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Advertorial: Best Non-Combat Isekai Manga to Read on emaqi

I'm a bit confused about what y'all are talking about, so if anyone wants to clarify, I'd appreciate it. This seems more like just a platform to me...

Very disappointing to see ANN post an advertorial from an AI localization company.

This is known in the industry as machine translation post-editing (MTPE), and if you ask just about any professional translator what they think about MTPE

ANN's current policy is not to publish advertorials or advertising for Crypto, NFT, Gambling, drugs, pornography, religion, or politics (although we allow politics over network ads) unless the ads are related to anime, in which case we make a case-by-case decision.

We also ban a few other advertisers with exploitative and/or morally repugnant practices on a case by case basis (for example advertisements for conversion therapy).

We are aware that ai translation is a very contentious topic right now, but we do not ban advertisements for ai created or ai translated anime or content, including anime and manga.

It's also worth noting that although Emaqi is a platform owned by Orange Inc. and carries all of Orange Inc's MPTE translated titles, the Emaqi platform also carries a lot of titles from other publishers (many of which are also MPTE translated even if they don't acknowledge it).

Thank you very much for this excellent summary of MPTE.

I would like to add two points.

The first is a clarification for other readers. MPTE has been around since long before ai translation engines, but it is now almost exclusively (if not entirely exclusively) done with ai. A few years back, copy-editing a google translate translation would have been a common case of MPTE.

Second point: Orange Inc. is absolutely not the only anime/manga company using MPTE. They are the only one that has officially acknowledged that it is their official workflow; most other companies are either experimenting with MPTE and/or turning a blind eye to when their staff or contractors use it. I know of at least one publisher considering making it part of their official workflow, and I suspect other localization contractors (not publishers) are currently using MPTE almost exclusively.

Companies are aware of the negative perception around ai, so they don't publicly acknowledge it. A lot of current anime is made using varying degrees of ai.

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I see. I guess the ethical stances of most of editorial don't carry much weight, then, or that they just don't actually care as much as they claim. Disappointing, but so be it, then.

Daizo wrote:

I see. I guess the ethical stances of most of editorial don't carry much weight, then, or that they just don't actually care as much as they claim. Disappointing, but so be it, then.

Please don't lump us in with this ! Editorial isn't involved in our paid advertisements.

And honestly, are you really saying that there is absolutely nothing you could do about this? That as the EIC all you can do is shrug and say "nothing to be done" when ANN is running advertisements for something that you find to be morally and ethically objectionable?

I see. I guess the ethical stances of most of editorial don't carry much weight, then, or that they just don't actually care as much as they claim. Disappointing, but so be it, then.

It is certainly true that MTPE has been around for a while. That doesn't really change anything when it comes to my post though, as attitudes among JP-EN translation professionals haven't dramatically changed on the subject matter over time.

here you are essentially saying "actually everyone from companies to contractors (which most pro translators are) are enthusiast MTPE users today but they just don't say so because it's bad press". And that's just... very much not the case, at least when it comes to professional anime/manga localization today.

I am neither directly informed of advertorial decisions nor do I give any stamp of approval before they are run. This is because of how journalism traditionally works, not just ANN.