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YouTube No Translation

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Re: YouTube No Translation

#31

Post by zorrolovsky »

Anybody knows the business reason for this feature to exist? most people here and in other places are incredibly frustrated with auto-translate and the inability to turn it off. I include myself in that bunch.

There are two potential reasons in my mind: - Youtube folks A/B tested it and it got more engagement - n/ views, time viewed per video, etc. (but were they tracking the right metrics? ie did they capture user frustration) - Some 'guru' at Youtube decided "it's good UX" and "it's what everybody wants". In such case, the damage the 'guru' is doing is unbelievable. Millions of people annoyed across the world... every single day.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#32

Post by hombre_fatal »

zorrolovsky wrote: post #31

Anybody knows the business reason for this feature to exist? most people here and in other places are incredibly frustrated with auto-translate and the inability to turn it off. I include myself in that bunch. There are two potential reasons in my mind: - Youtube folks A/B tested it and it got more engagement - n/ views, time viewed per video, etc. (but were they tracking the right metrics? ie did they capture user f…

Well, surely the idea is that anyone can watch any video in any language. Especially enabling the non-English-speaking world to consume the much larger corpus of English-speaking content.

The idea is great. They just botched it at the UI level.

In practice it means clicking a video you think is in your native language but it's actually in English with low quality auto-subs, but there's no reason Youtube couldn't improve the UX here, like indicate that it's been auto-translated or let you easily filter out content that's not in your language.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#33

Post by lbotos »

zorrolovsky wrote: post #31

Anybody knows the business reason for this feature to exist? most people here and in other places are incredibly frustrated with auto-translate and the inability to turn it off. I include myself in that bunch. There are two potential reasons in my mind: - Youtube folks A/B tested it and it got more engagement - n/ views, time viewed per video, etc. (but were they tracking the right metrics? ie did they capture user f…

You gotta remember that "think of the average person, and then remember 50% are dumber than that".

By doing this, Youtube has probably 10x'd available content for "dumb" ppl to watch. Respectfully, my parents are in that cohort, and I suspect my father will happily watch AI translated and dubbed woodworking channels and not care at all. He "wins" here.

I have to acknowledge that there are probably more people like him then like me who want to have Japanese videos in Japanese in my US feed.

YT needs to make it configurable and I'm fine to turn it off, but the fact that I need an extension to do so is very much lame. As well as that I'm not sure uploaders are aware of their videos being displayed in this way.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#34

Post by kaoD »

rickcarlino wrote: post #19

Unbelievable that YouTube has not made this feature configurable. I am a language learner and use YouTube to find target language content. It’s very difficult now because you can no longer trust the title of the video to tell you what language it was intended for. Would have been very simple to add a settings toggle. This is one of the worst app inconveniences I’ve come across in recent years.

I don't even need a configurable toggle. I just need YouTube to understand I am native Spanish and English speaker and leave those untouched.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#35

Post by lbotos »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #32
zorrolovsky wrote: post #31

Anybody knows the business reason for this feature to exist? most people here and in other places are incredibly frustrated with auto-translate and the inability to turn it off. I include myself in that bunch. There are two potential reasons in my mind: - Youtube folks A/B tested it and it got more engagement - n/ views, time viewed per video, etc. (but were they tracking the right metrics? ie did they capture user f…

Well, surely the idea is that anyone can watch any video in any language. Especially enabling the non-English-speaking world to consume the much larger corpus of English-speaking content. The idea is great. They just botched it at the UI level. In practice it means clicking a video you think is in your native language but it's actually in English with low quality auto-subs, but there's no reason Youtube couldn't impr…

in my feed there is a small pill that reads "auto-dubbed". Easy to miss though.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#36

Post by forinti »

CivBase wrote: post #2

I didn't know video translations were a thing. Is this not configurable?

Nope. I follow channels in English, Russian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

YouTube seems to randomly translate the titles and it's irritating.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#37

Post by waschl »

YouTube settings are notoriously volatile even on the same device and being logged in. Subtitles are enabled every other day all of a sudden without any need (even for my natural language content). Since they rolled out the auto-trabslation thing the same happens, I have to switch to original English every few days.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#38

Post by hombre_fatal »

lbotos wrote: post #35
hombre_fatal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, surely the idea is that anyone can watch any video in any language. Especially enabling the non-English-speaking world to consume the much larger corpus of English-speaking content. The idea is great. They just botched it at the UI level. In practice it means clicking a video you think is in your native language but it's actually in English with low quality auto-subs, but there's no reason Youtube couldn't impr…

in my feed there is a small pill that reads "auto-dubbed". Easy to miss though.

Yeah, and that's only for auto-dubbing which barely has any penetration. Most videos don't have that, just a translated title that doesn't match the audio track.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#40

Post by ahmedfromtunis »

lbotos wrote: post #33
zorrolovsky wrote: post #31

Anybody knows the business reason for this feature to exist? most people here and in other places are incredibly frustrated with auto-translate and the inability to turn it off. I include myself in that bunch. There are two potential reasons in my mind: - Youtube folks A/B tested it and it got more engagement - n/ views, time viewed per video, etc. (but were they tracking the right metrics? ie did they capture user f…

You gotta remember that "think of the average person, and then remember 50% are dumber than that". By doing this, Youtube has probably 10x'd available content for "dumb" ppl to watch. Respectfully, my parents are in that cohort, and I suspect my father will happily watch AI translated and dubbed woodworking channels and not care at all. He "wins" here. I have to acknowledge that there are probably more people like hi…

What's dumb about watching dubbed woodworking videos? And what part of watching japanese videos in japanese makes superior?

You know what's dumb, though: failing to acknowledge that the world is diverse and people have diverse needs that we can't even start to imagine.

I'm happy for your dad that AI has opened for him the gates to even more content to watch from around the world about his hobby.

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