The Artificial Intelligence (AI) He is getting strongly into the manga and anime industry, and many translators are already seeing the consequences. Although some believe that AI could leave them without work, others think that the problem is dirtier: publishers are using it as an excuse to pay them less.
In an interview with Gizmodo, David Evelyn, official translator of “Kaiju No. 8”, talked about how editorials are starting to use tools such as novelus to make rapid translations of sleeves and light novels. But for him, AI is not a real threat … because it is a total disaster. «Translation is not just spending words from one language to another. I do not believe that AI is threatening jobs because, honestly, it is useless in what it does»He said.
According to him, AI does not understand context, does not know how to make words games, does not adapt cultural references and fails that the dialogues sound natural. Basically, it translates as Google translator in its worst eras, which does not use something as important as manga location.
Although the AI does not yet give the size, the publishers are using it the same, and the problem is that they do it to pay less. Currently, most manga translators work as freelancers and have to take several projects to pay the accounts. The rates are far from being fair: between $ 100 and $ 250 per chapter in weekly sleeves, and between $ 1,000 and $ 1,700 for the month. With those numbers, living alone of translating manga is almost a joke in the first world.
And here comes the dirty play: the publishers are using AI to make fast translations and then hire humans only to correct errors. «Companies say they will use human editors to review what the AI does, but that is basically translate from zero. The difference is that now they call it 'review AI' and they hope we do it for salaries of misery», Explained Evelyn.
But this is not the only problem. According to Casey Loe, another veteran translator, delivery deadlines are absurd. Sometimes, the manga arrives just a week before publication, and at that time you have to translate it, edit it, label it and review it. With so little margin of maneuver, it is normal that there are errors, but the community is not always comprehensive. There are more and more cases of translators receiving harassment in networks only by minimal details.
Loe believes that a solution would be for Japanese publishers to send the material more time, so that location equipment can do their job well without being on the verge of collapse. In a nutshell, AI still cannot translate well, but it is already wreaking havoc in the industry. Not only does nothing improve, but it is making the translators charge less and work more. If this continues, the future of manga location could become more and darker.
Fountain: Gizmodo
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(Tagstotranslate) intelligence-artificial
