As someone who has been translating for years and also hates the AI mass psychosis, it frustrates me to no end when people point to machine translation (MT) software as evidence that "AI" has value.
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As someone who has been translating for years and also hates the AI mass psychosis, it frustrates me to no end when people point to machine translation (MT) software as evidence that "AI" has value. First of all, I have used that kind of software for over a decade - and no one thought to call it "AI". Second, the reason why it works so well is because translators like myself have been feeding those MT great translations while working. The software has been improving as we used it.
I'm watching a video of a Dutch potato breeder right now. I don't understand Dutch, but speech-to-text software combined with machine translation makes it possible to understand what he's saying. That's truly amazing and useful. I wish the fruits of translators' labor hadn't been privatized in corporate MT engines, but I'm still happy it exists. And it builds on technology that is also very different from the chatbots that generate plausible sounding answers to your questions.
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I'm watching a video of a Dutch potato breeder right now. I don't understand Dutch, but speech-to-text software combined with machine translation makes it possible to understand what he's saying. That's truly amazing and useful. I wish the fruits of translators' labor hadn't been privatized in corporate MT engines, but I'm still happy it exists. And it builds on technology that is also very different from the chatbots that generate plausible sounding answers to your questions.
@malte I feel you ...
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B bettina@mastodon.nu shared this topic
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As someone who has been translating for years and also hates the AI mass psychosis, it frustrates me to no end when people point to machine translation (MT) software as evidence that "AI" has value. First of all, I have used that kind of software for over a decade - and no one thought to call it "AI". Second, the reason why it works so well is because translators like myself have been feeding those MT great translations while working. The software has been improving as we used it.
@malte Yes! But most of us don't have access to you, when we translate our daily stuff. So I admit I find it great to clone you, and be able to get help for tasks which either wouldn't be translated at all or so poorly that it would be meaningless... However, I DO think you should be acknowledged and rewarded for your work
Maybe a percentage of a fee for all translations by languages, you contributed to? (brainstorming). -
@malte Yes! But most of us don't have access to you, when we translate our daily stuff. So I admit I find it great to clone you, and be able to get help for tasks which either wouldn't be translated at all or so poorly that it would be meaningless... However, I DO think you should be acknowledged and rewarded for your work
Maybe a percentage of a fee for all translations by languages, you contributed to? (brainstorming).@bettina My point was machine translations are great - for everyone as well as translators. It's a technology that has existed for a while and now is being misused to market so called "AI". That's what is pissing me off.
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@bettina My point was machine translations are great - for everyone as well as translators. It's a technology that has existed for a while and now is being misused to market so called "AI". That's what is pissing me off.
@malte ah, ok, sorry, I misunderstood! Yes, AI is all over the place, but most of it is machine learning, not AI...
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@malte ah, ok, sorry, I misunderstood! Yes, AI is all over the place, but most of it is machine learning, not AI...
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@bettina My point was machine translations are great - for everyone as well as translators. It's a technology that has existed for a while and now is being misused to market so called "AI". That's what is pissing me off.
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@anderslund @malte Yes, but it's easier than starting from scratch...
And to be honest, I'm quite impressed by mistral chat and chatgpt when it comes to translation...
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@anderslund @malte Yes, but it's easier than starting from scratch...
And to be honest, I'm quite impressed by mistral chat and chatgpt when it comes to translation...
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@anderslund @malte Yes, sometimes also movie translation / subtitles... But Ritzau should really know better!
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As someone who has been translating for years and also hates the AI mass psychosis, it frustrates me to no end when people point to machine translation (MT) software as evidence that "AI" has value. First of all, I have used that kind of software for over a decade - and no one thought to call it "AI". Second, the reason why it works so well is because translators like myself have been feeding those MT great translations while working. The software has been improving as we used it.
@malte Even with it improving, problems with machine translations are still hugely common, sometimes in ways that are very difficult to notice if you don't know enough of the languages being translated from/to to catch them, and often in ways that are difficult to catch if you don't know much about translation in general, since the number of decisions that most non-trivial translations needs to have made is... not really something a lot of people seem to recognize.
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@malte Even with it improving, problems with machine translations are still hugely common, sometimes in ways that are very difficult to notice if you don't know enough of the languages being translated from/to to catch them, and often in ways that are difficult to catch if you don't know much about translation in general, since the number of decisions that most non-trivial translations needs to have made is... not really something a lot of people seem to recognize.
@malte (I mean things like... do you translate an idiom preserving the words said, or preserving the intended meaning?
Is the russian голубой / синий distinction meaningful in this text, or can both just be "blue" and not lose any important information, for some simpler examples.) -
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@malte (I mean things like... do you translate an idiom preserving the words said, or preserving the intended meaning?
Is the russian голубой / синий distinction meaningful in this text, or can both just be "blue" and not lose any important information, for some simpler examples.)@miss_rodent These are the very kinds of problems that translators are skilled at dealing with! Most translators use MT for routine and basic translation tasks and save their energy for the more thorny problems like idioms, catching the spirit of the text etc
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@miss_rodent These are the very kinds of problems that translators are skilled at dealing with! Most translators use MT for routine and basic translation tasks and save their energy for the more thorny problems like idioms, catching the spirit of the text etc
@malte
The trouble is that most clients don't realize or acknowledge that. I now get offered the same work (technical translations in the environmental field) from old clients, except they want to deliver a machine pre-translated text and pay me half to a quarter of what they used to pay me just a couple years ago for a job that would likely take me longer to rework than it would to do it from scratch. Hard pass. My job is essentially dead now after 27 years in the business. -
@malte
The trouble is that most clients don't realize or acknowledge that. I now get offered the same work (technical translations in the environmental field) from old clients, except they want to deliver a machine pre-translated text and pay me half to a quarter of what they used to pay me just a couple years ago for a job that would likely take me longer to rework than it would to do it from scratch. Hard pass. My job is essentially dead now after 27 years in the business.@WesternExposure What a shame. I expect we will see lots more mediocre and sometimes outright false and contradictory translations on technical documents for that reason - we probably already are. I have mostly translated books and text where the standard for translation is expected to be high, and in best case scenario is seen as a form of writing itself. I've never been economically dependent on it and imagine that must be uncertain times now.
