Again, if anybody had thought to talk to the translators that were among the very first guinea pigs for much of the underlying technology and workflows for over a decade, we could've told you this is exactly what would happen to your productivity. But who needs to put a face to translation anyway? 🥴

Some good news for your late night!

Are you a Pokémon Go player of any era who has feelings about how the game's data has been used? Has it soured your memories of the game? Have you stopped playing because of it? Would you want to chat about it for a Kotaku story? Please reach out here or email me at [email protected]

MOTHERFUCKER

You can find the icon here: hinokodo.itch.io/human-made The human made icon tells people no ai was used. The ai guys hide that info, and people want to know what they're buying. Often they'll be more supportive if they can see your commitment to human creativity.

Using AI for translation is like assembling flatpack furniture: - You don't know whether you have all the words and whether they are the right words - The assembly instructions are cryptic - The very basic tool provided barely holds it together - The result is wobbly and looks cheap

Woke up to officially made lazy Kingdom Hearts slop. Instantly killed all my interest in this game. So disappointing to see SquareEnix sully their games with this crap.

"So AI can't exist without stealing. If it could exist, it can't be trusted. If it could be trusted, it can't be controlled. If it could be controlled, it can't create. If it could create, it's not good enough. And if it was good enough, all of us would be dead."

"don't worry we didn't use AI to do it, we just used AI to decide what to do" is what I hear from brainstorming, concept phase, internal-use hand waving. I even saw somebody refer to that as ethical (?) use, but, same data center pollution, same stolen training data, same deskilling, same lazy trash

A reminder that the only answer to "did you use AI to develop this game" that will gain you goodwill instead of get you paraded as money-hungry ghouls is "absolutely the fuck not, we take pride in our craft" www.rockpapershotgun.com/tomb-raider-...

I have a huge backlog of games to get through spanning ten years and more , I have no problem not buying games from studios doing this and watching them rethink when their profits drop.

I tried Am I Nima at BitSummit and LOVED it. It's a horror mystery where you have to work out if you're Nima while also finding out what happened. It had a great creepy vibe, interesting gameplay, and an intriguing mystery. Definitely going to pick this up when it drops.

Do you like books? Do you like GAY books? Do you like REALLY GAY books? Well then you'll love the #PrideBookFair Pride Hard bundle, containing Woman of Sorrow and Blood + 37 other extremely queer books across science fiction, fantasy & horror for just $40! itch.io/b/3675/pride...

In all the excitement for this weekends game announcements, don’t forget about all the devs that have been laid off in the last few years. Imagine how much better games could be if people weren’t tossed aside for profit & corporate greed. We may never know how it could have been.

@TanyaGold.bsky.social has spots for #editor business coaching from July through the end of the year. Tanya is brilliant; I highly recommend working with them if you need some insight into running your #freelanceeditor business! tanyagold.com/editors/coac... #amediting #edibuddies #freelancing

“It’s two or three times harder than pure translation work, and they have the barefaced cheek to pay you half as much.” - fascinating on how AI has changed translators' work @sarahoconnorft.ft.com and @jburnmurdoch.ft.com:

Y'all. Please remember the artists that drew these things when sending around memes. I feel for these artists who NEVER get credited for these (and some, nowadays, are even being accused of being AI!) Here's a few common ones I see (feel free to add others, I want this to be a living thread): 🧵

The Delinquent and the Transfer Student volume 1 is out in English! I adore these characters and the artwork in this series. It's full of fun text stuff, like sound effects, asides, signage, etc. Here's a thread of some lettering details from volume 1!

I love the original PS1 Tomb Raider, it's one of my favourite games of all time, but no way an I touching the remake when it's been made with slop and published by Amazon.

annual reminder #pride

🤔 One of the questions we hear most from #IndieDevs: "If we only have budget for a few languages, where should we start?" There isn't a universal answer, but industry data and player behavior do reveal patterns. A short thread! 🧵

2022年のイラストの再掲：ガルガとアトワート #HappyPrideMonth 🌈

People, when you post a piece of writing that's in translation, cite the translator who chose every word. (That goes double for poems! And triple for poems in rhyme.) Even if it takes you two minutes to look it up. If you really can't find the name, say so and maybe someone else can.

One of the more misogynistic takes currently trending in the AI policy space is "women use less AI than men because they have less tech literacy" Ok but have you considered that women use less AI than men because we have more tech literacy?

IMPORTANT: For any artists/writers/etc etc, using Linktree to point people to their work, from 5 July, they'll be feeding all imagery you use on your landing page into DALL-E by OpenAI. I deleted my account this morning.

"This [foreign word] doesn't have a translation. It means [a translation of the word]." (⁠ノ⁠ಠ⁠益⁠ಠ⁠)⁠ノ⁠彡⁠┻⁠━⁠┻ Just because some words don't have an exact one-for-one translation doesn't mean it's not translatable.

The fact that they're hitting completely SFW artists with this label wasn't bad enough, so they also had to make this the most miserable user experience for a social media app ever conceived. I legit don't think I've ever seen ANYTHING this bad before on a social media platform lmao

occupied

Today was the first time I felt the urge to just walk out of my Korean lesson. I got a new teacher who's clearly a brand new baby teacher but he did multiple things that really urked me and made the whole lesson feel frustrating. I get he's new but I really hope I never get him again.

Since Google revealed its plans for an AI search overhaul, visits to our "No AI" search page have tripled…and they’re still rising! Want to make it your default on Chrome or Firefox? Grab our No-AI extensions and banish AI-assisted answers, chat, and AI images. (1/3)

Real good bit about the slippery slope of genAI use. A battle we're already fighting, especially against the C-suite.

Stopped me in my tracks, from our new interview w/Makoto Yukimura: Q: The end of Vinland Saga reminds me that a human life is short. It’s easy for our personal ambitions to exceed what’s possible in a single lifetime. A: That’s true, human life is short. Still, it’s too long to do nothing.

For some reason the guy deleted his post, I suspect because of the thousands of notifications, but for the daytime crowd here's this. Windows is feeding everything you type to AI. Checked myself, several FFXIV and WoW guildies confirmed it's there and turned on by default. Go turn it off.

From the review: “If the original makes you laugh, cry, feel excited, get goosebumps, feel puzzled, get bored, be charmed,” she says, “then the translation should try to create those effects.” www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

I added an anti-AI badge to the Game UI Database! Every one of the 72,684 (and counting!) screenshots on the site has been painstakingly tagged BY HAND with no AI assistance. If you're a creative, consider adding a similar disclaimer to your work to get the credit you deserve. www.gameuidatabase.com

Background/UI designer Yoshio Nishimura (Dragon's Crown, Odin's Sphere, Muramasa, 13 Sentinels) branches off on his own, becomes a farmer, and shows back up half a decade later with a self-produced JRPG that takes place inside of a fictional set of TTRPG books? That's a guaranteed day one pick-up.

Reading this interview with Richard Honeywood on his time at 90s Square starting up the localization department and learned so much. FF's Dia spell = Dispel Undead?? Gold Needle was a soft acupuncture needle and that's why it can puncture stone??? Yuji Horii kind of sucks to work for????

The results are in: 0/4 of the recent Tales Remasters/Ports have credited the English localizers who worked on them. This has been an ongoing issue since 2014, when Tales games suddenly stopped crediting English localizers in both remasters and new entries. #TranslatorsintheCredits (1/8)

I was skeptical of Dungeon Crawler Carl but I finally gave it a go after several people—including two of my best friends (who don't know each other), my sister, AND my mother-in-law—recommened it to me... It's really good.

STOP TELLING ME AI IS THE FUTURE OH MY GOD

YouTube’s response to this piracy is infuriating. They are absolutely complicit in providing these pirated works a platform. Please don’t listen to audiobooks on YouTube - support authors by buying a copy, listening on an accredited streaming service, or borrowing it from your library. #booksky

Red XIII's voice change in FF7 Rebirth came as a shock to Western OG fans, while those in Japan somehow saw it coming. In May's blog, I talk about what may have led to this divide and how such a beloved character's true self could go hidden for so long. annacairistiona.wordpress.com/2026/05/26/w...

If you're a reader/author and use Audible, you need to be aware of what's going on right now. I got the offer too: Literary translation 28 USD/hour 2500 words to edit per hour (For context, I need about an hour to edit 1000 words of my own work, or the work of reliable professional translators)

🌟 Pre-orders are now available for issue #2 of the Anime Herald Magazine! 🌟 Price: $22.95 USD ( + shipping ) More announcements coming soon! Just know I've been working hard designing for the past month! 😁 Pre-order your copy today: shop.animeherald.com/products/ani...

"estimated that the finished project would cover about as many square miles as Washington, D.C., making it the largest data center on the planet, and that it could produce enough heat to spike nighttime temperatures by as much as 28 degrees Fahrenheit in the high-desert valley" 😰

At BitSummit again today as part of the volunteer interpreter group!!! Looking forward to playing fun 100% human made indie games and help out cool people!