For example, whenever I watch an American movie with Japanese subtitles: the translation kind of sucks since there are words translated literally word by word making zero sense or lack of taking account of visual context from a scene. Depends on who translated the dialog, it could be that translators didn’t watch the movie or understand the context in specific scenes.

I recall watching Clear & Present Danger (Harrison Ford) with JP sub, there was a piece of dialog where the commander of a special forces unit gave the orders on planting explosives in which he ordered them to “cook it” basically implying on detonating the trigger but the subtitles translated this as 料理しろ which is incorrect when you account the scene’s context.

Whether you speak German, French, Spanish or etc. are the translated subtitles crap when it comes to movies where colloquialisms (slang), jokes (humor) or wordplay (puns) are thrown into the mix while listening to the original English dub? It’s because subtitles only convey a message but can miss nuances from spoken dialog via the source language.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    12 hours ago

    LLM subtitling is generally really bad.

    All relative. Let’s take an infamous example of human translation from Japanese to English, Zero Wing’s intro:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u5Z-PGJWYU

    The Japanese, the original human translation, and what current Google Translate’s LLM gives when I plug in the original text.

    Japanese Original human-done English translation Google Translate English translation
    西暦2101年 In A.D. 2101 The Year 2101 A.D.
    戦いは始まった。 War was beginning. The battle has begun.
    艦長:一体どうしたと言んだ? Captain: What happen? Captain: What on earth is going on?!
    機関士:何者かによって、爆発物が仕掛けられたようです。 Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb. Engineer: It appears explosives have been planted—by whom, we don’t know.
    通信士:艦長!通信が入りました! Operator: We get signal. Communications Officer: Captain! We’re receiving a transmission!
    艦長:なにっ? Captain: What ! Captain: What?!
    通信士:メインスクリーンにビジョンが来ます。 Operator: Main screen turn on. Communications Officer: Visuals are coming through on the main screen.
    艦長:お-お前は!! Captain: It’s you !! Captain: Y—You!!
    CATS:おいそがしそうだね、諸君。 CATS: How are you gentlemen !! CATS: You all look rather busy.
    CATS:連邦政府軍のご協力により、君達の基地は、全てCATSがいただいた。 CATS: All your base are belong to us. CATS: Thanks to the cooperation of the Federal Forces, CATS has successfully seized every last one of your bases.
    CATS:君達の艦も、そろそろ終わりだろう。 CATS: You are on the way to destruction. CATS: And it seems your ship is about to meet its end as well.
    艦長:ば-ばかなっ・・・! Captain: What you say !! Captain: Im—Impossible…!
    CATS:君達のご協力には感謝する。せいぜい残り少ない命を、大切にしたまえ・・・・ CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time. CATS: We are grateful for your cooperation. Do try to cherish the precious little life you have left…
    CATS:ハッハッハッハッハッ ・・・ CATS: Ha ha ha ha … CATS: Hahahaha…
    通信士:艦長・・・・ Operator: Captain !! Communications Officer: Captain…
    艦長:ZIG全機に発進命令!! Captain: Take off every ‘ZIG’!! Captain: Order all ZIG units to launch!
    艦長:もう彼らに託すしかない・・・ Captain: You know what you doing. Captain: We have no choice now but to entrust everything to them…
    艦長:たのむぞ。ZIG!! Captain: Move ‘ZIG’. Captain: We’re counting on you, ZIG!
    艦長:我々の未来に希望を・・・ Captain: For great justice. Captain: Bring hope to our future…
    • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      I got to the second row thinking ‘this is familiar…’ and then my brain went ‘MAIN SCREEN TURN ON’. Classic.