language we speak. If it auto-translated japanese or polish or whatever for me I wouldn't mind as I don't speak those. But it auto-translates titles from English to my native language which is just bonkers. That's the difference here.

That's a fair point.

I use English while using any YT client so I didn't notice it as much. So I changed the language on my browser to German, went to a couple of American channels and now I get some of the outrage on this thread. Weirdly, some videos get their titles translated and some don't. Not only the titles but also the descriptions get translated. Honestly, I'm surprised they aren't translating the comments at this point.

I still do understand and like the feature a lot. It's a good way to push the engagement rates I guess. A simple solution would be to show a dialog with languages where the users can pick what they speak, not touch videos in those languages and translate everything else.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#168

Post by gherkinnn »

mdavid626 wrote: post #66

Standard American thing - thinking everyone speaks only one language, and that language being the language of the country you live in.

Yes, I know Sundar is Indian. This doesn't stop Google from being one of the worst major tech companies I use at internationalisation and localisation.

Date formats, start of the week, 12/24h clock, auto translations, localised search results, language detection, it is all rubbish and clearly US-centric.

For all their (former) diversity dances, that company has very little to show for it.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#169

Post by cosmodev »

As someone whose native language isn't English but uses English across devices and daily life, this add-on is incredibly useful. I still prefer seeing video titles in my own language.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#170

Post by stackbutterflow »

cubefox wrote: post #120
anal_reactor wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think it's more that the YouTube developers are US Americans who overwhelmingly speak only one language and naturally assume this is the case everywhere else.

This is a clear example where diversity of lived experiences make for a better product. I have no doubt that a young monolingual US developer can't imagine that many, if not most, people around the world are juggling between two or more languages multiple times a day. But it's obvious to anyone else.
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