YouTube: Robotic translation annoys users and cannot be turned off

I can understand why it automatically being on and coming back on would be annoying.

But the auto-dub feature itself is amazing. As an english only speaker (with a bit of german) I'm loving that now I can directly listen to Brazillian hot air balloon underground art scene videos in Portuguese, among others. Having the auto-generated subtitles was good, but now with auto-dubs it's even better. These auto-translations features really are bringing the world together in the ways the internet always promised. That's a good thing. I never would've interacted with many of these people if not for the auto translation (both ways).

Dubbing in general is a horrid practice. People's voices and speech mannerisms are a big part of their personality and presence. Hiding it behind someone else's voice (or an auto-generated translation) just erases a huge part of who the other person is, for no good reason in a world where virtually everyone can read subtitles.

Imagine listening to "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse", but instead of Marlon Brandon's iconic performance, you get someone speaking another language, or an AI generated voice: you'd lose half the point of the scene.

The dubs are not replacing the actual audio track. Both tracks are available if you want the original because you understand that language. You can just pick using the options menu (the gear).

The problem is that people are picking and then youtube is ignoring that on future videos and reloads instead of storing the preference.

The problem is not the availability of the auto-dubs as an option, which are undeniably great and helpful when you don't understand the language. I agree re: entertainment movies, dubs are bad. But sometimes in video media, often in fact, the speech is not about the person emoting but instead about what they are saying (ie, documentaries, reviews, etc).

You can still listen to the original audio and look at subtitles if you don't understand the language. It's so dehumanizing to auto generate a replacement of the original voice. I would really hate to know that I went through the trouble of recording and sharing something for free and people were listening to an AI rendition of what I was saying.

Yeah. I personally self-host my videos that I send to people on IRC/email/etc. Easy solution if you don't like what a free corporate service is doing. It would be nice if Alphabet's Google's Youtube also offered an option to disable it for one's own account's videos.

But I will never agree that auto-translations are a bad thing. They open the world up beyond language barriers. And that's good. Just because "AI" is involved does not make it bad, even if you're sick of it being shoved down your throat in contexts like Tik-Instagram-whatever.