I remember watching a film online that had AI generated subtitles. it was shit because the subtitles said vaguely the same thing but were still very different to what was actually said. and both the film and the subtitles were in English. can't imagine how bad AI translations will be. also what's wrong with getting a translator, who can understand context?
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Why would they use LLMs for translation over dedicated translator (apps like Google translate)? Is this common now?
In my experience LLM get vastly better results that traditional translation software.
Also google translate is not traditionally suited for long coherent text. One particular issue is tone, proper translation takes into account not only the worlds but the tone and the subject is being treated. Google translate cannot take that into account, with an llm the user can tweak the tone to match the tone of the original text with better accuracy.
And, anyway google translate if it's not already using llm for translation will soon. Results are just better. It's one of the tasks that language models are actually good for.
Anyhow, what's the issue if an automatic translation is done using one software or other? Just use whatever gives best results and it's more convenient for the developer.
I don't have an issue, it was just a question.
I don't ever translate anything but a few words myself.
My assumption was that a dedicated tool would have done a better job, but you have good points about tone and coherence of long text (and possibly even across many promps of the translation).
I work with multiple languages and I haven't heard of LLMs being used instead of Deeply/Google translate.
Don't really see the reason to switch to LLMs.
Just so we're clear, the first pass of localization of every game you've played in the past decade has been machine-generated.
Which is not to say the final product was, people would then go over the whole text database and change it as needed, but it's been frequent practice for a while for things like subtitles and translations to start from a machine generated first draft, not just in videogames but in media in general. People are turning around 24h localization for TV in some places, it's pretty nuts.
Machine generated voices are also very standard as placeholders. I'm... kinda surprised nobody has slipped up on that post-AI panic, although I guess historically nobody noticed when you didn't clean up a machine-translated subtitle, but people got good at ensuring all your VO lines got VOd because you definitely notice those.
As with a lot of the rest of the AI panic, I'm confused about the boundaries here. I mean, Google Translate has used machine learning for a long time, as have most machine translation engines. The robot voices that were used as placeholders up until a few years ago would probably be fine if one slipped up, but newer games often use very natural-sounding placeholders, so if one of those slips I imagine it'd be a bit of drama.
I guess I don't know what "AI generated" means anymore.
I haven't bumped into the offending text in the game (yet), but I'm playing it in English, so I guess I wouldn't have anyway? Neither the article nor the disclosure are very clear.
That said, the game is pretty good, if anybody cares.
historically nobody noticed when you didn’t clean up a machine-translated subtitle
I don’t know about that, it’s super noticeable when that happens, it’s just that it mostly affects languages other than English, so it did not get noticed by Western media unless there is a review bombing campaign after a particularly atrocious localization
As a non-native English speaker, let me tell you, terrible localization was very much a thing that happened well before machine translation, so that by itself (and more subtle typos or one-off errors) was definitely not enough to infer that someone had forgotten to fix a machine-translated line once.
You can definitely tell when something has been machine-translated and not fixed, but the real challenge is lack of context. This leads to nonsensical localization even today, whether it's human or automated, especially in crowdsourced localizations, which are frequent in open source software. I contribute to some on occassion and maaaan, do I wish well intentioned people in that space would stop contributing to projects they don't use/lines they haven't seen in situ.
Machine generated voices are also very standard as placeholders. I'm... kinda surprised nobody has slipped up on that post-AI panic
Diablo 4 had this recently, where an obviously Microsoft Sam like robot voice made it through, and a few people lost their minds.
I thought MS Sam was an accessibility feature, that you can enable and disable text-to-speech. Did they use that for NPCs voice-overs?
Ok? It was a temporary voice file that the devs forgot to remove or replace. And people immediately screamed that Blizzard is trying to sneak AI into the game.
Oh, I did not know that. Thanks for explaining it.
but I’m playing it in English, so I guess I wouldn’t have anyway?
The text in the screenshot in the reddit post they link is in English
I hadn't clicked through to the Reddit thing (for obvious reasons). The example in the article proper is in a Portuguese subtitle, but now that you pointed me at it and I did check the Reddit thread... well, that text is not legible in game unless you really try, so yeah, I hadn't read it. I'm guessing that's the only English instance?
Shameful, but this is the state of modern game developers. Scrap every possible avenue of paying your workers a living wage while surrendering to all latest failure tech fads.
Neither of those things happened here.
The examples people found include a monitor showing random technical text that someone asked a LLM to write (presumably the writer who goofed is getting paid) and some localized subtitles that were left with a machine localization (the rest of the localization was contracted out).
Even assuming a bunch of other stuff in the game was AI generated and just went undetected, which is likely, if it's all iterations on what people noticed it definitely doesn't fit your description.