YouTube No Translation

This Hacker News discussion revolves around the pervasive and often frustrating implementation of automatic language translation features on YouTube, and to a lesser extent, other Google services and websites.

Dislike of Forced and Inaccurate Automatic Translations

A primary theme is the widespread dissatisfaction with YouTube's aggressive and often unrequested automatic translation of video titles, descriptions, and audio. Many users expressed annoyance at these translations, finding them to be of poor quality, nonsensical, and even misleading.

• "Kudos to YouTube for making it to the list of a rare few websites that require browser extensions to deliver a half decent user experience." (goku12)
• "Automatically translated titles are often just wrong and misleading, and there is no way to turn this "feature" off." (sebtron)
• "I wouldn't want my browser to automatically translate every page I go to (without my consent!) either, and that would've been a much easier job!" (Nullabillity)
• "The translations of video titles are absolutely atrocious and rarely mean anything near the intent of the original title." (Jcampuzano2)
• "Their automatic audio translations engine could be easily renamed "Mechanical Italian Brainrot Generator"." (easyThrowaway)
• "The same plugin for Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/youtube-no-translation/lmkeolibdeeglfglnncmfleojmakecjb" (doener)

Frustration with Lack of User Control and Options

A recurring complaint is the absence of user-friendly options to disable or manage these automatic translations. Many users stated that even when they prefer content in its original language, YouTube overrides their preferences, forcing translations or replacing original audio with AI-generated dubs.

• "What's more? YouTube also leaves the competition in the dust in the sheer number of extensions required to achieve this." (goku12)
• "If I don't want the translated sound track there's a button right there in settings to change it. Why do I need this extension?" (ars)
• "Also for the sound track sometimes there isn't even an option to disable it depending on what experiment or client you are using." (charcircuit)
• "If you understand more than one language, you'll get half of the videos sloppily translated for no reason. There is no way to tell YouTube not to do this for specific languages." (sebtron)
• "A better solution would be a ‘blacklist’ of languages you understand—so YouTube only auto‑translates from languages you don’t speak, and always leaves familiar languages in their original form." (vcvbcv)
• "I have to hunt for the audio setting each time, because you cannot turn off AI voices permanently." (Tomte)
• "It's insane that this requires an extension for a company with as much resources as google." (Jcampuzano2)
• "It’s unbelievable how broken YouTube is when it comes to language. I’m German. I want to see German content in German, and obviously I want to see English content in English. How is this not possible—especially when it worked perfectly for years?" (tobi_bsf)
• "It is insane to me that you cannot turn it off in the setting even as a premium user. Or better yet, make this opt-in for everyone." (lajosbacs)

YouTube's Hostility Towards Multilingual Users

Several users feel that YouTube (and Google by extension) is actively hostile towards multilingual individuals. The platform's behavior demonstrates a lack of understanding or disregard for users who speak multiple languages and prefer to consume content in its original form.

• "It's surprising how hostile youtube is to multilingual users." (rdtsc)
• "But surely someone sane there has to realize there is a large number of users out there who speak more than one language, and don't need Google do "help" them or "guess" for what language they like more." (rdtsc)
• "I really, really want to have a way to tell Youtube that if I enable subtitles and the content is either English or Portuguese, then the subtitles should be shown in the original language..." (nextaccountic)
• "I would assume there are multilingual speakers in mostly every single team at YouTube. Or at the very least enough nerds who just like some random content from another country. People who would both want their UI to be in a language A but also to consume content from languages B, C... I do not understand how that assumption holds in any product decision except in one where the YT product teams are entirely and totally separated from the engineering teams." (rtpg)
• "Google as a whole is hostile to the user's browser's language settings." (weberer)
• "It feels like the youtube team doesn't have any multilingual experience, which would be surprised if that's the case?" (dgellow)
• "I don't think you understand the proficiency needed to comfortably consume content in another language. Save for a few hotspots (Benelux, Nordics) most people say "yes, I speak a second language" because when they focus hard, they can say "me wants toilet" and that's enough for their use case (holiday abroad once a year)." (anal_reactor)
• "It seems obvious to me that it is, but I also come from a country where everyone is bilingual." (simongray)
• "The main holdouts when it comes to bilingualism are former imperial powers who managed to both kill domestic language diversity (e.g. France, UK, Russia) while also spreading their national language as a lingua Franca. Another group of holdouts are settler colonies such as the US, which didn't have a dominant native population after the arrival of Europeans." (simongray)

Reliance on Browser Extensions and Alternatives

Due to the perceived deficiencies in YouTube's native handling of language preferences, many users resort to using browser extensions or alternative platforms to regain control.

• "I stopped using the site long ago because of what it's turned into, and only visit it for the occasional things I can't do with Invidious, yt-dlp, and a few shell scripts." (userbinator)
• "I can recommend the DeArrow extension for this. It has an option to always show the untranslated title. Plus, it has the intended features such as thumbnail replacement and crowd-sourced titles. DeArrow works in Android Firefox. It's unfortunate that YouTube is only usable with these extensions, but here we are." (tilsammans)
• "The same plugin for Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/youtube-no-translation/lmkeolibdeeglfglnncmfleojmakecjb" (doener)
• "I’ve been using “YouTube Anti Translate” for a year or two. I think the developer figured out all the bugs and quirks by now and it's pretty good." (gethly)
• "I just installed this extension, and confirmed that -- at least for now -- it works. The translated titles will be flashed first, then replaced by the original titles." (RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u)

Misguided Assumptions About User Language Preferences

A significant point of contention is the assumption that users primarily want content translated into their "regionally detected" language. This fails to account for:

• Multilingualism: People who speak multiple languages and prefer to switch between them or consume content in the original language.
• Language Learning: Users who actively seek out content in foreign languages to improve their skills.
• Cultural Preferences: The desire to hear music or media in its original artistic form, with original titles and lyrics.

• Technical Users: Individuals who set their system or browser languages to English for convenience or familiarity with technical terms.

• "It’s telling of how their developers "think" when they put the original language stream as the last one in the track list, instead of the sane first (zeroth?) position that it should occupy." (userbinator)

• "It is easy developer to assume: If your IP is coming from country X, you must want the content to be served in language X. No, there are tourist from country Z, long term resident who prefer language A and people from country X want to learn language B." (phantomathkg)
• "I would rather all application, including web app just give me the option to choose and say, interface language, english, content language, follow origin." (phantomathkg)
• "But even setting the client right is not really possible. I'm danish. I understand english and german. Norwegian and swedish are similar enough to danish that I can read it without too much trouble. Websites, if they're translated at all, usually offer their native language plus an english translation. So if I visit a website in any language I understand, I'd prefer the original. But for any other language I want the english version." (encom)
• "Unfortunately, the smartphone is not designed to help users with this goal. It is a medium for tech companies to shove garbage down the throats on people who are just trying to live their lives, and to perform the largest mass surveillance campaign in the history of mankind. Communication and connectivity is the Trojan horse used to sell the malware that the smartphone is. This feature is designed for users who "don't know any better"." (user923851)
• "I don't want japanese band's name to be translated. Nor I want my own music titles to be translated into other languages. There are many reasons why I wrote or said something in a specific language." (Parae)
• "The problem is when it does it for a language we speak. If it auto-translated japanese or polish or whatever for me I wouldn't mind as I don't speak those. But it auto-translates titles from English to my native language which is just bonkers. That's the difference here." (matsemann)
• "This is such a Google thing. I'm browsing from a German IP address, have my language set to English only and my region set to the US. This is still not enough for Google, and Youtube by extension, to not show me German search results. It is honestly incredibly frustrating." (oakstendheim)
• "What drives me nuts with this is that they'll go for a weird guessing game instead of using the language settings that the browser is providing in every single request." (edarchis)
• "Is this the educational standard in America?" (oc1)
• "It's profoundly American to assume everyone wants to see everything in one language." (Jcampuzano2)
• "Average user is not multilingual. Target group is average user. End of story." (anal_reactor)
• "I think it's more that the YouTube developers are US Americans who overwhelmingly speak only one language and naturally assume this is the case everywhere else." (cubefox)
• "This is a clear example where diversity of lived experiences make for a better product. I have no doubt that a young monolingual US developer can't imagine that many, if not most, people around the world are juggling between two or more languages multiple times a day. But it's obvious to anyone else." (stackbutterflow)

Impact on Content Creators and Language Learning

The automatic translations also negatively impact creators who may have their original audio or titles altered without their consent, potentially misrepresenting their work. Furthermore, the feature hinders language learning by replacing original audio with artificial dubs.

• "The automatic audio switch is very offensive to the creators." (seydor)
• "YouTube's often been cited as a great resource for learning new things. Well, now it's useless for, that's right, learning a second language! I wonder why this Spanish for beginners video's all in English? /s" (RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u)
• "I’ve been learning a new language, and I’m constantly encountering language-learning videos that get translated entirely into my native language, effectively useless until I revert the audio track. Annoyingly, there’s not a native way to revert the translated description and title as far as I know. And this seems to be done without the knowledge of the creator!" (snailmailman)
• "I watched a language-learning YouTube short today that was entirely not in English. But YouTube was automatically dubbing it into English. A commenter replied with “but why the bad ai voice?” And the creator replied “it’s not, that’s my voice”" (snailmailman)
• "It also destroys language learning opportunities." (isaacremuant)
• "When I watch ASMR -- yes I'll admit in public I'm that guy -- videos, and am just about to fall asleep, I just love to be jolted awake by a loud robotic voice's rendition of tapping sounds." (RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u)
• "The audio provides a strong feedback for OCR errors." (godelski)
• "It would be a lot easier to add this to the YouTube app on my TV (as well as uBlock Origin)." (petargyurov)
• "You're all doing machine learning, why not use it to put the same text on top of it? It's easy to cache the results and you're already scrubbing audio data and automatically doing STT, so extend it to do video to text and compare. It's not like this is an unsolved problem, even if imperfect." (godelski)
• "I was curious about something similar. I'm working on an app that's based around youtube videos for language learning. I had to solve the same problem of youtube automatically changing the audio track to match the device locale." (yunusabd)
• "The trouble is Babel Fish is science fiction. Douglas Adams described it as "feeding" the speech centres of your brain directly, not translating the audio into a shitty generated copy." (globular-toast)

Google's Priorities and Business Model

Some users speculate that these aggressive translation features are driven by business goals, such as increasing engagement and ad revenue, rather than genuine user experience improvements.

• "Whether the $goal was {accessibility, show off translations, UX improvement} is quite irrelevant for a business that optimizes for revenue from ads." (pickledoyster)
• "I'd suspect it's something banal, such as: $goal --> translate by default --> enough users click through by mistake (AB test shows user interest) --> more preroll ads shown to users (AB test shows business value) --> promotion" (pickledoyster)
• "Google being anti user, probably so some director can boost AI numbers is pretty typical though." (isaacremuant)
• "The only feedback that may be heard must be numeric and translate to $$$ KPI. Hint: Youtube viewers are not Googles customers." (oc1)
• "Maybe in those countries. In any case, it's considerably easier to read and listen than write and speak." (Mawr)
• "The main holdouts when it comes to bilingualism are former imperial powers who managed to both kill domestic language diversity (e.g. France, UK, Russia) while also spreading their national language as a lingua Franca. Another group of holdouts are settler colonies such as the US, which didn't have a dominant native population after the arrival of Europeans." (simongray)
• "I think the engineers at Google know and want this, but Google has a monopoly here so without a strong financial reason nothing will happen." (amelius)
• "Inaccurate auto-captions for videos with hard coded captions probably isn't a big enough pain to warrant big investments?" (yunusabd)
• "Google knows which languages we speak... right? Surely... Also, advertisers get that option, because they're the only users YT cares about." (addandsubtract)