this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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I mean, at a certain point this kind of thinking becomes like the MPAA's math around thinking every person downloading a movie from a streaming service was a lost sale.
Yes, this would mean a massive expansion of translated audiobooks without the labor that traditionally would have gone into creating them.
But we don't have translations for the majority of audiobooks in the majority of languages because the costs of that labor has historically outweighed the benefits of a potential expanded audience in niche languages for the long tail of audiobooks.
Personally, I'd rather live in a world where there's broad accessibility to information for all people regardless of their native languages, rather than one in which humanity tears down its own tower of Babel to artificially preserve the status quo.
Ah yes the "labour should be free" / "but if we have to get permits from every artist we won't be able to feed our AIs!" argument.
Listen, I'm not gonna lie. it'd be wonderful if we lived in the utopia where everything is autotranslated for us (not to mention it's done correctly, no "Brock's jelly donuts"). But there's 123456 ways to get it done with human labour properly paid and the corporations are in the position where they have the power and the responsibility to do it. Else authors are going to end up with automated translations which are sold as "official" but over which they don't have control, in particular if the AI translation misrepresents them (using language the author wouldn't changing concepts, or even - imagine - adding slurs).
Like, sure, maybe these corpos don't want to pay for someone to do the translation from scratch... but have they thought of looking for fandom translations and sourcing and paying for those? That's work already done, and has the advantage that someone cared enough about the "niche work", kinda like with anime fansubs. Or they could also, you know, novel idea and all, pay people a wage to translate this. I know. The horror. How dare I suggest that a company doesn't divert wages and income to the CEOs!
I hope that once enough people get replaced with automation, they'll realize how shit capitalism is and push for harsher corporate tax to fund UBI.
That's fair, and I have no problem with authors employing machine translation in order to translate their works. However, I happen to think that that should be the writer's decision.
Most authors would much rather employ a professional translator to get it right instead of a computer to approximate it. He
I don't know why you think it won't be.
What, you think Spotify is just going to do it without the uploader choosing whether the feature is turned on or not?
The podcast translations are opt-in. Why do you think these won't be the same thing?
Because I wasnt born yesterday, and dont spend my time with my head lodged firmly up my own asshole?
Look at how broad that legalese is. Ask yourself if auto application would make them more money. Now count what 2 + 2 is on your fingers.