I have been using an untranslate add-on like this one and have been absolutely loving it. Since YouTube has been AI translating video titles and dubbing contents it has been suggesting foreign videos in users' home feed.
The way these untranslate add-ons work (layman's explanation) is that they fetch the original title and audio and reinsert it, but the recommendation for the video stays in your feed. This has resulted in loads of super interesting foreign language content in my feed which is just awesome.
Cars are one of my YouTube interests and seeing loads of cool old car content from different parts of the world has been fascinating. Not only were different models popular in different places but the things people value in a car are also wildly different across the globe. And I get to listen to a cool foreign language while discovering this!
One downside is that to the YouTube algorithm, it probably seems like I absolutely LOVE this autodubbing feature, going crazy for all these translated videos. That could not be further from the truth: my youtube feed has become completely unusable without an untranslate add-on since this update.
Great! Dutch living in Austria and YouTube is randomly dubbing videos from one language to another with no way of turning it off, which is my real WTF here.
Unbelievable that YouTube has not made this feature configurable. I am a language learner and use YouTube to find target language content. It’s very difficult now because you can no longer trust the title of the video to tell you what language it was intended for. Would have been very simple to add a settings toggle. This is one of the worst app inconveniences I’ve come across in recent years.
Everyone I've spoken to in my circle hates this feature.
We're all fairly intelligent people — if we needed audio dubbing, we'd turn it on ourselves.
But to have auto-dub enabled by default is, frankly, incredulous.
If someone from Google could explain the rationale behind forcing this on users, I’d genuinely love to understand it.
Anybody knows the business reason for this feature to exist? most people here and in other places are incredibly frustrated with auto-translate and the inability to turn it off. I include myself in that bunch.
There are two potential reasons in my mind:
- Youtube folks A/B tested it and it got more engagement - n/ views, time viewed per video, etc. (but were they tracking the right metrics? ie did they capture user frustration)
- Some 'guru' at Youtube decided "it's good UX" and "it's what everybody wants". In such case, the damage the 'guru' is doing is unbelievable. Millions of people annoyed across the world... every single day.
- some non-guru added a potentiality useful feature, but since there is no strong engineering culture around UI quality (which also translates into inability to do proper A/B or any other testing you capture the dissatisfaction in relevant metrics), the pain persists
AFAIK it's up to the video owner to choose whether or not they enable these translations. When I found this out, I lost respect for so many creators, because they turned on this shitty feature.
YouTube settings are notoriously volatile even on the same device and being logged in. Subtitles are enabled every other day all of a sudden without any need (even for my natural language content).
Since they rolled out the auto-trabslation thing the same happens, I have to switch to original English every few days.
This really needs to be configurable on a per-account basis. I'm using YouTube mostly on mobile devices and TVs, without the possibility to use addons.
The required settings are quite simple (a lot of social media platforms have them): Setting a list of languages that should never be translated, and setting a preferred language the other ones should be translated to.
I guess the silicon valley people who develop YouTube can't grasp the concept that there are people out there who speak multiple languages.
I ll give you an even better idea for a youtube extension, if nobody makes it, i ll most certainly do. I need to pin a particular comment on a set of videos matching a criteria and change this pinned comment across all these videos every now and then, like for example when i put a new video out, i would like to link to this from the pinned comment of relevant videos. this is such a hassle doing manually in current times. i am amazed nobody has come up with a pinned comment manager for youtube yet
The fact that this needs to exist is a testament to how bad some things in YouTube are. They were able to make me quit being a paying customer with shitty things like that.
How did they fail to make this an option in the first place?
To be very clear, I don’t even want to translate videos in languages that YouTube know I don’t understand. Much less in videos languages I do understand.
Also I don’t think it’s a good idea to use AI in any part of this chain unless there is user driven corrections. Seems like even big TikTok/Instagram accounts use some auto subtitling machinery and it’s invariably wrong. Why even bother? Or why not just manually subtitle if it’s a 10 second English video and the text is in English? Why use automation at all for that?
I _love_ when youtube auto-translates english titles to my native language and then asks me if I want to translate the rare comments in my native language to english.
It seem they just don't contemplate people speaking two or more languages, *even though the setting in the google account is there*.
One thing this kind of thing severely hurts is a lot of devices, services are affected by local laws, units, concepts, brands sometimes severely altering their function.
- Searching for a guide on say a car infotainment system would be totally different here from someone explaining in the USA or germany. Now I see a ton of titles in my language, only to find out it's information is completely useless to me because a menu, button or whatever doesen't even exist.
- Recommendations on cooking advice become almost worthless since a grading system for flours is arcane, brands I've never heard of, compounded by some imperial units in the mix. A recipe turns into a research project
- when searching for non-native content I may avoid content in my language, since I know the subject is definitely not relevant anywhere near me, so perfectly valid content will be missed
Worse yet, sometimes physical products claiming to have localized manual will instead have used some very inferior version to google translate and give dangerous advice about safe handling of the device.
Every time I find a video that was shot in my mother tongue auto-translated into English I want to bang my head against the wall. I've told Google in multiple ways that I'm multilingual and it just doesn't get it. It's worst on mobile, where you can't switch the audio channel to the original sound.
YouTube apparently does not understand that bilingual people exist. I do not want translations between German and English, I understand both languages just fine.
I do not want to backwards translate some nonsense autogenerated YouTube translation to understand what some video title means. I do not ever want to watch an automatic dub where some AI voice replaces the actual language I understand.
Browsers got this right "never translate German" was enough to fix the auto translation feature. Somehow one of the most valuable companies in the world, managing one of the largest websites in the world can not implement something that basic.
It’s crazy that an extension is needed to fix this. When I first saw that “feature” I thought it was some bug and YouTube would fix soon, but they don’t seem to care about it.
27 comments
[ 288 ms ] story [ 1962 ms ] threadThe way these untranslate add-ons work (layman's explanation) is that they fetch the original title and audio and reinsert it, but the recommendation for the video stays in your feed. This has resulted in loads of super interesting foreign language content in my feed which is just awesome.
Cars are one of my YouTube interests and seeing loads of cool old car content from different parts of the world has been fascinating. Not only were different models popular in different places but the things people value in a car are also wildly different across the globe. And I get to listen to a cool foreign language while discovering this!
One downside is that to the YouTube algorithm, it probably seems like I absolutely LOVE this autodubbing feature, going crazy for all these translated videos. That could not be further from the truth: my youtube feed has become completely unusable without an untranslate add-on since this update.
What a great way to stop people ever needing to learn another language. God forbid people use their brains for anything that 30 second shorts.
If someone from Google could explain the rationale behind forcing this on users, I’d genuinely love to understand it.
There are two potential reasons in my mind: - Youtube folks A/B tested it and it got more engagement - n/ views, time viewed per video, etc. (but were they tracking the right metrics? ie did they capture user frustration) - Some 'guru' at Youtube decided "it's good UX" and "it's what everybody wants". In such case, the damage the 'guru' is doing is unbelievable. Millions of people annoyed across the world... every single day.
The required settings are quite simple (a lot of social media platforms have them): Setting a list of languages that should never be translated, and setting a preferred language the other ones should be translated to.
I guess the silicon valley people who develop YouTube can't grasp the concept that there are people out there who speak multiple languages.
1. Sites/apps that automatically change language based on your location, and force that auto-translation onto you.
2. Reddit that translates reddit posts to your location based language. Those will quickly populate your search feed for almost any search you do.
To be very clear, I don’t even want to translate videos in languages that YouTube know I don’t understand. Much less in videos languages I do understand.
Also I don’t think it’s a good idea to use AI in any part of this chain unless there is user driven corrections. Seems like even big TikTok/Instagram accounts use some auto subtitling machinery and it’s invariably wrong. Why even bother? Or why not just manually subtitle if it’s a 10 second English video and the text is in English? Why use automation at all for that?
I _love_ when youtube auto-translates english titles to my native language and then asks me if I want to translate the rare comments in my native language to english.
It seem they just don't contemplate people speaking two or more languages, *even though the setting in the google account is there*.
- Searching for a guide on say a car infotainment system would be totally different here from someone explaining in the USA or germany. Now I see a ton of titles in my language, only to find out it's information is completely useless to me because a menu, button or whatever doesen't even exist.
- Recommendations on cooking advice become almost worthless since a grading system for flours is arcane, brands I've never heard of, compounded by some imperial units in the mix. A recipe turns into a research project
- when searching for non-native content I may avoid content in my language, since I know the subject is definitely not relevant anywhere near me, so perfectly valid content will be missed
Worse yet, sometimes physical products claiming to have localized manual will instead have used some very inferior version to google translate and give dangerous advice about safe handling of the device.
Translated subtitles are useful though, even if often very bad.
I do not want to backwards translate some nonsense autogenerated YouTube translation to understand what some video title means. I do not ever want to watch an automatic dub where some AI voice replaces the actual language I understand.
Browsers got this right "never translate German" was enough to fix the auto translation feature. Somehow one of the most valuable companies in the world, managing one of the largest websites in the world can not implement something that basic.
Is this a US only feature? I hope I'm never going to see it because it sounds horrible.