Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Segagaga Has Been Translated into English

thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 42 posts

Re: Segagaga Has Been Translated into English

#21

Post by ndiddy »

RobRivera wrote: post #18
ndiddy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and I don't understand why some users are boycotting the translation due to the AI used in the translation work, but that's beside the point Segagaga has a ton of obscure, referential, meta humor that isn't easily translated to English. The "cleaned up machine translation" approach means that a lot of this is lost. Looking at some screenshots of the game, the script seems stiff and overly formal, much like how dire…

Based on what I read in the article, MT was used as an experiment and proof of concept, and dedicated translation was done for the full release. Was that not the case? Was the workflow MT -> human translation? If so thats honestly such a lazy followthru given the technical hurdles overcome wrt the font tech

From the Github repo (https://github.com/ExxistanceDC/Segagaga-English-Translation), the translation went through a process called MTPE (Machine translation, post-editing). This works just like it sounds. The initial translation is done with machine translation, then human translators review and edit the resulting translation to try to correct any mistakes.

> What I call the “playtesting translation” — a base translation that allowed the artists and playtesters to get started early and understand what they were working on — was developed using a combination of DeepL and ChatGPT 4o/4.5. That translation then went through a substantial, months-long human translator review. I don't think that the end product feels “machine-translated,” but that’s ultimately for you, the player, to judge.

Re: Segagaga Has Been Translated into English

#22

Post by Tiktaalik »

Anonyneko wrote: post #4

Amazing technical achievement, and also a very unfortunate situation with the reliance on AI translation. I'm not privy to the details of the actual translation process (whether AI translation was really just a technical placeholder or actually the draft for the real translation), but the criticism online has been scathing.

Yes the real achievement here I think is the creation and public sharing of the translation tools. The AI translation here should be considered effectively a proof of concept of the tools.

Given the particular nature of this game, so reliant on inside jokes requiring a knowledge of SEGA history, it's likely an AI translation could miss a lot, and I think the community will eagerly await further real translations done by professional translators leveraging these tools.

Re: Segagaga Has Been Translated into English

#23

Post by jsheard »

ndiddy wrote: post #21
RobRivera wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what I read in the article, MT was used as an experiment and proof of concept, and dedicated translation was done for the full release. Was that not the case? Was the workflow MT -> human translation? If so thats honestly such a lazy followthru given the technical hurdles overcome wrt the font tech

From the Github repo ( https://github.com/ExxistanceDC/Segagaga-English-Translation ), the translation went through a process called MTPE (Machine translation, post-editing). This works just like it sounds. The initial translation is done with machine translation, then human translators review and edit the resulting translation to try to correct any mistakes. > What I call the “playtesting translation” — a base trans…

> MTPE (Machine translation, post-editing). This works just like it sounds. The initial translation is done with machine translation, then human translators review and edit the resulting translation to try to correct any mistakes.

And the consensus among professional translators is that MTPE only saves time if you're willing to accept a half-assed result. For them to edit MT up to the standard of manual translation takes just as much expertise and effort as translating it manually in the first place.

Re: Segagaga Has Been Translated into English

#24

Post by RobRivera »

ndiddy wrote: post #21
RobRivera wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what I read in the article, MT was used as an experiment and proof of concept, and dedicated translation was done for the full release. Was that not the case? Was the workflow MT -> human translation? If so thats honestly such a lazy followthru given the technical hurdles overcome wrt the font tech

From the Github repo ( https://github.com/ExxistanceDC/Segagaga-English-Translation ), the translation went through a process called MTPE (Machine translation, post-editing). This works just like it sounds. The initial translation is done with machine translation, then human translators review and edit the resulting translation to try to correct any mistakes. > What I call the “playtesting translation” — a base trans…

Oh boo hoo.

Just boooooo.

Disappointed. Gif

As a side bar, I found it funny how in a Stanford lecture teaching various routes to training llms on the Machine Translation benchmark, the sample used was a French to English translation of 'the teddy bear is blue' or something similar.

After the lecture I reviewed the current production grade google translate...it butchered the translation

I wouldnt trust machine translation.

Re: Segagaga Has Been Translated into English

#25

Post by sumtechguy »

thiago_fm wrote: post #9
tom___n wrote: post #3

This is the first time Dreamcast owners can play it in a more understandable way (and I don't understand why some users are boycotting the translation due to the AI used in the translation work, but that's beside the point). Playing SGGG, we can all see how brave Sega was at the time. I'm still shocked that Sony had such good marketing around the PS2 launch, so users could trust them to wait - and NOT buy - a Dreamca…

The reason the PS2 was successful it was because it was very easy to unblock it and use pirated games. The Dreamcast wasn't as easy as I can remember.

I think that it was a game player and a DVD player had more to do with the success of the thing. Oh and it plays psx games too.

I owned both. The graphics/games were of similar quality. Having a larger game storage gave the ps2 a decent advantage. The dreamcast seemed more interesting. But the PS2 had a better customer feature set.

Re: Segagaga Has Been Translated into English

#26

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

It's a shame to see all the pearl-clutching about the use of AI. I've been playing ROMs and fantrans since the early aughts, and we were content back then when some of our desired games just got menu translations. I've watched a ton of projects spring up around the games people wanted to play, only to stall or die out because the majority of the project people were programmers, and the one translator was a college student enrolled in Japanese 102 who flaked out.

Human translation should obviously be the end-goal, particularly in a text-heavy game from the 32-bit era...but that shouldn't undercut the technical achievement of this hack, even if the MTL text becomes little more than placeholder. Put it all up online, make it easy for someone to pick up the script and translate it independently in chunks, and then insert it back in later. That's how a number of fan-trans were done in the past, if memory serves.

Re: Segagaga Has Been Translated into English

#28

Post by Anonyneko »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #22
Anonyneko wrote: post #4

Amazing technical achievement, and also a very unfortunate situation with the reliance on AI translation. I'm not privy to the details of the actual translation process (whether AI translation was really just a technical placeholder or actually the draft for the real translation), but the criticism online has been scathing.

Yes the real achievement here I think is the creation and public sharing of the translation tools. The AI translation here should be considered effectively a proof of concept of the tools. Given the particular nature of this game, so reliant on inside jokes requiring a knowledge of SEGA history, it's likely an AI translation could miss a lot, and I think the community will eagerly await further real translations done…

I hope so... but in the fan translation world the first translation is almost always the only translation, and the only one most people will experience even in the exceedingly rare case of an alternate translation coming into existence (as only the first one ever makes the news).

Re: Segagaga Has Been Translated into English

#29

Post by whywhywhywhy »

tom___n wrote: post #3

This is the first time Dreamcast owners can play it in a more understandable way (and I don't understand why some users are boycotting the translation due to the AI used in the translation work, but that's beside the point). Playing SGGG, we can all see how brave Sega was at the time. I'm still shocked that Sony had such good marketing around the PS2 launch, so users could trust them to wait - and NOT buy - a Dreamca…

> boycotting the translation due to the AI used in the translation work

Non-AI translators had literal decades to step up and do this and didn't so honestly who cares what they think about it.

Re: Segagaga Has Been Translated into English

#30

Post by vova_hn2 »

jsheard wrote: post #23
ndiddy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the Github repo ( https://github.com/ExxistanceDC/Segagaga-English-Translation ), the translation went through a process called MTPE (Machine translation, post-editing). This works just like it sounds. The initial translation is done with machine translation, then human translators review and edit the resulting translation to try to correct any mistakes. > What I call the “playtesting translation” — a base trans…

> MTPE (Machine translation, post-editing). This works just like it sounds. The initial translation is done with machine translation, then human translators review and edit the resulting translation to try to correct any mistakes. And the consensus among professional translators is that MTPE only saves time if you're willing to accept a half-assed result. For them to edit MT up to the standard of manual translation t…

> consensus among professional translators

[citation needed]

Post reply on HN