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)
“It’s an issue probably because the OP doesn’t speak Vietnamese or are unfamiliar with viewer culture, not every country will have ads, and memberships will cost less than a US Stamp. I’d rather have an intended audience of US, Canada, Australia, and English speaking EU…”
Clearly you’ve made your videos for the Vietnamese audience lol
“Whenever the subtitles reach 2 lines on top of each other There is supposed to be an animataion where the new words slide from downwards and the old words slide upwards Unfortunately the animitaion doesn't happen the CC just freez and stop displaying any more words until I toggle it off and on again and then repeat I want help please I'm using an LG tv (Ignore the photo it's just to bring attention) (A Repost to see if anyone got a fix) submitted by /u/Legitimate-Newt-511”
“Is there a switch buried in the preferences and settings that will let me turn them off? https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/improving-ai-labels-viewers-creators/ submitted by /u/Interesting-Log-9627 [link] [comments]”
“On videos in languages other than English, I can only put on subtitles in the language the video is in. I'd love to be able to change this so I can understand what the people in the video are saying. In my image, the video is already in German so the subtitles will be in German too. It's the only option. There used to be a few more languages to choose from, English included. Now we can't choose. I hate these auto-generated subtitles. Wish there was a way to turn them off. All I want”
“I'm trying to watch a video in Japanese and before I was able to select auto-translate for the audio track but now I don't see it? submitted by /u/isamu999 [link] [comments]”
“I was watching Captain sparkles 2s newest Minecraft series and I got to episode 11 and it’s only in French and other popular languages. But not English is anybody else having this problem? It seems to work fine on the website but not the app for me. https://youtu.be/A93du4klQew?is=JsY9yfkPxtFQeS-W submitted by /u/No-Ad6306 [link] [comments]”
“https://preview.redd.it/f3wiehhchfdh1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a48e73927cbe691f67d71ec31645d806e436d85 the subtitles... submitted by /u/milk_go_brrrrr [link] [comments]”
“Why did they change the option to always show the subtitle even the autogenerated??? are YT devs mentally ill or something? cant they do something good instead of messing what good it has for a change? submitted by /u/A_Random_Sidequest [link] [comments]”
“I upload videos to YouTube regularly. I stopped uploading for about a week, and today, while uploading a new video, I noticed something strange. I can no longer upload language-specific YouTube thumbnails. The only things I can translate are the title and description. I also can't edit the language-specific thumbnails on my older videos anymore. I tried using two different computers, but the issue is the same on both. Has YouTube removed the ability to upload language-specific thumbnails for”
“I mean, yeah, I'm just a bit scared to do that bc there are things that cant be translated properly between the lenguages, and also I would have to create a new channel witch then brings the question, with one should be the main one? But I should thank you, you've given me the motivation to at least try one video to see if I like the process of editing and then doing it again to a different lenguage”
“This is really sad. I am from England but I live in Chile. I make my videos in English because whenever I try to make videos in Spanish, people (very politely) tell me that it's hard to understand me. But it seems implausible that there are many niches which no one in Latin America is interested in.”
“Same! I thought it was just me for a coupla days. It just shows the enshittification of everything!”
“I keep not having the option to auto translate subtitles to english, the option is just not in the list. https://preview.redd.it/t55k6co4c0dh1.png?width=796&format=png&auto=webp&s=93d970e17ef95089c850cdbb0f9c277ccbaa1c0c submitted by /u/No-Construction-2840 [link] [comments]”
“Has anyone else noticed the manual dubbing feature disappearing from their channel? I’ve been using the “Languages” tab to upload my own audio dubs for months, but the option has suddenly vanished. I usually go to Studio → Content → [video] → Languages, select the target language, and upload my audio file there. Now, that “Dub” section is completely gone, and I’m only seeing options for titles, descriptions, and subtitles. Even worse, I can no longer add new languages to videos that already have”
“It can, yes. Things with AI voiceover often break YouTube's rules about "inauthentic content", which lead to demonitization. You're much better off using your own voice”
“I search something in English, the video title is in English, I click it, and it's an Indian guy speaking Hindi the whole video. I have no problem with people making videos in their own language, but why not make the title in Hindi too? Or at least YouTube should tell us what language is spoken before we click. submitted by /u/Master-Series-3944 [link] [comments]”
“I know YT does auto AI dubing of videos. Maybe they are doing it to live as well? The Person may not even know it's being done.”
“BRO MA YOUTUBE E MEGLIO SE E UN APP UNICA MA SI STA CONVERTENDO IN UN APP DI MERDA!!!!!!!”
“You can let YouTube know which languages you don't want dubbed as shown here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/13339776?hl=en”
“i'm not a native english speaker + i struggle with auditory processing disorder, so i always have subtitles on. recently i noticed that automatic youtube captions suddenly started to feel a lot more inaccurate than before. has anyone noticed this as well or am i going insane????? submitted by /u/Betka101 [link] [comments]”
“So they ARE AI generated, I was watching a video and the subtitles COMPLETELY rewrite character names as it pleased, and it was driving me insane!”
“What's my IP shows American location. Settings icon has no audio track option. ... only has report option. I was watching video preview in English, and then it was dubbed Spanish when I click. So annoying! submitted by /u/Repulsive-Memory-298 [link] [comments]”
“So I am trying to watch this russian (spanish dubbed) film , youtube says there are subtitles automatically translated to English and other languages, I click on it but nothing show up.. submitted by /u/UMaqran101 [link] [comments]”
“So my youtube is giving me kids videos FOR NO REASON and WHEN I CLICK NOT INSTRESTED OR DONT RECOMMEND CHANNEL THEY POP UP so how can I remove kids content including kids content that's in a different language? submitted by /u/BisonDear2460 [link] [comments]”
“youtube gave me an autotranslated video and didn't even give me the option of choosing the original english audio track. what the actual fuck is this youtube submitted by /u/Famous_Letter9462 [link] [comments]”
“The video was originally entirely spoken in English and yet YouTube wanted to auto dub it submitted by /u/axumite_788 [link] [comments]”
“last night I was on youtube like I always am watching my subtitled show and all of a sudden the subtitles are not showing on the screen. the subtitle button is on and everything, just that the words are not showing on screen. I want to know if anyone else is experiencing that today and yesterday June 26th submitted by /u/ZaeSky [link] [comments]”
“when WE are watching a film and WE don't understand what the people on screen are saying that means WE want AI dubbing WE want it locked so you can't turn it off so WE don't have to be bombarded with "reading". to like a video you first have to subscribe to YouTube Premium Plus wich also increases the amount of subscriptions you can have to unlimited (premium has 1000 and normal has 83). commenting can now only be done as normal but it now goes through a "filter"”
“I've noticed these pop up everywhere and I like the format but I can't tell which one's are AI. They all mispronounce common words and it ruins it for me because it makes me think it's fake. submitted by /u/GreatestBluestHeron [link] [comments]”
“I already have a channel in my native language, so I created a brand new one in english to reach an international audience. Everything is in english (videos, titles, descriptions, tags, channel language, etcc.), and I didnt even tell my existing audience about it because I wanted youtube to find the right viewers naturally. But instead, youtube is mostly recommending my videos alongside creators from my own country. Is this normal for a new channel? will it eventually start recommending my conte”
“i was watching a video ( this one, if anyone wanted to check) of a german recipe with a voiceover. i noted that the english voice-over had a little german accent which i thought nothing of, until i saw that the video was auto dubbed. once i switched back to the original german track, the voice was identical to the autodub, just y'know, in german. i've noticed this with other creators who get their vids autodubbed, and some movie clips too. is autodubbing now done with AI and directly gen”
“I rented a movie to watch with my mother this weekend and it KEEPS auto switching to Spanish! I don’t speak Spanish and never have watched Spanish videos but it won’t let me change it to English (the original audio) PLEASE someone help EDIT: I forgot to mention but it’s in English on my phone. It just goes Spanish on my TV :/ submitted by /u/Huge_Strawberry2327 [link] [comments]”
“Anybody who have ever used Youtube might cringe at how bad the auto translate or auto generated subtitles are. So how can I improve it? Would reporting a issue with bad translation help improve the quality? How can I contact anybody on the youtube team to complain about such features and bring some suggestions on the table? submitted by /u/xalxary2 [link] [comments]”
“Its totally possible on web version of it but there is less than 10 15 languages in the actual app Even the TV app submitted by /u/FeR4Less-shah [link] [comments]”
“I went on mobile website and disabled the captions when into my app settings and disabled captions. But every time I look at a video, the captions are automatically generated and nothing is checked. Everything is turned off but it still does it. What am I missing? submitted by /u/finalmetal [link] [comments]”
“ok so this is probably obvious to everyone but me lol but I never bothered translating my videos because I thought it would sound weird. tried it last week with this tool called Mediaio and honestly the dubbing doesn't sound like the usual robotic garbage. it kept my voice which was the part I was most worried about. got like 200 views from Brazil which I've literally never had before. might keep doing it, idk. anyone else doing this or is it not worth the effort long term? submitt”
“This is a problem I've had on both PC and Android. I've tried clearing cache, reinstalling all updates, turning on and off the subtitles etc and nothing works. Sometimes the subtitles work fine, but 9 times out of 10 they don't work, the automatically generated subtitles of the video (in native language) are fine, but the moment I put a translated language, they just don't work. Is there any way to fix it? Also, I noticed some videos have the option of changing the Audio to a lan”
“Almost every single video I watch ,the subtitles turn themselves on. I checked in settings and "Show captions" is off. How can I make it stop automatically turning on subtitles? submitted by /u/TheRealTastyTurnip [link] [comments]”
“Hello. Having a problem with one of my videos on my YT channel. It's automatically redubbed into english language. I figured a way how to switch it back to native speak but sadly for other viewers it's still in english and they also have to switch it manually. Is there a way I can change some settings so that other viewers see the video with original audio without needing to change anything? Thanks for help. submitted by /u/CliffuckingBooth [link] [comments]”
“When I click on the settings on the video and change it the audiotrack to german, it just goes back to english. Also in the preferred languages settings I have both german and english but it doesnt do anything. This ai translation is so bad I want that turned off! submitted by /u/Flopi04LP [link] [comments]”
“My UI is set to English, but YouTube keeps auto-translating video descriptions that were originally written in a different language. I'm bilingual and I actually want to read the original the translations are often inaccurate and miss the creator's tone entirely. There's no "Show original" button visible anywhere, even after expanding the full description. The only workaround I found is a third-party extension, which feels like overkill for what should be a basic setting. I”
“https://preview.redd.it/64h42okrel7h1.png?width=1324&format=png&auto=webp&s=ad2824b20c192a670d6d7061db68645b1501a0cf No matter how I turn it off, it keeps coming back like a ghost. Driving me nut~~~ submitted by /u/Hackettlai [link] [comments]”
“My app is in German, but I am german and english speaker. I can't seem to turn off this AI auto-translation feature globally. It's super annoying! When I am watching German Videos, sometimes the voiceline its AI English and if I am watching American content, its AI translated to German. 🤬 Any idea how to fix that? Is it a bug? Am I stupid? I'm a bit desperate submitted by /u/No_Tradition5608 [link] [comments]”
“The idiots at YouTube somehow think it's a good idea to slam the entire fucking transcript which covers half of a 15s short to our faces. EVERY SINGLE VIDEO IS LIKE THIS !!! submitted by /u/thelazyhandsome [link] [comments]”
“YouTube's closed captions used to always default to the top language, in this case "English - Animated". It was perfect, I never had to mess around with the settings. Now, it always - and I mean ALWAYS - pre-selects this new "auto-translate" option. I have checked my playback settings, and I have selected English and German as spoken languages, so it shouldn't translate those, right? Well, guess what... every time I watch a German video, it translates to English, and”
“Hello, i just had a problem where when i try changing the languague of a video featuring multiple languages always reseting back to english, is there any way to fix this? submitted by /u/Dry_Highway_8988 [link] [comments]”
“Its terrible the other way around as well. Im a Theme Park enthusiast and watch content from all over the world. When watching any German/Spanish or Dutch Creators when using there native language I just put the subtitles on and keep the original language otherwise it just doesn't come across as natural flowing content”
“I’ve been following this glasgow girl who does daily vlogs where half the appeal is how she talks. I saw the auto dub option and clicked Spanish out of curiosity. It's just a flat narrator voice that lacks pace and slangs. Like I love how she stretches words when she's annoyed and it’s all gone. Plus the lip sync is terrible Is autodub helping creators at all? Because I wouldn’t subscribe or follow her if I saw the dubbed version submitted by /u/Key-Chemist4847 [link] [”
“It's not that it just automatically changes to my native language (French, but I prefer watching in original language so most of the time english) but it's also that no matter what I try, refreshing the page, changing the audio manually, setting my preferred language to english, the videos with a french dub are always put with the french audio with no possibility to change it. What happens when I change it manually is I click on "english - original" and it closes the settings p”
“It's so annoying. I keep clicking on videos that I think are in English and they aren't submitted by /u/DEANPRIME91 [link] [comments]”
“I've been dealing with a really annoying YouTube issue for a while now and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this. For some reason, YouTube keeps turning subtitles on whenever I start a new video. The weird part is that I've gone through every setting I can think of. I've checked YouTube settings, Google account settings, accessibility settings on my devices, and anything related to captions or subtitles is already turned off.Yet subtitles still keep showing up and I h”
“As title says, changed it ONCE so I could send a video to my mom, making sure she'd understand it, and now every single time I open the app, I have to manually change the audio track to english. I have my preffered language set to english, no other languages selected. System language is set to english, im currently living in the U.S. so its not the location doing it. This is getting on my nerves. Anyone have a fix? Edit: Samsung Galaxy S22. <”
“Have you ever faced a problems with translation on yt? the video kust translate to english”
“So I'm experiencing something weird all of my ads are in Spanish even though my language is English this happens nowhere else (that I know of)”
“So this is the second time this has happened to me the first time it went away, but the other day I was scrolling through videos and some of the videos on my YouTube channel are now coming in a foreign language. Everything is set to English. I have no clue what's going on. Any help would be appreciated.”