Jacob

I realize that language is strong, and for a long time I have been skeptical of this notion that 'AI bros hate artists' or such—but seeing the response to this critique, which on the other site really actually has too often been literally 'Fuck Miyazaki', what other conclusion are we to come to?

Stop sharing the Ghibli AI slop, what is wrong with you:

aftermath.site/studio-ghibli-...

This might be the worst TL advice I've ever seen. The number one thing I tell students is to look everything up all the time. Look it up in monolingual dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, corpora, thesauruses, whatever! The ability to question your own knowledge is the mark of a good translator.

They won’t be translations. They will be fraudulent text-like things that appear to hold meaning but will not. It’s not benevolent or about access, it’s capitalism.

YouTube video by National Book Ursula Le Guin

I miss her so much, but the work is on the rest of us now.

@ursulakleguin.com at the 2014 National Book Awards. "I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9N...

Another great article on localization!

"Delivering a top-notch game localization requires great linguistic skills, attention to detail, detective-like abilities, nerves of steel and a whole lot of patience to deal with the industry."

Time and time again translators are pointing out how machine translation produces terrible quality work, but it's normally the translators who are forced to make it somewhat readable for pennies, while middle men pocket the profits.

All the #warcraft 2 #pixelart drawings together (watermarked)

Iceland, 2017

from my series Anarres, inspired by Ursula K Le Guin's novel, The Dispossessed

[“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? The moneylenders, the know-nothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can.”]

Ursula le Guin, on the accusation that fantasy is an escape from reality

screenshot of a Tumblr post from user ecofear yelling "what is HAPPENING" in response to a screenshot of a quotetweet from user @Ovichknox reading "this is so scary to me. i recommended a book to a friend recently and she came back to me a day later saying it was really good and i asked if she finished it already and she said "yeah i got chatgpt to summarise each chapter into 3 paragraphs to it was easy to read" which is replying to a tweet from @alz_zyd reading "Personally, I read a bunch of classics in high register in college. I guess it was fun. I recently ChatGPT'd Aristotle into readable English, finished it around 5x as fast as a translation, and felt l got the main gist of things. idk does the pain incurred…" Followed by a a reblog from tumblr use moonglade-poetess reading "Hey guys, with so much love, and as someone with an actual English degree: Please just use Sparknotes if you're going to do this. I get it. I do. But chatgpt or other genAl shit doesn't actually know what's important for you to know, and in some cases it might fully make shit up. Use sparknotes. Failing that, talk to someone who did read it. I'm begging.

So deeply not kidding when I say that the current paradigm of "Gen AI" is doing deep, lasting harm to our ability to make knowledge, meaning, & truth w/ each other.

Like… it's really fucking us up & if we don't stop it soon we're gonna see a kind of negative chaos frankly unimaginable to most ppl 👍🏾

Gandalf the White saying, "Be silent. Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth"

me when any program's AI assistant asks me if I want help writing:

陰の太陽グウィンドリン / Dark Sun Gwyndolin
#DARKSOULS

Thank you!! I can only speak for the first four so far but I *very* much enjoyed all of them and am now reading the fifth. It's really pulled me in to mystery in general.

I also plan to re-read them in English this year to check out @tanteikid.bsky.social 's translations (which seem amazing!)😄

This is a very motivating article for me because I really want to increase my reading in 2025, so thank you! I read about 12 or so books in 2024, seven of which were in Japanese - mainly the first half of Ayatsuji's 館 series.

I think I'll aim for 20-25 books this year with half in Japanese!

AI and the Enshittification of Life, or My Year Wading Through the Slop of Generative Artificial Intelligence | Jason Sanford Get more from Jason Sanford on Patreon

My Genre Grapevine report on "AI and the Enshittification of Life" is out. I spent a year wading through the slop of generative artificial intelligence to show what happened with the programs in 2024, how they affect artists and writers, and where we go from here. 1/2 www.patreon.com/posts/ai-and...

Daily reminder that the underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.

This is why publishers should have been crediting translators on their websites and front covers, and book reviewers normalised into crediting translators with authors much earlier--to give translators more visibility. To show that translation is writing that requires humans to do well.

Gold Banner on Red Background: Stop Forcing A.I. into Fucking EVERYTHING! Nobody Asked For It; Everyone Hates It

Stop Forcing A.I. into Fucking EVERYTHING!

Why Do Video Game Subtitles Suck? - J-En Translations A look at why some video game subtitles suck and what game devs can do to improve the standard of subtitles in all languages.

One of my pet peeves when playing games is bad subtitles. Tiny text, illegible fonts, no speaker names, poor line breaking, the list goes on! Movies and TV have standardized style guides, so why don't games?!

Anyway, so I decided to rant about it.
j-entranslations.com/why-do-video...

I'm sure Duolingo revels in people's ignorance around AI because they mean to exploit it as they continue their pivot to AI. www.pcmag.com/news/as-duol...

I keep trying to write something eloquent and just being tired.
History matters. Philosophy matters. Languages and literature matter. Indigenous studies matter. Arts and humanities and social sciences matter. All of them.

Signed,
a physicist

Lee Jae-myung, Leader of South Korea's Democratic Party, live-streamed himself scaling the walls of the National Assembly to bypass military barricades so that he could vote to overturn the President's martial law.

Comic, two panels Panel 1: Robin speaking on her phone, clearly distressed, tears in her eyes: "I'm telling you that I'm scared. These people-- the kind of people you vote for-- want to take my health care, my rights away from me. I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave my home." The voice from the phone answers: "Well," Large dialogue text in a large white space between panels: "I just don't think that's going to happen." Panel 2: Robin, wide eyes still tearing up, stares in disbelief at her phone.

Comic, six panels. P3: Headline on Utah banning gender affirming care for minors, and other states considering the same P4: Headline on states beginning to target trans health care for adults P5: Robin looking at a tablet. P6: Robin on a couch, watching TV. Voice on TV: "After the anti-LGBTQ+ campaign prompted several protests and bomb threats made against the Boston facility, the group has now turned its gaze toward the Gender Health Program at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville." P7: Headlines on Tennessee's broad and vague drag ban, Missouri banning transgender care for minors, and restricting coverage for adults Tennessee ban on gender affirming health care for trans kids. Headlines accompanied by a map of anti-trans legislation in US states. P8: Robin's spouse Jordan looking up from her laptop toward Robin, who has tears in her eyes. Jordan says "That's it. We're leaving."

Comic, six panels. Panel 9: Robin taping a cardboard box, looking over her shoulder toward Jordan, who is saying something as she walks holding another box. More boxes are behind them. Panel 10: Robin sitting at a table with a stack of paperwork and holding a pen. She is leaning back and groaning: "Eughhhhhh" Panel 11: Robin standing with three friends, embracing as one of them speaks "I'm glad we got to see you before you left. We'll miss you." Panel 12: Jordan and Robin standing by the trunk of their car, several bags and suitcases loaded into the back. Jordan is shoving things in, grumbling "It WILL fit!" Robin, holding a vacuum bag of full of clothing not yet in the trunk, looks unsure. Panel 13: Robin and Jordan standing in the empty house. Robin looks upset, Jordan has a comforting hand on her shoulder. Panel 14: Jordan and robin sitting in the very full car, their dog in the back seat. Jordan is driving, Robin in the passenger seat looking out the window.

Comic, two panels Panel 15: Robin, still in the passenger seat of the car, now propping her head up with her hand on her cheek. She is looking down, seeming morose. Large dialogue text in a large white space between panels: "I just don't think that's going to happen." Panel 16: closer shot on Robin. Her gaze has shifted outside the window, her expression is now bitter, with tears gathering in her eyes.

"I just don't think that's going to happen."

Session | International Japanese-English Translation Conference

I will be giving a presentation, Rage Against the Machine: A Case Against LLMs, at IJET-33 in Fukuoka (May 9-11, time TBD) about why not to use these bullshit engines in anything intended for humans to read.
There will be cursing, and not all of it by me!
Reposts welcome!
#Translation #IJET33

What a cool title to have worked on, congratulations!

Normalize this reaction
#art #artists

All #diablo2 heroes
#pixelart

The “The End” thumbnail image from the final episode of the Masahiro Sakurai on Creatjng Games YouTube channel.

A screengrab of the thank-you message from 8-4 in the final episode of the Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games YouTube channel.

This was a dream project in so many ways. I’ll miss working on these scripts every Saturday morning! Big shout-outs to everyone on the team, especially @moriyoshijon.bsky.social and @brilingual.bsky.social who were in the trenches with us for all 260 episodes. Thanks and ❤️ to all who watched!

AI (LLMs) is TERRIBLE at translation. It should never be used for client/audience facing work, especially entertainment translation like manga and games.

And I'm tired of misinformed people trying to cut corners with it instead.
#l10n #translation #localization