> and I don't understand why some users are boycotting the translation due to the AI used in the translation work, but that's beside the point
Segagaga has a ton of obscure, referential, meta humor that isn't easily translated to English. The "cleaned up machine translation" approach means that a lot of this is lost. Looking at some screenshots of the game, the script seems stiff and overly formal, much like how direct machine translation of Japanese text reads. https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2jjromh55tf7pp7s4hsvurf4/po... Obviously it's better than nothing, but people are pissed off because the "edited machine translation" workflow leads to poor results, not because of some reflexive anti-AI bias or whatever.
i don't think the translators had any first hand experience with akiba culture of that time period, nor did they know how to speak japanese to actually research it (and most of those ezweb.ne.jp / imode sites are long gone)
Is it possible for AIs in the future catch up those gags and meta humor in the language? Could the translation team have done a better job prompting the AI with the current technology?
Afaik japanese media (manga) abuse alot the use of puns on its language due to the amount of homonyms on it.
Based on what I read in the article, MT was used as an experiment and proof of concept, and dedicated translation was done for the full release. Was that not the case?
Was the workflow MT -> human translation?
If so thats honestly such a lazy followthru given the technical hurdles overcome wrt the font tech