As much as people would love to think that localizers are getting what they deserve, this isn’t the bad ones being removed, it’s just cost saving.
I for one won’t pay for AI translation of anything since I can do that on my own if I wanted to read a machine translation.
Honestly, these days I’d prefer advanced mtl to a shitty localization every time. Nintendo has turned me into a hard liner, working to figure out what the fuck a character just said is better than that character just not saying anything. I’m an old head, i remember needing to work that shit out, it sucked but at least it wasn’t purposefully mangled.
Man i miss fanlations being the standard, they are so much better.
Localization is necessary though. I agree that localization can go too far, but most translations have some form of it, because languages have their own unique quirks and nuances, that MTL won’t pick up on, losing its meaning or impact in the process. If it’s dependent on QA to be good, it’s doing it wrong. QA should be the last gate, not the first.