I'm pretty sure that I didn't learn multiple foreign languages by running my homework exercises through ChatGPT. As a matter of fact, I learned them by practicing and doing homework. And, sure, you COULD "automate" learning Japanese Kanji by running WaniKani through ChatGPT but that's not learning

Stopped off for a little treat on my way home from work.

I spent 4 months trying to answer a simple question: has this book been translated into my language? Turns out no one tracks this. Not ISBN registries. Not Amazon. Not Google. Not libraries. So I built a tool that crosses four databases to piece it together. zenodot.app

Grmbl. Foreign parents need to be their mixed child’s advocates. If I say your child is 100% Japanese, don’t counter by “…but they’ll never be completely Japanese.” Yes. They do. They are. Drill that in your mind: holding mixed roots does not mean they’re less Japanese.

Today, we're publishing Don't Steal This Book - a (mostly) empty book from almost 10,000 authors, protesting the theft of their work by AI companies. 🧵 1/3

With Strange Buildings out worldwide, Jim talks about some of the fun, and challenges, of the biggest Uketsu book yet. #Uketsu #StrangeBuildings jimrion.com/2026/03/10/t...

Not content to just steal from the real deal, this game is also ripping off fan designs 😬

I need every single male artist that follows me to read this. It's not very long. You need to bear witness to this shit. You have to see it with your own eyes because you never will in your everyday life. I'm serious, read it all please

Every year I tell my students "use spellcheck before submitting the final project", every year they look like me like I'm stupid for suggesting something this obvious, and inevitably every year roughly half of the group submits their final projects WITHOUT using spellcheck.

Yes, the French booksellers association forced the Paris Book Festival to drop Amazon sponsorship due to Amazon "seeking to flood the market with fake AI-generated books, promoted by fake reviews, written by fake readers [which rise] to the top of fake rankings"💥 MORE OF THIS, PLEASE 💥

Anyways.

idk I’ve seen a bajillion kids movies where the kids parents die & let me tell you, having a convo with my kid about how anyone can die at any time & it doesn’t matter if they’re someone’s mom or dad is way harder than having a convo about how sometimes someone has two dads or whatever. And yet

As everyone is sharing, here are #my9games that had an impact on my life in one way or another and probably permanently changed my brain.

"We use a problematic plagiarism machine in every aspect of our creative work, but you can totally trust that we write the words. Definitely wouldn't use AI for that one aspect. We've already shown our integrity doesn't exist, but pinkie swear that the words we feed into the AI voiceover are real."

Why is generative AI slop bad for language learning? Because it's a RANDOM word generator! Putting aside the theft/world burning ethical issues, LLMs are designed to pick the likelihood of a word based on the words that came before it. They're not designed to BE accurate but to SOUND accurate.

Attempt to read Japanese high fantasy no.???. I recently picked up 神の蝶、舞う果て (Kami no Cho, Mau Hate / God's Butterflies, Dance to the End) by Nahoko Uehashi, who also wrote Moribito, The Beast Player, and The Deer King.

The House of Lords Digital & Communications Committee just published their report on AI, copyright & the creative industries, and their conclusions could not be clearer. 🧵 1/5

🌙NEW VIDEO DROPS AT 8PM PST🌙 lol disregard my last post, I decided not being awake to moderate chat was a Bad Thing, so I moved up the premiere to 8pm, pst....like, 17 minutes from now. gonna jump in the shower and be back.

We’re pleased to announce that Ally Le is the winner of the 2026 Stevns Translation Prize! Congratulations to Ally and finalists Lukas Tuyet Tung, Nguyễn Thị Bích Trâm, and Chau Anh Nguyen.

When we first got the brief on this project, I was absolutely terrified. The prospect of having to edit a novel's worth of intricate 17th century prose was daunting, but our incredible translators managed to pull it off. Shoutout to Violaine, Marie, Thomas and Félix for their work!

Automate your lettering, save your wrists! I’ll be running a panel for @cartoonist.coop’s Nib & Ink Festival about how to make your computer do more work and prevent injury while lettering! Time: May 9 @ 2PM EDT Place: Zoom / remote More info here: nif.cartoonist.coop/event/automa...

I made this for a talk I'm giving, but maybe you can use it, too?

📖 THE GAME NARRATIVE KALEIDOSCOPE ❄️ is out NOW! www.inklestudios.com/kaleidoscope 100+ essays on writing & narrative design, with articles from the writers of Baldur's Gate 3, Control, Call of Duty, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Sam and Max... ALSO the Kaleidoscope Podcast with 2 full eps!

Given the recent news about the Seven Seas Acquisition: I want to extend my congratulations to @fakku.net for becoming the new #1 Independent Manga Publisher in the United States!🎉🎉🎉

Another reason not to use generative AI in translation -- it ADDS stuff that wasn't in the original!!!

Miyamoto should've done more interviews in 1989 because this is like reading a wizard talk. This snippet distills why playing games in another language has always been so appealing to me. (And also reminds me why Tunic is such a masterpiece.)

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed. Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

With all the recent stuff going on, I do want to affirm here that all of the localization for @mangamavericks.bsky.social titles are done 100% by humans. We have no interest in using AI for any part of the localization/production process.

maybe we shouldn't be laying the blame at the feet of contractors for the poor pay maybe people take jobs that pay poorly because they need the work and money, even if it's not ideal. not everyone has the clout to push for better without threatening their livelihood.

Manga companies, please pay us $8/page! The small and new publishers can do it, surely the big companies with owners who make $3 million+ per year can afford it too!! x.com/MangaAlerts/...

Mood.

I want to spread some positivity in the world, so I want to shout-out folks doing great work in the Japanese translation space:

I'm supposed to be celebrating a huge success this week but instead I'm feeling helpful, frustrated, and angry at everything.

Just screaming.

Now would be a good time for anyone who wants to learn about recent Iranian history to read this. It is well worth your time and money (I am sure your local library has it if you don’t want to purchase it).

I think we should take our time translating 🤷🏻‍♂️ More time than we have been expected to take, more time than we even think it should take.

GIVE US THE LAYERED CSP FILES IF YOU WANT MANGA LOCALIZED FASTER

Can confirm, takes about this long and the best-paid translators only make about $1,000 per volume. Editors make less per volume; I’m not sure about Letterers. It’s not that expensive to get a good localization of a manga volume. Don’t let them forget that.

Every professional translator I know has the same position on this and can easily explain the reasons for it when asked. The fact that executives don't even bother to ask and force translators to work on AI/MTL slop regardless makes it clear where their priorities lie: money trumps quality.

AI does not "assist" translators, it just makes their work harder, brings down the quality, and impacts their pay. 😭

THAT is the problem with "better than nothing". MTPE fan TL is worse than nothing. It's actively detrimental to the games supposedly being translated and the community at large. It makes players associate the game with slop. It forestalls good-faith translations. It wastes everyone's time.

One of the few good human only translation companies gets bought out by company that uses slop.

New Interviews With Localizers is out!!! This month we talk to John Neal (@johnnylandmine.bsky.social) about how he became an in-house video game localizer then moved to freelance manga/game translation and editing. #InterviewswithLoc j-entranslations.com/john-neal-ma...

I'll be talking online about how I ended up becoming a "literary translator" and hopefully people will find it amusing, at least, if not helpful. April 18th! Free for JAT members, ¥500 for students, ¥2,000 for others. #Xl8 #Translation #JapaneseLit

If you want to know what it's like to be an actual human translator translating a video game by human hand www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.

If you feel that use of AI art assets at any stage of the process is an automatic out, but ChatGPT translations are fine if they're "checked" by people, it might be worth asking yourself why that is. Because it sounds a whole lot like valuing the work of translators less than other creatives to me.