Machine translations are often brought up as a gotcha whenever I criticize LLMs.
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I have the impression that primarily anglophone people don't read as much translated literature, because so much good literature already exists in their language, so this issue may not be as familiar within that demographic. As someone who did not grow up anglophone, I can tell you there is a world of difference between a good and a bad translation even when done by humans. Machine translations are not even on the scale.
@Gargron
I would love to see an LLM try to translate the Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem -
@gdinwiddie Yes, and there a few different translations into Polish
"duch wprawdzie pełen chęci, ale ciało — słabe."
"duch wprawdzie ochoczy, ale ciało - słabe."
I wrote ho I remembered it for the record. And the vodka was strong, not good. Translations are a fascinating rabbit hole.
@Szescstopni Maybe it was “the vodka was strong” in English, also. I was a child when I heard my father tell that joke.
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I have the impression that primarily anglophone people don't read as much translated literature, because so much good literature already exists in their language, so this issue may not be as familiar within that demographic. As someone who did not grow up anglophone, I can tell you there is a world of difference between a good and a bad translation even when done by humans. Machine translations are not even on the scale.
@Gargron This is why I learn languages, so I can read the source materials myself. Bad translations sometimes mean they manipulated the meanings, and hidden censorships you won't be aware of if you don't have access to the source.
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Lem would confuse the heck out of an LLM. Heck, I think his work confused most of his translators too!
@nitinkhanna @Gargron @Szescstopni
This is why I mentioned Lem
There was a masterful translator, In one of the "Constructor Trurl and Klapautius" stories, one of them makes a machine that makes items that start with a letter "n", the list and the consequences (spoilers) are a masterful translation.
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@nitinkhanna @Gargron @Szescstopni
This is why I mentioned Lem
There was a masterful translator, In one of the "Constructor Trurl and Klapautius" stories, one of them makes a machine that makes items that start with a letter "n", the list and the consequences (spoilers) are a masterful translation.
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Machine translations are often brought up as a gotcha whenever I criticize LLMs. It's worth pointing out two things: Machine translations existed decades before LLMs, and yes, machine translations are useful. However: I would never in my life read a machine translated book. Understanding what a social media post is talking about in rough terms? Sure. Literature? Absolutely not. Hell, have you ever seen machine translated subtitles? It's absolute garbage.
@Gargron Has everyone already heard of the brilliant machine translation for the saying "Out of sight, out of mind"?
"Invisible, idiot."
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@ErikUden @Gargron I work for Swiss Broadcast Company. Our devs did a wonderfull job in this regard. I get autotranslated subtitles that are amazingly good. It ain't literature but very good. It's a two tier system that joins the captions, then translation and then reconstructing the captions. Translation is done by Claude. Langs are not that big of a challange (DE FR IT EN). Only Rumantsch is a challange. Claude 3.5(!) Is pretty darn good though. Claude 4+ not so much
@decurtins @ErikUden @Gargron One Apertus focus is being multilingual, it may do a better job with Rumantsch. https://www.swiss-ai.org/apertus
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@decurtins @ErikUden @Gargron One Apertus focus is being multilingual, it may do a better job with Rumantsch. https://www.swiss-ai.org/apertus
@slowenough @ErikUden @Gargron not yet. But there is something in the works
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From what I've observed, people who claim that LLMs can replace artists don't understand art, people who claim that they can replace musicians don't understand music, people who claim that they can replace writers don't understand literature, and people who claim they can replace translators don't rely on translations. If I had a button that would erase LLMs from the world but it would take machine translations away (which is a false dichotomy anyway), I would absolutely still press it.
@Gargron Also the idea that gen AI will just get better and it's now only a question of years that "they" will be "as good or better than a human expert" is so naive and misses out a very important detail.
Today's gen AI/LLMs already has all the training data from humanity even that data that they have no permission for. To make AI better you would need 3 or 4 times the amount of people on earth. There is no physical principal that dictates that AI will become "better over time".
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@Gargron It's hard to put the brakes on advances, like the Ghost Shirt Society finds out at the end of Vonnegut's Player Piano.
I heard an interview with a professor yesterday who wrote a book on the benefits of keeping cash alive and not relying completely on digital payment systems. He suggested using cash at least once a week. Maybe people will be able to do that with AI - limit their use and rely on their own brains at least some of the time. https://blogs.bu.edu/zagorsky/
@KerryMitchell @Gargron Saying that it's hard is not the same as saying that it's impossible.
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@Gargron ultimately LLMs like any other software is a tool. It's all about how a human uses them.
Lets take photoshop as an example. Humans generate vast amounts of garbage photoshopped images. Ever been to deviant art?
And yet the same tool is used by professionals all day every day to create stuff we like and enjoy.
The same applies to LLM use, and back to my first reply. What you lament is low quality output a human shared. Meanwhile the tool gets used masterfully to great effect elsewhere
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@Tekchip @Gargron The technology doesn't yet do much of what is claimed for it; and it is already expensive in terms of externalized costs: memory, energy, water. It really looks like the future of LLMs depends on mass acceptance of the "what-if" scenario - those hoped-for advances where it works better, uses less energy, and somehow doesn't wipe out thousands of middle- to low-level jobs.
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@Gargron But it seems that LLMs are here to stay. This time, it doesn't seem to be just a passing fad. There is a lot of investment involved.
@df @Gargron alright, well, let's review:
* literally no one likes it, not even the normies who do not care about any of the myriad ethical issues surrounding it
* a bunch of very rich people dropped an unprecedented amount of cash to make it happen and now, in their desperation for that investment to pay off, are trying VERY hard to gaslight people into thinking they like itsounds inevitable to me
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@Gargron is it art if a person uses words and an LLM to create and tweak an image until it's what they envisioned in their head?
Years ago I had a friend who insisted that those that used a computer (e.g. photoshop) to "draw" were not real artist and that it was letting the computer do the work. To him it wasn't art.
@benjaminmetzler @Gargron I don't know. Maybe. But even if that's possible (which I doubt) I don't know anyone who would spend enough money on credits to do it when they could be churning out random art pieces they think are pretty and not spending too long on each one.
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@cstross @Gargron I have a friend who worked for years as a translator (English to French) but in recent years he found that he was no longer being asked to translate but to "post-edit" machine translations. It was taking him just as long, paying him less, and destroying his soul.
He now works as a tour guide.
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Machine translations are often brought up as a gotcha whenever I criticize LLMs. It's worth pointing out two things: Machine translations existed decades before LLMs, and yes, machine translations are useful. However: I would never in my life read a machine translated book. Understanding what a social media post is talking about in rough terms? Sure. Literature? Absolutely not. Hell, have you ever seen machine translated subtitles? It's absolute garbage.
@Gargron I'm pretty sure J.R.R. Tolkien would view LLM's as an abomination
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Machine translations are often brought up as a gotcha whenever I criticize LLMs. It's worth pointing out two things: Machine translations existed decades before LLMs, and yes, machine translations are useful. However: I would never in my life read a machine translated book. Understanding what a social media post is talking about in rough terms? Sure. Literature? Absolutely not. Hell, have you ever seen machine translated subtitles? It's absolute garbage.
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@qgustavor @aeva @Gargron Netflix does proper translations to bigger languages? I've by far watched their Watership Down, and the Finnish translation in subtitles was just awful, characters' names kept changing between episodes and translator confused Holly with Vervain several times. Hadn't I known source material and kept English audio, it would have been really hard to follow. So I just thought any Netflix-translation must be taken with grain of salt...
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@Gargron But it seems that LLMs are here to stay. This time, it doesn't seem to be just a passing fad. There is a lot of investment involved.
