End of Japanese community • Hacker News Board

Re: End of Japanese community

#121

Post by ninkendo » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:55 AM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #87

shusaku wrote: post #29

It’s a shame because “improve an off the shelf llm ti translate in line with this large dataset we prepared” is precisely the kind of project people love to work on. It could have been a chance to immortalize the hard work they did up until now.

Is it? I don't think you quite understood the issue. This issue is specifically centred around the human element of the work and organisation. The translators were doing good work, they wanted to continue that work. Why it's important that the work done is by a human is probably only partially about quality of output and likely more about authenticity of output. The human element is not recorded in the final translat…

> The human element is not recorded in the final translation output, but it is important to people that they know something was processed by a human who had heart and the right intentions

Not that I entirely disagree with the conclusion here, but…

It feels like that same sentiment can be used to justify all sorts of shitty translation output, like a dialog saying cutesy “let’s get you signed in”, or having dialogs with “got it” on the button label. Sure, it’s so “human” and has “heart”, but also enrages me to my very core and makes me want to find whoever wrote it and punch them in the face as hard as I can.

I would like much less “human” in my software translations, to be honest. Give me dry, clear, unambiguous descriptions of what’s happening please. If an LLM can do that and strike a consistent tone, I don’t really care much at all about the human element going into it.

Re: End of Japanese community

#122

Post by numpad0 » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:56 AM UTC

totetsu wrote: post #11

pseudalopex wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some grievances were vague. It doesn't follow our translation guidelines. What specific guidelines did it not follow? It doesn't respect current localization for Japanese users, so they were lost. What was not localized? Mozilla's response should not be limited to clarifying these grievances. But it could have been all the staff member who responded could do.

These ones? https://github.com/mozilla-japan/translation/wiki/L10N-Guide... Looking through that wiki there seems to be a lot of things that ML would get wrong.

lmao. This is a "research team and five years" task with current state of LLM.

Re: End of Japanese community

#123

Post by shermantanktop » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:57 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #74

dingnuts wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and actually understanding their contributors would require a lot more than a fucking "quick call" that's the problem. stop thinking about the org and think about the person. these are volunteers who feel taken advantage of, being met with corporate jargon fly out and take him to dinner if you actually give a shit. or write a check. a "quick call" is so insulting

What are you talking about? A quick call is a courteous first step . The other person might not have time for a long call, so you want to show you're respecting their time. Then you follow it up with a longer meeting with the relevant engineer and manager, etc. "Taking someone to dinner" is not the first step here. The way to show you care is by trying to understand the situation before anything else. There is no wor…

This follows an offense, and the insult is the implication that the offense is trivial.

Re: End of Japanese community

#124

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:57 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #90

kerakaali wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fastest way for both parties is over the phone ASAP rather than through a bunch of emails I don't disagree with your statement, but I read the sentence: "Would you be interested to hop on a call with us to talk about this further?" with a similar gross reaction as the OP comment did. Reading that in response to Marsf's original message of airing grievances and feelings of disrespect towards his work felt entire…

> felt entirely tone-deaf and corporate in nature. Especially in context of this being in response to the Japanese team The person is a "Support Community Manager" in Indonesia if you click on their link. They're not the CEO of Mozilla who is supposed to be an expert in intercultural communication. I think you're being kind of harsh on someone who is presumably not high-level and just trying to do their job and get m…

[deleted]

Re: End of Japanese community

#125

Post by iAMkenough » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:58 AM UTC

ants_everywhere wrote: post #64

kaveh_h wrote: post #17

Some people do these type of contribution or charity work not just to do some good but also to feel some autonomy and mastery in a world were much of the regular top down driven drudgery work does not provide much of that feeling. These people are canaries in the coal mine. I expect more people feel a loss of purpose and rise of anxiety and depression in the world.

Conversely, it's a bit strange for a for-profit company like Mozilla Corporation to rely on volunteer labor through its non-profit parent Mozilla Foundation to perform customer support. There was a period where every company was trying to "crowd source" free labor. It died off because people didn't like working for corporations for free. I can see why they have it under Mozilla.org. And lots of companies have communi…

There was probably a more tactful way to shift labor from passionate volunteers to soulless AI.

I too would be upset if an organization threw out a decade of translation work without any warning or discussion, in favor of a robot pretending to understand my language and failing.

Re: End of Japanese community

#126

Post by throw_a_grenade » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:58 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #90

kerakaali wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fastest way for both parties is over the phone ASAP rather than through a bunch of emails I don't disagree with your statement, but I read the sentence: "Would you be interested to hop on a call with us to talk about this further?" with a similar gross reaction as the OP comment did. Reading that in response to Marsf's original message of airing grievances and feelings of disrespect towards his work felt entire…

> felt entirely tone-deaf and corporate in nature. Especially in context of this being in response to the Japanese team The person is a "Support Community Manager" in Indonesia if you click on their link. They're not the CEO of Mozilla who is supposed to be an expert in intercultural communication. I think you're being kind of harsh on someone who is presumably not high-level and just trying to do their job and get m…

Even if not a high level, then s/he had to learn that style of communication from peers in the corp, and the tone is set by managers. It's entirely OK to blame someone who has title “Manager”.

Re: End of Japanese community

#127

Post by alwa » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:58 AM UTC

TheJoeMan wrote: post #33

alwa wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did as you suggested with respect to “nemawashi.” I read about that and “ringi,” and I’m glad I did. Even to get just the gist of what I’m sure is a thin interpretation: that nemawashi refers to a “laying-the-groundwork” process of circulating a proposal between peer-level counterparts, before formalizing it and proposing to act on it. Much less crashing in with it in the form of a “SumoBot,” as Mozilla seems to ha…

That reminds me of internet RFC’s… like by the time they are formally published, no the author is not interested in your “comment”.

…and, for that matter, there was an earlier draft phase where the author was R’ing For your C. And you could have jumped in then and been more-or-less welcome.

Re: End of Japanese community

#128

Post by gpm » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:59 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #106

rtpg wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel about the MT workflow that we just recently introduced. Would you be interested to hop on a call with us to talk about this further? We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with. - No apology - No "we stopped the bot for now" "We're sorry for how you feel" is enterprise for "we think you're whining". Maybe not what the person meant but ho…

> - No apology - No "we stopped the bot for now" "We're sorry for how you feel" is enterprise for "we think you're whining". Anyways the point is just that one side of this relationship here clearly cares about the problem way less, and _even when presented with that fact_, does not even pretend to be actually sorry for the damage they are causing. This is just a single initial reply from a "community support manager…

Huh, if you click through their link the person responding is also a "sumo administrator" and it's "sumobot" causing the issues. It seems entirely likely they are personally directly responsible for it.

Regardless they are representing the company. If they aren't the right person to respond - they should not have responded and kicked it up the chain/over the fence to the right person - instead of responding by offering to waste the complainants time on a call with someone you are asserting is not the right person to be handling this. Supposing you are correct about their position, it makes their response far worse, not better.

Re: End of Japanese community

#129

Post by aydyn » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 5:00 AM UTC

mkagenius wrote: post #118

davidclark wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess would be the anger comes from implication that is a possible solution at all. This type of “hop on a call” request is not usually actually designed to “truly understand what you're struggling with.” (words from the post) Instead it is usually a PR tactic. The goal of the call requester is to get your acquiescence. Most people are less likely to be confrontational and stand up for themselves when presented wi…

Are we reading too much into one sentence? HN comments dese days

I mean, its right and also not the only sentence too.

Re: End of Japanese community

#130

Post by roncesvalles » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 5:02 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #31

jahsome wrote: post #10

I'm not really able to understand the finer details but I think I picked up enough to get the broad strokes. Really though, all I needed to see was the phrase "jump on a quick call" to form an irrationally strong opinion. That phrase instantly warms my entire body with rage.

Why? It seems like someone who has no awareness of the problem, who wants to learn more about the problem, and the fastest way for both parties is over the phone ASAP rather than through a bunch of emails. When software goes wrong, you need as much information as possible to figure it how to fix it.

"quick call?" in corporatespeak means "I believe our disagreement to be a minor misunderstanding that can be clarified in a few minutes of conversation"

In a company you should never ever "quick call" someone (especially on a group forum) who has presented a genuine list of grievances against whatever you're doing, unless you're subtly trying to pull rank to override those grievances.