a treatise against auto-dubbing on youtube
Never has youtube given me more reason to stay away from their website than when they present another auto-dubbed video. The thumbnails of these videos often feature some intriguing sentences of Spanish, French or Portugese for me to admire while I shift my behind to the other side of the toilet seat. When I however finally decide to spend my time on a German documentary about the wreckage of a WW1 U-boat, it will invariably be made valueless by the introduction of jarring synthesized voices, speaking broken English.
I admit immediately that I have no quarrel with the practice of dubbing itself, as it can certainly have great value for both cross-cultural exchange and for the accesibily of videos to people with reading difficulties. My problem starts, however, when dubbing is turned into the default option, or, as is the case for my mobile version of Youtube, the only option. I will offer three reasons for my position:
Firstly, this design choice does nothing to promote the "breaking down of language barriers", because it deprives people of interactions with other languages. Instead, they can keep enjoying the comfort of effortless consumption. Contrary to what Duolingo and other services profess, I believe that mosts instances of learning require moments of confrontation, where your mind wrestles with itself wile it tries to comprehend something new.
Secondly, the computerized translation, besides lacking personality or vitality, will often distort the meaning of a given video, because it has no sense of the intent or context in which the original words are spoken.
Lastly, this design choice can be an affront to multilingual people around the world. I happen to watch mostly English countries from my current residence in Europe, but the occasional high quality video I encounter in my second or third languages are now incomprehensible.
This issue is doubly frustrating on youtube because it is incredibly easy to fix: instead of forcing this auditory violation on users, the platform could just notify them about the extra option, or give them the opportunity to set their own preferences. As it stands now, youtube is making the experience of many users much worse, all for the purpose of promoting their inhuman technologies and promoting linguistic self-isolation for all.
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a short music update: I've been mixing my recently recorded piano music and am planning to release this as an 11-minute EP soon.
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