![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/jk-1.jpg\")
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Another bang-up job from AI translation!<\/p>\n
We haven\u2019t really covered the recent and brief suspension of American late-night TV talk show host Jimmy Kimmel here on SoraNews24. Not that it\u2019s not a topic worth discussing, but the intricacies of Kimmel\u2019s acrimonious relationship with U.S. president Donald Trump, questions of what constitutes appropriate use of authority by the American Federal Communications Commission, and the myriad open and veiled motivations of broadcaster ABC, parent company Disney, and affiliate station owners Nexstar and Sinclair aren\u2019t having a direct or significant effect on Japanese culture and society, which are our site\u2019s primary areas of focus.<\/p>\n
Something we do dabble in here on SoraNews24, though, is Japanese linguistics, and a recent episode of Kimmel\u2019s now-reinstated show starts off with a call for his death, if you\u2019re listening to the provided Japanese-language version of its dialogue.<\/p>\n
Below is the official Jimmy Kimmel Live YouTube channel\u2019s upload of the opening monologue of the show\u2019s September 25 episode, its third after coming back from being off the air for a week. It starts with announcer Lou Wilson making an energetic, but ordinary, proclamation: \u201cNow, Jimmy Kimmel!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Or, at least that\u2019s what it says if you\u2019re listening to it with the original audio. However, if you have the video\u2019s audio set to Japanese, or even if you haven\u2019t touched the settings but YouTube has decided it thinks you want the Japanese-dubbed version (say, for example, if you\u2019re watching the video from somewhere in Japan), the very first thing you\u2019ll hear is the announcer saying, \u201cSaa, kare wo korose,\u201d which means:<\/p>\n
\u201cWell now, kill him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before anyone starts spinning conspiracy theories, it\u2019s pretty clear that the culprit here isn\u2019t Kimmel\u2019s detractors in the Trump administration or the extreme-right media, but is actually YouTube itself, and that the reason this happened isn\u2019t malice, but ignorance. YouTube is of the mindset that translation is something that can be left up to AI, as evidenced by its recent push to add auto-translated, auto-dubbed foreign language options to videos on the platform.<\/p>\n
The problem is that AI doesn\u2019t really know anything (hence the whole \u201cartificial\u201d part).\u00a0A human being, even one who doesn\u2019t speak a single word of English, would still be able to recognize that whatever the announcer in the video is saying, he\u2019s definitely not saying \u201cWell now, kill him,\u201d since Kimmel than walks calmly out on stage with a warm smile to a clearly adoring audience. But YouTube\u2019s AI translation program doesn\u2019t see anything contradictory about pairing that cordial atmosphere with a command to take a man\u2019s life, and a particularly aggressive one at that (korose is a more vulgar variant of the standard word for \u201ckill,\u201d koroshite).<\/p>\n
As for how the AI translation program managed to proverbially poop itself so badly, the only thing that springs to mind is that it thought \u201cKimmel\u201d sounded like \u201ckill\u201d and \u201chim,\u201d but that raises more concerns. The \u201cki\u201d and \u201cl\u201d parts of \u201cKimmel,\u201d which the AI seems to have interpreted as \u201ckill,\u201d wrap around the \u201cimm\u201d part that it appears to have translated as \u201chim,\u201d which would mean that the AI translation program not only couldn\u2019t hear correctly, it also chopped up the word it was having trouble with and rearranged its parts to force-fit it into a phrase it had found somewhere else it\u2019d scraped data from, then converted that jumbled-up mess into Japanese and presented it as the translation. A person\u2019s name being a sticking point is also a huge red flag regarding the quality of automatic translations, since, again, names are something that human beings can recognize very easily through context, while AI will be tempted to bluff its way through a \u201ctranslation\u201d of vocabulary it couldn\u2019t recognize, like a kid who was sleeping in class trying to B.S. his way through an answer when he gets called on by the teacher.<\/p>\n
\u25bc \u201cMr. Tanaka! If a Shinkansen leaves Tokyo at 9:35 a.m., traveling at 320 kilometers per hour, but stops in Kyoto for 10 minutes so the conductor can buy some gold green Black Thunder<\/a>, at what time will it reach Shin Iwakuni Station?\u201d The bronze lining to this (since the situation isn\u2019t positive enough to warrant silver) is that this is just a talk show intro, and it\u2019s unlikely that anyone watching the Japanese auto-dub is going to be swayed to actually try to murder Kimmel because the video told them to. However, the fact that auto-translating can go off the rails so spectacularly, and so quickly, is alarming, and if a similar mistake were to happen in auto-translating a speech from an influential political or religious leader, commanding viewers to enact violence against a person would be much less of a laughing matter. Also worth considering is that the \u201chim\u201d part of the \u201cWell now, kill him\u201d AI translation isn\u2019t present at all in the original dialogue. If AI translation is simply guessing that it should throw in \u201chim\u201d, it could also guess that it should throw in \u201cthem,\u201d expanding the target of the statement to an even wider group of people. This sort of mistake is something particularly likely when translating between Japanese and English, as the two languages have very different rules and customs regarding the use of pronouns and plural or singular forms of nouns.<\/p>\n Again, Kimmel\u2019s life isn\u2019t in any danger due to the absurdity of the translation error and the environment in which it appears. The real threat of reliance on, and acceptance of, AI translation lies in less ridiculous errors, things that might seem believable because they\u2019re less dramatic than a direct call for blood or are coming from a source where the subject matter doesn\u2019t make it obvious that something has gone wrong in the translation. \u201cKill the talk show host\u201d is so far out here that it\u2019s darkly comedic, but misattributed statements to the effect of \u201cWe need to expel people of Group X\u201d or \u201cThere\u2019s no need to take any precautions about Recalled Product Y\u201d wouldn\u2019t be so chuckle-worthy.<\/p>\n In short, always take AI translations, regardless of the language they\u2019re coming from or going into, with a massive grain of salt.<\/p>\n Source: YouTube\/Jimmy Kimmel Live<\/a> Like this:<\/p>\n Like Loading…<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026uhhhh..kill Jimmy Kimmel\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/JK-2.jpg\")
Top image: Pakutaso<\/a>
Insert images: Pakutaso<\/a>
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