Shouwaru Tensai Osananajimi to no Shoubu ni Makete Hatsutaiken o Zenbu Ubawareru Hanashi

[Kirin-kun]

Now this manga has no english translation at all. Hooray. Guess that means Spanish is the go to now.

Or you go to Dynasty reader.

 

[Kirin-kun]

If you're good at using MTL, it's more or less indistinguable from normal translation for 90 percent of manga. The only stuff it really misses on is puns and dialects and stuff like that.

I'd disagree that "90%" of manga can be translated by a machine. You still need a human that actually knows both languages well. Mainly because Japanese heavily relies on context, especially in dialogues. For example, you can have entire conversations about someone without ever mentioning their gender. Sentences can have multiple meanings.

As long as the machine doesn't analyze the pictures, can tell who's speaking, what gender they are, doesn't know the idioms, the slang, the shortcuts, the dialects, etc, it can only be a tool to help a translator eventually. I doubt AI will ever have the intelligence to do that. It can make statistical educated guesses because the models have been trained with a large amount of data, but if you run a Japanese script through an AI verbatim, you're going to get something unreadable. That's what we get when people barely knowing Japanese and English think they can "translate" with an AI. You eventually get what it means because YOU are making the corrections in your brain, but the experience is ruined nonetheless.

MTL can only go so far as to give you a general idea of what's going on. It's fine for personal use, but to give it to other people to read is insulting them.

MTL is a tool, like a dictionary. It'll help a translator with vocabulary, with grammar and such but it can't replace a human brain. And I doubt it'll be able to in the near future.

When you say "the future of scanlation is AI", it's scary, because it means that soulless companies will rush out "translations" of manga in mere hours, with probably an underpaid human to re-read it and correct the more glaring mistakes and will make you pay for them. And people with the actual skill to translate it into something interesting and lively (for example, AI won't use swear words, because Japanese has very few of them. Insults are often implicit) won't touch it. So you'll be forever stuck with a boring, inferior version of otherwise good manga.

Like we currently are with the MTL'rs who think they can earn internet points by putting out garbage.

 

[aoibhemanga]

Oh so they got mad about dead internet theory stuff so they decided to make the internet more dead than it was before. Woo.

I mean, yeah? The more people make it clear they’re okay reading machine generated crap without a soul the more people who have been putting their effort into things are going to leave. A good scanlation is a shit ton of work and people don’t get any reward out of it but maybe some appreciation.

Why would you expect anyone to keep putting in all that effort here when the site, other groups, and a majority of the readers are signaling they’re just fine with whatever fever dream ChatGPT comes up with pasted over barely redrawn comics?

 

[NinjaGoemon]

Or you go to Dynasty reader.

This doesn't solve the problem of demographics and "there are now no notices for redirecting traffic so it's dead in the water for many people". This is how logistics works. Dynasty Reader has a pretty shitty search function.

 

[Argon2409]

I mean, yeah? The more people make it clear they’re okay reading machine generated crap without a soul the more people who have been putting their effort into things are going to leave. A good scanlation is a shit ton of work and people don’t get any reward out of it but maybe some appreciation.

Why would you expect anyone to keep putting in all that effort here when the site, other groups, and a majority of the readers are signaling they’re just fine with whatever fever dream ChatGPT comes up with pasted over barely redrawn comics?

Does this in any way solve the issue.

 

[aoibhemanga]

Does this in any way solve the issue.

Nope, and it's not meant to. Only people rejecting generative AI en masse will solve the issue. But the majority of people don't value any of the arts so it's going to be what it's going to be. It's not artists' fault that so few people their efforts.

 

[knight_evangel]

I think it would be fine to let AI handle only the cleaning and redrawing though. Have you seen some cleaning jobs out there?

Remember that scene in Medaka Box where Ajimu Najimi actually uses several hundred skills at once?

Or that scene in 100 Girlfriends where Rentarou says everything he likes about his current girlfriends at once and it took up two full pages?

Seriously, put the TL issue aside for a moment. If scans groups accepted the cleaning robot they'd have less issues to deal with in general. Just food for thought, it would only be Translating and Proofreading at that point. You could fill in the correct words yourself and then the bot could typeset it from there.

 

[aoibhemanga]

I think it would be fine to let AI handle only the cleaning and redrawing though. Have you seen some cleaning jobs out there?

There are certainly a lot of time consuming and difficult redraws out there. From what I've seen so far though AI's not really up to that either. Just trying to get it to properly patch a gradient (Photoshop's AI tools I think) where SFX were already removed was only having marginal results part of the time. If the tools catch up and they can assist redrawers in being faster or more consistent, cool (aside from them being completely unethical at the moment).

Seriously, put the TL issue aside for a moment.

Well the TL issue already isn't really the issue here. I have my worries about the trajectory of MTL usage but, the issue here at the moment, is more of throwing AI work up there, when there's already a good translation going, with zero understanding or effort to fix the outputs and people saying "good enough". It's an AI problem in general, not just here in Scanlation. People are rushing to use AI tools they don't understand that give them outputs which they lack the knowledge to appraise. The result is lower quality or just sometimes wrong outputs. And the major frustration is that people are accepting it and praising it.


This is next bit it a bit of a tangent from me:
The situation we're talking about in this thread, and some other things going on are a massive source of worry from me with AI in general. The ARE great ways AI can be used to assist human capabilities and expand what we can do as individuals. But we don't appear to live in a society that will take that route. From the start the current crop of AI have been designed to profit off of replacing human capabilities. Art and writing, two skils highly undervalued by society, yet still very important, are on the chopping block. Business are chomping at the bit to replace costly employees, and the general public are strry-eyed about how cool it all is (thought that may be changing).

Personally I'd rather have my love stories from humans that have loved and not from Kadokawa or some other company's AI that they trained to produce works that match some formula they came up with to say a story will be successful. At first, I thought that was a ridiculous outcome that would never happen. People would never accept unfeeling media mass produced from a formula. But then I remember Disney started using a formula-based approach to shows and actors years ago and people were fine with it. Watching people's open acceptance of error-riddled MTL, graphics, special effects, etc are making me think maybe it could happen after all.

So, while I'm a redrawer (and a far less skilled one than many) my problem with what was happening here is much bigger than just Scans so maybe it seems like I'm making too big a fuss. I just saw this whole episode as a worryinf sign of a bigger problem that we don't seem to be prepared to handle.

 

[aoibhemanga]

And, to be perfectly clear, when there's no existing translation I don't entirely have a problem with what Bawkwan was doing.

I'd be happier with myself if I could get my yuri fix by hurrying up and learning to read japanese like I should. But a huge amount of time goes into that and it's unreasonable to expect people to wait to see series that may never get an official translation. I want these works to be appreciated by as wide an audience as possible, I want their authors to reap the rewards of their hard work and creativity. Maybe an MTL pipeline is the best way we have for that at the moment. Just, not when there's a group already working.

 

[MarcEvans]

Now this manga has no english translation at all. Hooray. Guess that means Spanish is the go to now.

Oh so they got mad about dead internet theory stuff so they decided to make the internet more dead than it was before. Woo.

Just read the manga on Dynasty-Scans.
Edit: I missed the fact there was a second page. Point still stands. Most Yuri readers will find the Manga regardless of it being on here or not.

 

[Argon2409]

Just read the manga on Dynasty-Scans.
Edit: I missed the fact there was a second page. Point still stands. Most Yuri readers will find the Manga regardless of it being on here or not.

Idk I'm down with piracy because I don't have to constantly switch between 20 different services to read what I want to. Also Dynasty's website is straight out of 2006, so it's missing functionalities like pages and summaries for non-series works, rating systems to judge quality, and search advanced enough to where I could just put in the title here and get the series there.

 

[Playerbase]

I've read the raw, it's not even that hard to translate 😅

It doesn't have quirks like many mangakas like to write into their dialogues (which most of times make translating it much harder).

Don't know how someone can screw the translation up.

 

[psuedonymous]

Watching people's open acceptance of error-riddled MTL, graphics, special effects, etc are making me think maybe it could happen after all.

Shitty scanlations have existed since before the recent AI boom, and even before the internet was used for distribution (shock, they used to be distributed as paper photocopies!). Multiple groups working on the same title is also far from new.
What is new, at least within the last few years, is the hissy fits thrown over 'dibs'. If any other translations (MTL or otherwise) than yours exist that does not take away anything from you...
Unless you think of scanlating as your income source rather than fan translation, and views as something you are somehow 'owed'.

 

[knight_evangel]

Well the TL issue already isn't really the issue here. I have my worries about the trajectory of MTL usage but, the issue here at the moment, is more of throwing AI work up there, when there's already a good translation going, with zero understanding or effort to fix the outputs and people saying "good enough". It's an AI problem in general, not just here in Scanlation. People are rushing to use AI tools they don't understand that give them outputs which they lack the knowledge to appraise. The result is lower quality or just sometimes wrong outputs. And the major frustration is that people are accepting it and praising it.

I only meant to make a point about the advent of good technology making the disparity between two results less pitiable....in the future. I'm aware that AI is ultimately in its infant stages, though growing exponentially. To reiterate-cuz I know someone will take this out of context-this was about redrawing and not translation. As for translation...

'speed scans' have always been a thing-younger folks seem to not know this. and you'd be surprised how inaccurate some of them were despite MTL being less of a thing at the time(OCR method was the closest thing)-and I've noticed lately that motivation is less about quality and more about who gets props. If it matters that much, it's probably more realistic to seek competitive methods technology-wise instead of sticking to old ways, because ironically the old way was used back when speed scans were widely accepted. Clearly new methods need to be adopted.

The fact that it's causing so much despair should make it evident that it's no longer feasible, and that's not me taking up for AI. That's just me using the "tough love" approach to this. It's like 'K' from Men in Black said, "A person is smart. PEOPLE are stupid.", you can't expect to cater to the masses off of virtue alone. Reality isn't that kind and people will always settle for less if they care less than you.

 

[erellisae]

Ah, the chapter went away again. If this is going to happen every time I proofread an MTL chapter I should probably do it more often.

 

[kn4ll]

If anyone would like to eat popcorn, here’s the deleted chapter thread.

https://forums.mangadex.org/threads...ken-o-zenbu-ubawareru-hanashi-ch-3-1.1687526/

 

[kn4ll]

Idk I'm down with piracy because I don't have to constantly switch between 20 different services to read what I want to. Also Dynasty's website is straight out of 2006, so it's missing functionalities like pages and summaries for non-series works, rating systems to judge quality, and search advanced enough to where I could just put in the title here and get the series there.

It’s probably better just using hakuneko to download chapters from dynasty scans. I’ve dropped manga because their reader is so terrible.

 

[kn4ll]

Shitty scanlations have existed since before the recent AI boom, and even before the internet was used for distribution (shock, they used to be distributed as paper photocopies!). Multiple groups working on the same title is also far from new.
What is new, at least within the last few years, is the hissy fits thrown over 'dibs'. If any other translations (MTL or otherwise) than yours exist that does not take away anything from you...
Unless you think of scanlating as your income source rather than fan translation, and views as something you are somehow 'owed'.

It’s the first that’s released that gets put on aggregators and get read. You’ll also notice that a subsequent release gets a lot less attention and comments. For some groups, regardless of if they’re for profit, this is demotivating and might cause them to quit.

I myself usually never work on more than one chapter at a time because it sucks being sniped and feeling all your effort was for nothing. I think it’s hard to understand unless you’re a scanlator.

 

[kn4ll]

I only meant to make a point about the advent of good technology making the disparity between two results less pitiable....in the future. I'm aware that AI is ultimately in its infant stages, though growing exponentially. To reiterate-cuz I know someone will take this out of context-this was about redrawing and not translation. As for translation...

'speed scans' have always been a thing-younger folks seem to not know this. and you'd be surprised how inaccurate some of them were despite MTL being less of a thing at the time(OCR method was the closest thing)-and I've noticed lately that motivation is less about quality and more about who gets props. If it matters that much, it's probably more realistic to seek competitive methods technology-wise instead of sticking to old ways, because ironically the old way was used back when speed scans were widely accepted. Clearly new methods need to be adopted.

The fact that it's causing so much despair should make it evident that it's no longer feasible, and that's not me taking up for AI. That's just me using the "tough love" approach to this. It's like 'K' from Men in Black said, "A person is smart. PEOPLE are stupid.", you can't expect to cater to the masses off of virtue alone. Reality isn't that kind and people will always settle for less if they care less than you.

I’d say MTL has been good enough to scanlate for the past two-three years, but it’s still improved considerably in the same time. Biggest issue with OCR is that it messes up the sentence order a lot, and it doesn’t connect text in bubbles that connects together. If you manually fix this and put it in deepl or chatgpt, you’ll usually get a proper translation. In my experience it’s more often than not this that’s the issue with AI MTL like ichigoreader, not the translation in itself. Otherwise it messes up with stuff like shortened sentences, dialects, puns, picking wrong meaning of words that you have to use some basic Japanese skills to fix.

 

[Kirin-kun]

The guy removed their chapter again.

I suspect they only do it so the aggregators pick it up.

I don't understand how people can defend such a troll, but to each their own.