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YouTube No Translation

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Re: YouTube No Translation

#81

Post by riedel »

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…

Funny thing is that people are complaining with channel creators. Was in a discord where the moderators desperately asked people to explain it to them because people in English speaking countries most likely do not have this terrible experience and don't understand the rage.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#82

Post by david-gpu »

Every time I find a video that was shot in my mother tongue auto-translated into English I want to bang my head against the wall. I've told Google in multiple ways that I'm multilingual and it just doesn't get it. It's worst on mobile, where you can't switch the audio channel to the original sound.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#83

Post by danielscrubs »

david-gpu wrote: post #82

Every time I find a video that was shot in my mother tongue auto-translated into English I want to bang my head against the wall. I've told Google in multiple ways that I'm multilingual and it just doesn't get it. It's worst on mobile, where you can't switch the audio channel to the original sound.

Spent a week in Africa, now YT swears that I know Arabic.

I haven’t watched a single Arabic video.

Any Googlers here that can explain how Google can be so bad at designing products?

Re: YouTube No Translation

#84

Post by danielscrubs »

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…

A generic algorithm is leaving money on the table if that’s the case.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#85

Post by xdennis »

maksimur wrote: post #72
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…

I wouldn't mind and I would actually prefer if things were translated correctly, adapting to local slang, cultural references and the likes. As of now translations are weird if not outright cringey. This is a problem with LLMs in general (probably because they're trained mostly on English data), although to a lesser degree, but enough that I have to correct them daily.

My experience with LLMs (OpenAI) is that it translates Romanian very well (including local slang), but that Google Translate (which I assume is not LLM-based) is very bad. Take for example this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azwUg6cP9BQ .

Original title: "Swedish warm foundation for the house. Full construction process"

Actual title on YouTube in Romanian: "Fond de ten suedez cald pentru casa. Proces complet de construcție"

OpenAI translation: "Fundație suedeză caldă pentru casă. Procesul complet de construcție."

The OpenAI translation is perfect. The Google one is trash. It doesn't just omit diacritics, but translates "foundation" as "fond de ten" (literally "background of tan") a term used in makeup instead of "fundație".

LLMs have enough context here ("house", "construction") to know that "foundation" refers to the term used in construction not the one in makeup.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#86

Post by grishka »

CivBase wrote: post #2

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

I am Russian but am also fluent in English so I watch videos in both these languages. This automatic translation doesn't happen that often with my usage of YouTube, but when it does, it frustrates the crap out of me. So yes, I did look for a setting to turn it off, but didn't find any.

Relatedly, Google and Microsoft insist on showing machine-translated developer docs by default. A translate button is fine, but doing it by default?! I struggle to understand who thought that this could possibly ever be a good idea.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#87

Post by daniel_reetz »

danielscrubs wrote: post #83
david-gpu wrote: post #82

Every time I find a video that was shot in my mother tongue auto-translated into English I want to bang my head against the wall. I've told Google in multiple ways that I'm multilingual and it just doesn't get it. It's worst on mobile, where you can't switch the audio channel to the original sound.

Spent a week in Africa, now YT swears that I know Arabic. I haven’t watched a single Arabic video. Any Googlers here that can explain how Google can be so bad at designing products?

Respectfully, at this point, do we need Googlers to explain?

Structurally: launch-dependent levels/career advancement. Design wise: massive over reliance on A/B testing. Philosophically: a company hell bent on observing, categorizing, and exploiting us in extremis in exchange for only a tiny "relevant" slice of their potential deliverable.

Because of their focus on "scale", they have never cared about any individual user. The indifference of their technical systems is absolute.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#88

Post by silon42 »

As someone from a country where dubbing is not a thing (except for kids cartoons), YouTube behavior is very annoying...

Translated subtitles are useful though, even if often very bad.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#89

Post by lbotos »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #40
lbotos wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> And what part of watching japanese videos in japanese makes superior?

We do have to acknowledge that putting in the effort to learn a second language (whatever language) "takes more skill" than watching a dubbed video, ya?

I took up the hobby of learning a second language to challenge myself. If I watch the videos dubbed in English, where is the challenge?

> failing to acknowledge that the world is diverse and people have diverse needs that we can't even start to imagine.

I think you missed my point because I (lovingly) called my dad dumb -- Youtube has absolutely liberated him and given him access to a rich world of woodworking content that cable TV could never. This feature is helping him access more of that.

Youtube also gave me a world of Japanese content that I could never imagine, but this feature is hurting me by making it harder for me to get the content I'm looking for. Maybe I'm no longer Youtube's target audience, but 1 toggle switch to disable this feature and I'm back in the target audience.

Re: YouTube No Translation

#90

Post by dzhiurgis »

b3orn wrote: post #50
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> And what part of watching japanese videos in japanese makes superior? Bilingual people exist and the AI translation YouTube currently uses sounds very unnatural and destroys everything that isn't voice.

Subtitles is way to go, esp. for likes of movies. For educainment I’m fine with dubbing. Obviously let me disable or enable multiple subtitles.
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