Mastodawn

Alex's Art Oct 28

As a kid, I learned English from English language cartoons on FilmNet. I learned from German TV shows. My passion for Swedish crime series taught me Swedish.

But now, the largest tv medium of our time, YouTube, has begun auto-translating everything. Future generations will not be exposed to foreign languages and be inspired to take an interest.

There was no public review of this, no democratic vote. One company just decided to turn foreign cultures off and make the world dumber.

For profit.

Mike Roach Oct 28

@randahl Since they're automatic, I assume the translations are bad or at least leaving a lot on the table. Professional translators know when text contains culture-specific references or word play or innuendo and come up with clever analogues to make the joke or point land when translated.

So sad for people consuming content this way...

Randahl Fink Oct 28

@mroach and the worst part: It is on by default.

YouTube channels like mine have to find a deeply hidden setting to turn it off.

I did that because my viewers were kind enough to inform me that YouTube had replaced my voice with a poorly implemented German AI.

But for every channel that does not realize what is happening, auto-translation is on by default, and many users will not know how to turn it off.

I find the arrogance behind this selfish corporate decision infuriating.

Mike Roach Oct 28

@randahl Whoa, it's doing voiceover?! I thought were talking just about subtitles. That's *way* worse. That could easily be changing the actual content of the video, and without telling you? What a hateful "feature". The evergreen: "you were too preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn't think if you should". Infuriating indeed 😠

Randahl Fink Oct 28

@mroach subtitles, video titles, voice over — everything.

Karma Sahne - R.I.P @natenom Oct 29

@mroach @randahl Yes, they generate voiceover with boring artificial voices.

Farshid Hakimy / فرشید Oct 28

@randahl @mroach
It gets even worse: On some platforms an sometimes if you're unlucky with the a/b testing, you cannot even turn them off!

Frank Heijkamp Oct 28

@farshidhakimy As a consumer / viewer on YouTube I am not given the option to turn this nonsense off.
@randahl @mroach

catflyhigh Oct 28

@alterelefant
I use browser add-ons like youtube-no-translations to keep the original audio-tracks, titles and descriptions.

@farshidhakimy @randahl @mroach

Frank Heijkamp Oct 28

@catflyhigh I prefer a checkbox in my YouTube settings.
@farshidhakimy @randahl @mroach

catflyhigh Oct 28

yes it would of course be nice to have settings, that are easy to access and to use. But since all these instructions that exist somehow never gave me the desired results, I switched to using browser add-ons.

@farshidhakimy @randahl @mroach

Frank Heijkamp Oct 28

@catflyhigh Ok, but those plug-ins only seem to exist for Chrome.
@farshidhakimy @randahl @mroach

Farshid Hakimy / فرشید Oct 28

@alterelefant @catflyhigh @randahl @mroach
yeah and many mobile browsers don't support extensions

catflyhigh Oct 28

@farshidhakimy
this is probably true, but I never use my smart phone for anything internet related. Only phone calls and photos. I am old-fashioned.

@alterelefant @randahl @mroach

Frank Heijkamp Oct 28

@catflyhigh That is indeed smart phone usage. Do calls and that be it.
@farshidhakimy @randahl @mroach

@alterelefant @catflyhigh @farshidhakimy @randahl @mroach well, AFAICT there is a Firefox AddOn and also #NewPipe on #Android...

Kevin Karhan :verified: (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] either way the fact that one needs a 3rd party client (i.e. #NewPipe or #invidious) or a [*specific AddOn*](https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/youtube-no-translation/) to undo this #Enshittification *is* the problem. - And yes, these #AutoDubbing|s are *an insult to native - speakers' ears to the point that I think I owe the folks who did the #localozation of #MLPFiM into German an apology, cuz whilst it is jarring, they at least didn't *"butcher my beautiful language"*… So obviously #sarcasm but this really is just bad.

Infosec.Space

catflyhigh Oct 28

@alterelefant
firefox in my case.

@farshidhakimy @randahl @mroach

JaneraTiciano Oct 28

@randahl @mroach this. It sounds horrible (flat AI voice) and is complete trash regarding the translation. Machine translation is completely unsuited to colloquial speech and misrepresents everything. I want to shut it off badly, becaus duhhhhh I speak 4 languages, i wanna consume my media in any of them AND i can do with subtitles!

@JaneraTiciano @randahl @mroach luckily there is a Firefox AddOn

Kevin Karhan :verified: (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] either way the fact that one needs a 3rd party client (i.e. #NewPipe or #invidious) or a [*specific AddOn*](https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/youtube-no-translation/) to undo this #Enshittification *is* the problem. - And yes, these #AutoDubbing|s are *an insult to native - speakers' ears to the point that I think I owe the folks who did the #localozation of #MLPFiM into German an apology, cuz whilst it is jarring, they at least didn't *"butcher my beautiful language"*… So obviously #sarcasm but this really is just bad.

Infosec.Space

Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC Oct 28

@randahl @mroach So far I haven't encountered any automatically translated YT videos yet, but then again, I have set the language of my YT account to "English (UK)" because I don't want to see all those stupid German videos in my recommendations. I haven't experienced any German videos automatically translated into English, either, though. The only human language other than German or English I ever learned is Latin, which of course has been a dead language for many centuries, so there isn't very much Latin content on YT.

UkeleleEric Oct 28

@LordCaramac @randahl @mroach maybe if you could set your language of your videos to Latin, YT wouldn't be able to translate it? 😕

Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC Oct 28

@UkeleleEric @randahl @mroach I don't know, I'm not making any YT videos, I just watch them. I uploaded a few short test videos to YT ages ago.

@LordCaramac @randahl @mroach In this case, with your language being set to English, YT will translate German spoken language to English.

It's a mess.

Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC Oct 29

@mich4el @randahl @mroach It hasn't happened to me yet.

@LordCaramac @randahl @mroach Then you've been lucky so far.
This "feature" exists for some time now. But I'm pretty sure its availability depends on various parameters and the channels you are consuming.

At least there is hope that this is still an experiment. Maybe, if enough viewers disable the translation (per video 😵‍💫) or skip these videos, Google may give the viewers anoption to disable it globally🤞

@mich4el @LordCaramac @randahl @mroach sadly.this has been rolled out across YouTube eith the only remediation besides using #NewPipe & #Invidious being yet another Firefox AddOn…

Kevin Karhan :verified: (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] either way the fact that one needs a 3rd party client (i.e. #NewPipe or #invidious) or a [*specific AddOn*](https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/youtube-no-translation/) to undo this #Enshittification *is* the problem. - And yes, these #AutoDubbing|s are *an insult to native - speakers' ears to the point that I think I owe the folks who did the #localozation of #MLPFiM into German an apology, cuz whilst it is jarring, they at least didn't *"butcher my beautiful language"*… So obviously #sarcasm but this really is just bad.

Infosec.Space

Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC Nov 10

@kkarhan @mich4el @randahl @mroach Does uBlock Origin block those autotranslations as well? If so, that might be the reason why I haven't encountered them yet.

@LordCaramac @mich4el @randahl @mroach no, it doesn't!

@LordCaramac I was watching Youtube on my Xbox and some of the ads played in original German while others were auto-dubbed into English, very badly (Bitte ein Bit is hell). I am wondering if advertisers actually know what is happening.

Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC Oct 29

@kaspi I only see YT ads when I watch YT on my phone, which I rarely do. Everywhere else my adblockers eat all the YT ads.

@mroach @randahl No idea if it's accurate, it is done in the most monotone, annoying, slightly too fast and too loud tone, that I wasn't able to pay attention to anything it said.

F4GRX SÃ©bastien Nov 10

@mroach @randahl the translations are fucking awful and feel very gross.

@mroach @randahl As a linguist and translator the internet is full of horror stories of mistranslation by AI:

“recent episode of Kimmel’s now-reinstated show starts off with a call for his death, if you’re listening to the provided Japanese-language version of its dialogue.”

https://soranews24.com/2025/09/26/youtube-video-calls-for-jimmy-kimmels-death-in-programs-ai-japanese-language-dub%e3%80%90video%e3%80%91/

Crunchyroll which is owned by Sony debacle:

https://thephrasemaker.com/2025/07/02/crunchyroll-uses-ai-translations-months-after-ceo-claimed-no-ai/

YouTube’s AI Japanese translation calls for Jimmy Kimmel’s death on his own show【Video】

Another bang-up job from AI translation!

SoraNews24 -Japan News-

Troed Sångberg Oct 28

@randahl I get why you learnt Swedish. Not even Danish children understand danish.

/Skåning

Randahl Fink Oct 28

Troed Sångberg Oct 28

@randahl trivia for the non-nordic readers:

Us nords are born into the intra-nordic bantering, but to others it sometimes might appear quite scary.

My US manager had invited a very important finnish customer of ours to dinner here in Sweden. As we had drinks waiting for the food to arrive I started up some Sweden-Finland jokes and he just looked at me as if I was absolutly out of my mind and thought they were about to just up and leave.

Fun times :D

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Scandinavian-countries-like-to-make-silly-jokes-about-each-other

Hans van Zijst Oct 28

@Troed Sångberg I remember a holiday in France, when I was 7 years old. We lived in the east of the Netherlands and I could speak -other than Dutch of course- the Lower-Saxon dialect.

On our campsite we made friends with a Danish family, and I remember we could understand each other reasonably well...

Danish can't be that difficult then 😇

@Randahl Fink

Troed Sångberg Oct 29

@hans .. and here comes the Dutch :D A nation of people with low self-esteem, to the point of having completely made up having their own language. When written down, it can be easily seen that Dutch is just a blend of English, German and the Nordic languages. Since it's made up, there's no real spoken Dutch which is why it's mostly a lot of guttural noises without actual content.

*hugs*

;)

(For those who don't believe me, ask a dutchman how the Gouda cheese is _really_ pronounced!)

Claus Cramon Houmann Oct 28

@randahl start boycotting YT

Randahl Fink Oct 28

@claushoumann start supporting me on Patreon and one day it will be possible.

Claus Cramon Houmann Oct 28

@randahl Patreon is controlled by fascists iirc

Randahl Fink Oct 28

@claushoumann so how do you suggest I earn a living from my work?

Claus Cramon Houmann Oct 28

@randahl That’s a great question for the community here isn’t it? Honestly never researched alternatives, just read what people wrote here and previously on old dead site.

draNgNon Oct 28

@claushoumann @randahl
maybe check that assessment more carefully before acting on it.

Patreon has made some creator-hostile business decisions in the last couple years but am not convinced those are political, just rent-seeking. before that, I think they purged some creators for violating TOU but I do not know the details.

for sure it would be nice to have an alternative

EaterOfSnacks Oct 28

@randahl @claushoumann Would something like Liberapay work as an alternative/option?

Randahl Fink Oct 28

@eaterofsnacks I think so. Looks really interesting. I am trying to figure out some more about the people behind it.
@claushoumann

EaterOfSnacks Oct 28

@randahl @claushoumann I hope it works out favourably

@randahl And for willingly turning the people into dumb*sses…

Mr. Lance E Sloan (IRL) 👤Oct 28

@randahl
Why does #YouTube want to add new, translated audio tracks to videos when what we need, #subtitles (or #captions), is so much easier to implement? They don't make sense.

Randahl Fink Oct 28

@sloanlance they have done autotranslated captions for years.

Frank Heijkamp Oct 28

@randahl And they are still full of mistakes.
@sloanlance

@randahl
Oh yes, very annoying!
You want to watch something on its original language to catch all whats usually lost on translation. Do anybody knows how to turn off that annoying translation?

Maybe we should boost DailyMotion

Randahl Fink Oct 28

@hadon what I need is to figure out if Dailymotion is an ethically sound alternative. I know nothing about the people behind it.

@randahl
I'm looking more in detail in an investment site and it's not so simple. Yes, Bolloré owns about 30% of Canal+ but when you see the other investors, you find a lot of Common Funds ( American retirement investors... the ones that are suffering a lot under Trump).
https://fr.investing.com/equities/canal-ownership

@randahl I even have spanish set as a language I speak and google still insists on giving me their poor translations.

@bluGill @randahl

It seems like we have to change language for each video?
I tried to watch a foreign video and by default it translated it. But I went to the bottom right menu Settings / Audio track , and choose the original language. It worked. But what a waste of time if we have to do it for each video! :/