Viewers Hit by YouTube's Bad Auto-Translation
Users who watch videos in multiple languages are experiencing frustrating and unpredictable behavior with YouTube's automatic translation and dubbing features. These features often activate unexpectedly, misinterpret content, or override user preferences, leading to a degraded viewing experience and a lack of control over their subtitles. The algorithm struggles to understand users' language proficiency, creating inconsistencies and inaccuracies.
SOURCES (60)
“I've been posting Shorts in English for over 3 months. I have no history of making content in any other language, yet my Shorts are still being recommended to people from my own country who swipe away from foreign language content like crazy. When my…”
“I was watching a korean video with subtitles when the subtitles started speaking in this ai voice how do i turn this voice off submitted by /u/adorable_k1ttenn [link] [comments]”
“A few minutes ago my youtube caption stopped working. I updated the app, cleared the cache, restarted the phone and even tried auto translation. But nothing is working and it's so frustrating. Does anyone know what to do to solve this problem? submitted by /u/maeee04 [link] [comments]”
“I haven't really used YouTube for about a week but when I tried to watch a video today, the captions/subtitles didn't appear at all. I know the video has captions, and the languages appear in the caption column so they're clearly available but somehow the captions just won't appear. I tried a couple different channels that I know for sure provide captions on their videos and nothing. Then I tried a different account to see if it's a weird setting I accidentally turned on but”
“https://preview.redd.it/2wxnma5vrloh1.png?width=1323&format=png&auto=webp&s=f271a901cdeacc46624adb46f52bf093dd05c5eb It's been happening for 2 weeks for me now. And everytime you play another video, it defaults back to Arabic. submitted by /u/Ok_Cauliflower_6237 [link] [comments]”
“could we add a feature to prevent auto-dubbed videos from being recommended? i really don't want hallucinated translations being pushed on me, considering nobody asked for this "feature" to begin with submitted by /u/opbossgmr [link] [comments]”
“Zero languages selected as "preferred", and I see that affects the videos themselves anyway, not the comments.”
“I watch videos in English, German, Hungarian, and Spanish. My phone is set to German. YouTube tries to translate everything into German and not only is it terrible, I just don’t want it. I speak those languages!”
“https://preview.redd.it/qifdescp7ioh1.png?width=378&format=png&auto=webp&s=ead216d4a0a692873ec5ec13005f8914e0caa1e5 Youtube implements auto-dubbing so well that now you can't even change to the original audio, you just have to listen to the AI-dubbed voice instead. And you know why do I watch this channel? His voice. Seriously, does anyone encounter this problem? I searched everywhere but can't seem to find anyone talking about this. Here's the video I'm talking about”
“Is anyone else having this issue all of a sudden? It started like 1 week ago for me. I follow some Japanese bands and channels, and the option to translate just disappeared, despite having my YT app/account set to English. But for other languages, e.g. I tried with some Spanish, the "Translate to English" option still does appear under each comment. What the hell? Is it something about location? It can't be, I'm not using any VPN and I'm from Eastern Europe, not Japan or an”
“It's still a manual process. Creators have to create separate subtitles for each language and upload them to each language track separately. YT also seems to reward creators who do this with better positioning on home feeds and such.”
“Same just noticed it in arabic. It just started for me, im on youtube alot and havent seen it change subtitles in a long ass time”
“I've been out of touch. I was just confused on why were the auto generated subtitles were In Arabic so i checked and... WHAT?! Is this new? submitted by /u/Pretend_Camp_2987 [link] [comments]”
“TL;DR: My Dutch channel is set to Afrikaans. My English one to German. I'm a native speaker of Dutch and German, and speak English fluently. I watch videos in all three of these languages. I presume due to the greater average views on English language videos, YouTube used to exclusively recommend me videos in that language. Therefore, years ago, I set up three different accounts, one for each language. You can connect accounts pretty easily on YouTube - something that works! - so this is an”
“Maybe it depends on the country? I had it happen to me once where YouTube started translating videos to Arabic automatically all I had to do was set the track to English once and it never happened again”
“Translation tools aren’t bad. Forcing them down people’s throats is pretty bad. I don’t need YouTube to babysit me and give me a mangled version of the original video with an unnaturally phrased title and awful emotionless AI voices replacing the original ones. Somehow people who only speak one language can’t seem to understand that multilingual people exist, and that we would prefer to experience the original video in the language it was intended without it being filtered Google’s often inaccur”
“literally just happened to me few minutes ago, someone at zootube must have fked up.”
“I understand that YouTube wants everyone to be able to watch any video, but pretty much everyone who watches YouTube video's in both English and their native language find this very annoying and those who only understand their own native language can still watch video's in that language.”
“Just upload your own .srt file directly into YouTube Studio, because YouTube actually uses your exact text as the base to generate way better auto-translations for non-English viewers. It’s infinitely better than burning animated captions into the video itself, which usually just annoys long-form audiences anyway.”
“I know it wasn’t my settings because before and after the ad the subtitles were in English. submitted by /u/TopNeighborhood2694 [link] [comments]”
“I was rewatching a guitar tutorial video earlier and all of a sudden the guy speaking in an AI German Dub, so I had no clue as to what he was saying and there’s no way of me going back to the original audio, can someone please tell me how to get rid of it. submitted by /u/Ur-boiiiii [link] [comments]”
“English is my native language, but I have seen the Ask feature having summaries and question prompts in foreign languages. The vid’s language is English, I do not have auto dubbing or captions, but this happened. What is going on with YouTube’s AI? submitted by /u/Exact-Wall-120 [link] [comments]”
The platform's subtitles aren't working for me (on PC). I've tried changing the quality and playback speed, and switching between Firefox, Brave, and Chrome, but nothing has fixed it. If anyone has…
“Not sure if anyone also experiencing this, just started for me today, but all my default audio is now spanish. I have already changed my settings to english, but still nearly everything is in spansih. submitted by /u/Flatc0ke [link] [comments]”
“Right, and that’s been what automatically pops up for me until yesterday, when it started automatically going to arabic instead.”
“Recently my captions have decided to be in arabic. No idea why. Will setting my preferred language as english fix this? Or will it do that thing YouTube has introduced recently where they dub over people’s videos? Basically, is the description in the first picture referring to dubs and captions uploaded by the creator, or to YouTube’s AI version? submitted by /u/Parker_Talks [link] [comments]”
“The title is supposed to say "Genius plan vs. Gordon Freeman | Half-Life 2" but for some reason it just says "The Ideal Checkpoint", what? Does anyone know how to turn this off for certain languages? Because I speak both Russian and English but I hate it when it auto translates the title submitted by /u/Surge_in_mintars [link] [comments]”
“If you figure this out or get any updates please let me know! Same thing is happening to me. I was recently added as a subtitle editor and when I attempt to open up the subtitle tab it will show me briefly the list of videos and then go back. if i refresh i get the dog too. very frustrating!”
“Suddenly I am seeing a foreign language, maybe Arabic, on some of the vids I watch. Sometimes it has English and the other language at the same time. Sometimes it is just the foreign language. Anyone else getting this too? How can I remedy this problem? Thanks submitted by /u/Mongozuma [link] [comments]”
“She used to never be on tv/phone so much but since yt added the automatic translation voice with ai she can’t stop watching yt she is very young and I can’t seem to find away to stop it is there any way to turn it off so the videos will stay in a language she don’t know? submitted by /u/Upbeat-Emotion-3863 [link] [comments]”
“I have a feeling it could be something convoluted with how the default subtitle language was changed to Arabic, maybe the audio is being translated to Arabic then back to English for the subtitles? submitted by /u/Pctove [link] [comments]”
“they'll get to it, soon as they're finished further obfuscating our search results.”
“I’m so confused and no matter how many times I change it it still says default arabic submitted by /u/Queasy_Dingo_8262 [link] [comments]”
“Like seriously, I have subtitles on while watching YouTube videos, and recently I’ve noticed that the default auto-generated captions option is in Arabic, not English. Frustratingly, I have to go and manually look for the English option and change it to that just to have English subtitles. Is this a bug, or is this becoming the default now? submitted by /u/Radio_TVGuy [link] [comments]”
“I speak english and french and once in a while the english short have no audio or like 2-3 word and try to translate it to french... i tried to do the inverse and made them switch to auto english but now does the same thing for my french short. *uck me F*ck forcing AI on consumer Fu*k auto translate and Fuc* google submitted by /u/ivanIvanovich420 [link] [comments]”
And it always uses the first available language (usually Arabic or Bangla)
“Now imagine a video with many subtitles already, and just seeing even more auto subtitles, why can't you just use the auto translator :/ submitted by /u/STCGbluewave [link] [comments]”
“yeah from what ive seen the quality is pretty rough, especially for anything dialogue-heavy”
“Also why is it in japanese when my youtube is set to english? Is it a youtube premium feature? submitted by /u/CounterAble1850 [link] [comments]”
When toggling off or on the captions on a Short, the message on the bottom of the screen telling you “Subtitles/CC turned off/on” doesn’t ever go away and is just stuck on…
“some videos in my browser feed when hovered over start the video preview and have arabic subtitles despite every setting being n English and being located in australia, is this a known bug or what, also i hvae checked the browser is the only thing logged into my account so its not a hack. submitted by /u/Megatronus95 [link] [comments]”
“So I was opened short and turn the subtitles then there so many languages. This is going to update in entire video? submitted by /u/Lumpy_Education4295 [link] [comments]”
“Is this a good sign that YouTube emailed me saying they will start auto-dubbing all my videos to other languages? I only have 65 subscribers. @billionaire_origins submitted by /u/StomachJolly3073 [link] [comments]”
“Pick a YouTube video in your target language from the collection, or paste your own link. The app guides you through it with captions and exercises. One recent improvement that I made is adding tiktok-style live captions, which make it much easier to follow what is being said in the video. Previously it was just showing the normal YouTube transcript, where you had to constantly scan the text while watching and sync it up in your head. Now it highlights each syllable as it's being spoken. Thi”
“I was watching YouTube shorts recently. Saw closed captions on. Though thought it was part of the video. Why? Because it was in Arabic. Then I kept seeing it on in several other shorts. And that's when I checked the settings. Did this happen to anyone else recently? submitted by /u/Mindslyder404 [link] [comments]”
“[Claude] ★★★ 3/5 (v1.260902.20) — si bien la IA es muy buena la transcripción de audio es pésima, traduce palabras que nada que ver con lo que dije. mil veces mejor la de ChatGPT”
“tried looking up and down the settings but unable to do anything to off it submitted by /u/cheehongtart [link] [comments]”
“Add an option to prevent YouTube from automatically translating video titles, descriptions, and audio tracks , and instead always display/play them in the original language of the video . YouTube increasingly applies automatic translations based on the user's language or location. This can be undesirable when watching content in another language, especially when the translated title or description changes the meaning or makes it harder to identify the original content. What should be kept in the”