Adding on to that I’m almost 100% sure that no translation software is able to understand context or reformat sentences to make sense in a different language.
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Manual translating is better in my opinion since google always comes out with the wrong meaning anyways, I hope translators will still be able to do their jobs.
BUG - if you disable the auto-translation it still translates.
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This can be bad some words we say may translate into rude words for other countries and it may not get tagged. I think we should still hire manual translators because they are much more accurate than ai translations which get it wrong most of the time.
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Will this feature be forced upon games or is it up to the developer to add it to their game?
The problem is not that automatic translation is bad, but it misses the most important point, which is context.
Just look at the filter that roblox as made, its not bad from a technical point as its able to recognize profanity’s even with heavy modifications, but it also filters words that can be used as profanity’s but that are not, just because the filter is unable to under the context they are being used into. Translation is almost always based on context, and only a human can understand context, while some IA are able to replicate that same level of understanding they are still able to fail and output completely wrong data.
Even translate.google.com is unable to understand context, so why would roblox one be able to do what hundreds of automatic translators are failing to do from now years. Translation is a job that requires a wide understanding of human language’s and expressions, something that a robot cannot understands correctly as of today.
Look, its true, small developers will be happy but this will cause problems over time. I did a test with 5 string of text, 2 titles/tool names, 3 descriptions/Multi line text. Google failed to translate correctly 2 times (he called a movement axe, an axe, yes, the tool to chop down trees, that would have confused a lot of users), 2 were technically correct but contained pronouns that most people would agree to remove and 1 would have work but would not be the best to present as it was just a literal translation which wouldn’t make a lot of sense in the real world.
In conclusion no, this update is terrible, especially that strings are not filtered in the same way chat is done, meaning that players will find profanity’s in the games they play just because the automatic translation failed to do a HUMAN job.
This doesn’t sound great. Automatic translations is great, but only if it is a user enabled feature (for both players and developers).
This sounds like it is forced upon us? I don’t think that’s going to go well, automatic translations have significantly improved with the addition of deep learning but they are still wildly inaccurate. I’m thinking of cases where the translation software:
- Has no context and makes no sense
- Translates it literally and butchers it
- Translates it into something inappropriate
If the developer has the option to enable/disable this feature it would be great because then they can see results from their game on a case-by-case basis and see if it’s right for them. Similarly, if players can enable/disable this feature from the game page or the in-game settings that would be beneficial as some games may have poorly translated content and users may prefer to view it in it’s source language.
TL;DR
This is only good if developers can choose to use it, and players can also choose to use it or not (in games where the developer has enabled it).
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Yes and no,
Automatic translation is just putting a text inside a box and then asking a robot to do a translation of it, the robot will go trough is dictionary and grammar rules for the said language, do the translation. BUT game translation and actual translation targeted for user consumption is way harder than that, because of context. Context is something that only a human can understand as of today, and even IA trained are still doing poor jobs after years of being developed and trained.
I have done translation outside of roblox, English to French, and some people of the teams I was part where indeed using automatic translators like google, all of their work at to be redone, nothing was correct, because the context was only a visual clue, which a robot cannot comprehend nor see, but a human can.
Roblox is very well known to have a terrible way of creating IA, look at the filter, filters out words that are not necessarily profanity’s because it cannot understand context and only remove the words based on a dictionary. Profanity’s filtering is just as hard as translation, the roblox filter is terrible, this update will just be another broken features which will stay for years, making player more and more frustrated over time.
Its very likely that players names won’t be translated, when you look names that get tagged in chat when said don’t get tagged inside of leaderboards, but now good question for custom leaderboards. As the robot could translate them just because they are inside a gui that is not part of the actual roblox core gui.
As far as I understood its a forced feature.
[EDIT]
You can turn it not entirely, but chose what not to translate.
Well I think there must be done something with ‘translators’ that aren’t translators. Anyways, Hope new languages will arrive soon.
That is not the point of this announcement?
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You can set your language differently on the bottom of the page. It doesn’t matter which country you live in.
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Will this eventually eliminate translators on Roblox? If so, I am totally against this idea. 
I don’t think so. As said thousands of times before, automatic translation will never replace human translation, the reason is simple: context.
Context matters mores than anything else and English being a tricky language, the same word can be 3 verbs and 5 nouns.
One of the most common examples is the verb play. While in English, you can play an instrument or play a game. In Portuguese, you can only tocar an instrument and jogar a game.
It’s in the human nature, though. As long as it is free, you’re gonna pick the free option.
Sure. It’s a great thing for small developers who can’t afford translators and want their games localized. But for people with enough resources, it’s totally advised to have translators.
You know, a bad translation can be worse than no translation.
This won’t be a good thing for smaller developers. With inaccurate translations developers of all kinds will inevitably be providing a HORRIBLE UX.
Yes, true. I don’t think it’s great, but they think so (That’s what I was trying to say). However, I see the point of small developers being happy with this update even though it’s quite problematic.
Here are the pros to this update:
1, For small devs you get a basically free but not good translator
Here are the cons to this update:
1, Automatic translators are just garbage since of how bad translating it is. Could lead to swear words and other offensive words. (Go for Human Translators)
2, Some people are prob gonna shortcut and instead of hiring a translator, they just get the automatic translator. This would make it harder for translators to get hired.
This update really only helps small developers who can’t afford to hire a translator
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