Another day, another type of job on the chopping block as CEOs rush to the AI frontier. This time our favorite company Crunchyroll has taken up the mantle to push AI forward into their workflow. During a podcast this week on February 27th, CEO Rahul Purini confirmed that the company is exploring the utilization of AI to optimize translations. He argues this would be very helpful to produce a much larger variety of language translations in a faster method that keeps up with the seasonal Japanese episode releases. He does have a point there as many countries currently rely on late and sometimes unprofessional fansubs. I still remember the glory days of Tokyo Ghoul’s famous “McDonald’s” line thanks to a wacky translation.
I'm not Japanese, but I don't think that was the official line.
While fansubs aren’t perfect, they’re better than nothing. They’re also better than “professional” subs from Crunchyroll that often change the meaning and implication of the original dialogue. Both have their flaws, so is handing the task over to an AI robot the best solution? I don’t think so, at least not yet. Right now AI is constantly in the news because of the rate that it's improving, not its current power and capability. It wouldn’t surprise me if current attempts to add closed captions to an anime episode would end up only slightly better than YouTube’s auto-generated captions. If you’ve ever tried to use that feature because you needed quiet but still wanted to watch a video, you know that it’s absolute dogshit. Every other word is an incorrect transcription and the original meaning of almost every sentence is lost. I’d imagine we’re still in that stage with AI too considering how wacky some of Chat GPT’s answers can be to basic questions.
No matter what, fans are worried about issues from all sides. Nobody wants to see ridiculous fansubs that fail to take the matter of translation seriously. Fans don’t want to see the employed translators shove extra ideas and context into the material that wasn’t put there by the original creators. And by the same token, most people don’t want to see translators swallowed up by AI and become another sector of people struggling to make ends meet after being replaced so a company can increase their profit margins by 7% that quarter. While some are hoping a shift to AI could be for the best after AI models are properly trained and optimized for the job as it would (in theory) eliminate the possibility of translators doctoring the work to appease their own vision, I don’t think the tech is ready yet. I suppose we’ll see what Crunchyroll thinks after they complete their in-house AI testing.
Jarvis, reroute all power to subbing the latest hentai episodes.
The world is advancing my friends, and it’s always interesting when I see the anime industry being directly affected like this. My faith in Crunchyroll to put the consumer first is at an all time low after the botched Funimation absorption so… not holding my breath for a great outcome here. Have you heard about AI being used for subtitles? Do you think it could be a net positive or negative? What’s the best solution to current translation issues we face today? Throw on an anime, slap on those auto-generated captions, and turn them right back off when Deku says “I’m going to slaughter your entire family like chickens at Chick-fil-a” in the comments below!
