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NEWS: Crunchyroll's German Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show Subtitles List 'ChatGPT'


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FireChick
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Joined: 26 Mar 2006
Posts: 2760
Location: United States
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 3:13 pm Reply with quote
OOOOOF. This sucks. No ChatGPT generated subs for me, thanks.
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EmeraldSaucer



Joined: 31 Jan 2025
Posts: 919
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 3:13 pm Reply with quote
Important to note that the English subtitles aren't any better, and besides being initially credited to "Translator's Name" before changing to "Charlie", it seems like portions of the translation are just them completely making stuff up
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2995
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 3:18 pm Reply with quote
EmeraldSaucer wrote:
Important to note that the English subtitles aren't any better, and besides being initially credited to "Translator's Name" before changing to "Charlie", it seems like portions of the translation are just them completely making stuff up


A lot of people are coming to the conclusion that the English translation (which might have come from the licensor, but hasn't been fully confirmed yet) didn't rely on the actual script at all, but instead had the AI listen to the audio, and in turn the AI essentially misheard certainly words at points, which resulted in totally incorrect & non-sensical translations for some lines.

In essence, they acted like fansubbers & translated solely off of how the lines sounded (only without any proofreading being done, which at least most fansubbers would still do), despite having the literal script on hand to go off of. Why would they do that? My only guess is because the AI could both translated & time simultaneously, so it'd only require a single pass to get done, whereas having AI translate from the script & then later time said translation would require two passes to get done.

Just the idea that an official translation for a new anime would seemingly just ignore the script completely when translating is astounding.
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 5144
Location: New York
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 3:19 pm Reply with quote
People are paying a company in the hopes of getting better service than the random chatbot everyone hates. What are you even doing?
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loveliver



Joined: 26 Nov 2014
Posts: 210
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 3:21 pm Reply with quote
I should tell you, Cygames (this anime's licensor) provided the translations to Crunchyroll, and either one didn't even proofread. One of Cygames' company photos showed a computer with DeepL (AI Translation software) on a desktop. I say BOTH Crunchyroll and Cygames are at fault here.

And I just started playing Umamusume: Pretty Derby, too...
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Aleximonious



Joined: 10 Feb 2017
Posts: 14
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 3:29 pm Reply with quote
loveliver wrote:
I should tell you, Cygames (this anime's licensor) provided the translations to Crunchyroll, and either one didn't even proofread. One of Cygames' company photos showed a computer with DeepL (AI Translation software) on a desktop. I say BOTH Crunchyroll and Cygames are at fault here.


Yup, Crunchyroll should, at a minimum be QCing licensor subs.

I also find it bad that the "ChatGPT said" is in English, which suggests they may have been using AI for pivot translations, without anyone actually speaking the language.

Finally, since you mentioned DeepL, why the fudge did they not use that, using a general-purpose LLM instead of a dedicated translation model is salt on an already wide open wound
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MushroomMan674



Joined: 05 Feb 2020
Posts: 121
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 3:37 pm Reply with quote
loveliver wrote:
One of Cygames' company photos showed a computer with DeepL (AI Translation software) on a desktop.


DeepL is AI? I thought it wasn't.
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paulchaested



Joined: 04 Oct 2016
Posts: 294
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 3:42 pm Reply with quote
loveliver wrote:
I should tell you, Cygames (this anime's licensor) provided the translations to Crunchyroll, and either one didn't even proofread. One of Cygames' company photos showed a computer with DeepL (AI Translation software) on a desktop. I say BOTH Crunchyroll and Cygames are at fault here.

And I just started playing Umamusume: Pretty Derby, too...


Yeah according to the files datamined, Cygames is the one who provided the subs. However, CR's QA should've tried to prevent this...

https://x.com/Animespiegel/status/1940093397353545954?t=2YmMzDWVMsRkdjYNjPidbw&s=19


Last edited by paulchaested on Tue Jul 01, 2025 3:44 pm; edited 2 times in total
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FanGamer24



Joined: 10 Apr 2024
Posts: 301
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 3:43 pm Reply with quote
Aleximonious wrote:
loveliver wrote:
I should tell you, Cygames (this anime's licensor) provided the translations to Crunchyroll, and either one didn't even proofread. One of Cygames' company photos showed a computer with DeepL (AI Translation software) on a desktop. I say BOTH Crunchyroll and Cygames are at fault here.


Yup, Crunchyroll should, at a minimum be QCing licensor subs.

I also find it bad that the "ChatGPT said" is in English, which suggests they may have been using AI for pivot translations, without anyone actually speaking the language.

Finally, since you mentioned DeepL, why the fudge did they not use that, using a general-purpose LLM instead of a dedicated translation model is salt on an already wide open wound


I don’t think Crunchyroll should be required to check other people’s work. If a book store is given books to sell should they be required to check the quality of that book? No because it’s not their job.
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el_morris



Joined: 09 May 2018
Posts: 445
Location: Tijuana, México
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 3:54 pm Reply with quote
Why didn't Cygames learned for Remow's fiasco of subtitles on Nokotan last year? They should had leave the translation job to Crunchyroll.
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thekingsdinner



Joined: 25 Sep 2010
Posts: 1171
Location: Geertruidenberg, Netherlands
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 3:56 pm Reply with quote
Even if CR is not at fault here, I can't blame people for thinking so (before delving deeper) because they've pulled it themselves in the past. I personally have very little in them. At least some QA would be nice.
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ChibiGoku



Joined: 29 May 2004
Posts: 710
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 4:01 pm Reply with quote
FanGamer24 wrote:

I don’t think Crunchyroll should be required to check other people’s work. If a book store is given books to sell should they be required to check the quality of that book? No because it’s not their job.


This is an entirely different situation. They are provided materials that are required to be checked, which range from the video files, scripts, and sometimes they need to do their own timing based off the original translations provided to them, if they aren't doing their own in house translation. Regardless of the case, they have to verify that everything is in good shape, which requires a human to check both the video and the subtitle files associated with the video, to make sure there's no issues.

This is a very different situation than a store carrying a book. The books do go through Quality Check and Assurance before the release, to make sure everything is good. The final product is what gets shipped to the stores. The store just provides the finished product, whereas in Crunchyroll's case, they have to check everything before hitting the publish button.
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Daiz_



Joined: 03 Feb 2009
Posts: 163
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 4:03 pm Reply with quote
thekingsdinner wrote:
Even if CR is not at fault here

You can absolutely 100% lay the fault at Crunchyroll even if the subtitles originate from somewhere else because ultimately, Crunchyroll is the one to have decided that they are willing to put up literally any crap they get from a 3rd party with zero oversight. This policy of theirs has been in place for basically Crunchyroll's entire existence, and at no point has there been any sign of them doing anything to change it. This is despite the fact that they could in fact always say "no, this is awful, we won't put this up and either you provide something better or pay us to translate this instead" to the 3rd parties in question.

But of course, Crunchyroll, especially the Crunchyroll of today, would never do that. At this point it is basically public knowledge that the executives don't even like anime and are in it just for making money, and the more money they can make, the better. They don't care one bit for Art, all they care about it Content, and the less they have to pay for their Content, the better (because that means making more Money). That's why they're willing to put up whatever AI slop they get from third parties, because if one day it actually results in a scenario where the users aren't loudly complaining about it, it means they have the green light to finally get rid of all their human localizers and replace them with AI slop of their own.

That is the undeniable end goal of the Crunchyroll executives here, and the only thing that can stop them is as mass of educated consumers actively demanding better, human produced localization from them.

-Soapboxing removed. We get it.
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rankothefiremage



Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 534
Location: Michigan
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 4:06 pm Reply with quote
So a monopoly leads to enshitifactaion you say?
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 7155
PostPosted: Tue Jul 01, 2025 4:12 pm Reply with quote
Daizo wrote:
Which is why every media covering anime and other Japanese media should be shouting about the importance of good localization at every opportunity possible, because that's the only way to actually turn the consumers into the educated ones who know how to do that properly.


You’re putting an awful lot of trust into a group of people who hate to do research or listen to people who know about things better than they do.
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