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YouTube No Translation

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Re: YouTube No Translation

#292
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…

Hostile to you, but 99.99% of the user base prefers it that way I’m sure.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, plenty of folk born in the UK whose first language isn't English. I have many friends who grew up speaking Scots, and a few whose first language is Gaelic.

> whose first language is Gaelic Is that really true though? I think it's a bit optimistic to say "first language". I know that many people do speak Irish, but the number of people who can speak Irish better than English is abysmal. No Béarla[1] is one of the saddest documentaries I've ever seen. It follows a native speaker who tries to do mundane tasks in Ireland using only Irish, but can barely get anything done. […

Likely not for Gaelic, even in the Gaeltacht. I have a couple of friends who deliberately speak Gaelic to their kids, but neither of them would consider it their first language. The kids themselves are properly bilingual, but tend to default to English when visitors are present.

Scots is a bit different, because for many speakers it's just seen as an informal register of English. My grandparents, for example, were primarily Ulster Scots speakers - they could understand English but would have struggled to speak it naturally. My own internal monologue is peppered with plenty of Ulster Scots but fowk wid luck at me quare an funny if I were to use it much in my daily life in London!

Re: YouTube No Translation

#294
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t it just use the primary language you select in your account settings? Unless you’re talking about using it in incognito, in which case it does get annoying when it assumes a language based on region without asking.

My configured primary language is English, but I regularly watch contents in Chinese and Japanese, where I have sufficient mastery over to not need YouTube's subpar translation. YouTube's insistence in displaying video titles in English, starting a few months ago, and now also auto-dubbing in English, is incredibly annoying.

Similar thing for me with Spanish and English. I consume both basically equally. I don't need audio or text translations for either, but Google insists on translating the english titles to Spanish completely ruining the entire meaning of what it is. Strangely I often get things in Portuguese for some reason even though I've never set a device to Portuguese, I just happen to have been to Brazil and Portugal.

I wish I could just say please never translate either of these languages, and while some apps have this many are very hostile.

I also have a weird setup where all my personal devices are in Spanish but my work devices and accounts are in English. It causes a strange mixup where I never really know what language I'm going to be served but its wrong more often than not.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google knows which languages we speak... right? Surely... Also, advertisers get that option, because they're the only users YT cares about.

Ah, well, the content has to fit localized ads! That's it! (You don't want that distracting break in languages between revenue earning productions and embedding media fluff. I guess, in this context, the plug-in is as evil as ad-blockers are.)

Good point about avoiding the distracting break.

In fact, there must be an incentive here for Google to auto-translate a video only when it can sell an ad in the translated language for more than one in the original.

I suppose we should be glad that they've not (yet!) gone that far, or it would become even more of an unpredictable mess from the end user's point of view.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#297
YouTube has become annoying with the AI thing. I live in the US but speak Spanish and consume almost 80% of content in Spanish and my OS and Keyboard are in Spanish, yet the thing is not able to respect the Accept-Language headers :(

Re: YouTube No Translation

#298
post #68

I've been using "YouTube Anti Translate" for a year or two. I think the developer figured out all the bugs and quirks by now and it's pretty good.

This add-on seems to only fix video titles. The add-on this post refers to fixes audio translation.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#299
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Danskjævel here, and I feel your pain. MS Windows has always had a pretty terrible danish translation. Partly because a lot of tech language translates poorly to danish, and partly because MS are lazy and incompetent. Back in Windows 2000 days, I found instances where "Windows" the product name was translated to "vinduer", the danish word for an actual window. I actually found a ~25 year old screenshot I took --> htt…

Hah, that "skjermbilde" is hilarious! One thing I've always found a bit peculiar between Norwegian and Danish computer words, is that in Danish they're often not translated but the English word is just used. My Danish family would say words like computer, download, password, cloud, software, while I would say datamaskin, nedlasting, passord, sky, programvare. And then they would mock our silly Norwegian words, heh.

Yea, german is the same way, they translate a lot of tech words as well. Danish is taking on english loan words at an alarming rate. Many products have english labels on them, even though they're manufactured for the danish (or scandinavian) market. Seing a store having "udsalg" is getting rarer, now it's a "sale". Many younger people use english words in regular conversation, and I hate how it affects me, and I start doing it as well. I try very hard not to. Last place I worked had english as the official corporate language, and all meetings were in english. Even if I'm very proficient in english, my brain works in danish and it takes much less effort for me to converse in danish, and switching between languages all day makes the mental load worse.

A language is much more than a protocol for communication - it's culture. I'm not a purist (only a little), but I think this is a concerning development. I can only imagine how much worse it is in Copenhagen, because that's a very silly place.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. It's mostly based on your location in my experience. Also, there is a clear distinction between the language you want for content and the language you use for the youtube UI. They shouldn't be conflated. It really feels like the youtube team doesn't have any multilingual experience, which would be surprised if that's the case?

Even if they had no experience, surely something like this would come out in user testing?

With the amount of dumb UI decisions these past few years, I don't think they do much, if any, user testing.
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