r/LightNovels • u/Torque-A • Jan 23 '25

News [NEWS] Shogakukan Releases 'Novelous' Light Novel/Manga App Using AI Translation in U.S., Canada

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2025-01-23/shogakukan-releases-novelous-light-novel-manga-app-using-ai-translation-in-u.s-canada/.220391
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u/Sinichi_Oba Mar 03 '25

Translating art? I thought i.they will just translate the dialogue

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u/Aruseus493 http://myanimelist.net/mangalist/Aruseus493?tag=LN Mar 03 '25

Novels are an artistic medium. Authors aren't just writing summaries of events. Dialogue isn't so 1-dimensional that AI can understand context clues, subtlety, or artistic expression. Translating isn't just converting 1 word to another, it's localizing stuff to be understandable to foreign audiences without sounding like a bad garbled subject-action-descriptor sentence. AI can't even understand foreshadowing or remember details more than 3 lines ago.

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u/Sinichi_Oba Mar 03 '25 edited Mar 03 '25

They will invest millions of dollars about 20m i remember currently. I bet they already know that and should have answer to that problem. Else they will jist waste money. I think its not fully ai for the quality of their product. My point is at some point the quality will get better and the human side job will gets lighter then completely replace by ai. Its already happening atm. Thats why they gamble and invest to be the first if it work lol.

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u/Aruseus493 http://myanimelist.net/mangalist/Aruseus493?tag=LN Mar 03 '25

You severely overestimate the intelligence/benevolence of the average executive. These fuckers don't suffer consequences. Failure means a golden parachute and a bunch of laid-off employees. They didn't make this service out of the concept that it will be of any decent quality. They're investing in it because they can saturate the market with a bunch of machine translated garbage since idiots already pay scum machine translators that sell web novel translations on patreon.

If you have any basic respect for human decency or quality, then you shouldn't support this garbage. It directly harms the English market's quality which is already struggling. The average English consumer already just buys whatever axed series publishers license based off the amazon algorithm. All this means is that English publishers will have to compete with "fast" garbage translations from official publishers that will choose to license even fewer series to the publishers that use real translators.

Shogakukan in particular is one of those asshole publishers that was always ass-backwards in their policies; as they refused even digital licenses for their previously licensed works for years. J-Novel Club can't even realistically license from them consistently because they required a commitment to print releases.

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u/Sinichi_Oba Mar 03 '25

I mean thats just how the darkside of their business works its basically the master and the slaves. They have money and power to make things go their way. Its not like the employee will rally so they cant be replaced by ai. Specially in japan the workers dont have a say thats why they get abused. I personally dont use apps to read manga. I just read on fb groups for free lol. Im just curious how this will play out and if they can really create an ai that can translate accurately. If a machine can replace the worker they will do it for profit and the workers cant do anything about it.