What do you think about the current state of H-games translations?

[RickSensei]

As you have probably already experienced, the majority of games are now translated by LLMs (I went through the first few pages of the Games forum, and about 70-80% of translated games are MTL).

From a translator's perspective, MTL is extremely efficient, it can translate texts in a couple hours if not minutes while humans would take months to do the same. Just for comparison, dazedanon (who's on the higher quality side of MTL imo) released 14 games in the last 2 months, while someone manually translating would probably take that same time or more to finish 1 game. Of course, a human translator's biggest limitation is time, how much time can they spend working on a project compared to other IRL activities, how fast can they translate a text, how fast can they type,... While MTL can eliminate that factor, they have a multitude of drawbacks as well. Just like manual translations, machine translations quality can vary in quality depending on the person behind it, the LLM model used, etc.

So back to the question, what do you think about the current state of H-games translations? Would you rather wait months for a fan translation, or a couple days for a MTL? What do you think of MTL quality in general? I know that most players wouldn't care or pay attention about the translation side of a game, but I'm curious to hear other opinions on this matter.

 

[Iexist]

Would you rather wait months for a fan translation, or a couple days for a MTL? What do you think of MTL quality in general?

I'd absolutely wait for a proper, well-done fan-translation over an MTL if I knew one is happening. Even if I did play a game with some form of MTL, I'd likely replay it with a proper fan-TL unless the game was total hot-garbage. I have, in the past, replayed games once they got better TLs, though usually that was less of a case of a game getting a fan-TL and more of a case of it getting a Kagura or Shiravune release or some such.

So yes, I prefer quality over speed.

That said, I'm well aware that a lot of games are not going to get any kind of TL outside of some form of MTL. Without an announcement somewhere or something, I will pick up MTLs and play them... at least, if they're around the level of quality that Dazed put out.

Speaking of... Dazed's LLM TLs have improved a lot in terms of quality. Comparing what he puts out now with what he used to have with GPT 3.5 is like comparing gold to garbage. With an editing pass or two (which will never happen with him unless someone else bothers, cuz he's lazy), it would be impossible for someone who doesn't know Japanese to tell that it's an LLM MTL.

At the end of the day, I don't know Japanese, so as long as a TL makes clear sense in the English Language, it'd be impossible for me to tell what kind of TL it is without a lot of investigative effort. If I did know Japanese, well, I wouldn't need TLs in the first place, now would I?

That said, it's worth noting that Dazed's TLs are not the standard. The guy's worked for years to perfect his tools, prompts and processes. He's got a guy to work on image edits for him. There's people on his Discord server willing to playtest his releases before they end up on F95 or anywhere else. He's willing and able to fix up game-breaking bugs and the like that result from the TL and sometimes even outright dev bugs.

Most people can't pull off what he does with LLMs. It's why we still have garbage like Sugoi VNs ruining VNs for people. Why MTL publishers still exist that put out crap like Hanabi Games and 072 Project, so on and so forth. Even then, it's not perfect. LLMs absolutely struggle with some of the weirdness of the Japanese language, and as mentioned before, the only way to ensure you can't tell that it's an LLM TL is to basically have some editing passes done to correct typical LLM things, which is a lot of work, but still a lot less than a full on manual TL.

That said. I do believe that the future of TLs will likely involve LLMs doing the initial draft of a TL, and then a skilled localizer proof-reading that draft, correcting mistakes and re-translating things that the LLM couldn't grasp. I think that's going to be the best of both worlds in the future.

 

[Xeline]

Even if I did play a game with some form of MTL, I'd likely replay it with a proper fan-TL unless the game was total hot-garbage.

So yes, I prefer quality over speed.

Not to be lazy, but "+1" all day to these two lines.

 

[olaf_yaddax]

I am waiting for an AI that can translate Asian languages more accurately. Apart from that, the translations of European languages are very good.

 

[Goeffel]

Would you rather wait months for a fan translation, or a couple days for a MTL?

I have no problem waiting, I will want to play lewd games next year, or five years from now on still - so if it pops up only then, fine!

But just like lexist said, it is more a question of getting a translation at all.
----------------------
----------------------

I don't think any AI, now or future, would come up with this wonderful translation: