Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Translating art is still art. It requires cultural knowledge and contextual understanding to be done well, and no soulless bot can do that.

The issue is that they're almost certainly going to be cheap, and therefore companies are going to use them even if they're complete dogshit.

But I think the bigger issue is saying "no ai" and then... using AI.

If you need translation for just getting facts and information for say math equation and its annotation translated, there's little margin in variety, what you need is database - that's mostly fine.

Pieces need translation are usually not like that. They have cultural context, pun, wordplay in rhymes, structural parallel, underlying tone, a lot of things only work in the language originally written. Translation is always a (nearly impossible) challenge for the translator to reconstruct all of them in target language.

I did game translation for a while. Translation is a field where AI hit first and honestly I've seen people lowering standards. The criteria of "good enough", "passable" is not the same compared to pre-AI days, and will keep changing. I'm almost sure this trend is happening in every industry the same way, and "just translation" is a slippery slope.

I don’t know why it’s so difficult for these Ayn Rand readers to understand that almost no market is perfectly free, efficient, contestable or optimal. When it comes to licensing IP in particular, the overhead of trying to get permission for a show that’s already licensed by a competitor is an insurmountable barrier to entry for anyone who isn’t already a huge media conglomerate.

The only realistic alternative to shitty subtitles is piracy.

They're fine if no official translation exists and they're free. If you're paying for a service, you are owed much better.