Machine translations are often brought up as a gotcha whenever I criticize LLMs.
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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 circa 2000 I came to the conclusion to consider translated textbooks only when the translators name was mentioned on the title.
This came after the worst translation ever, that translated SQL commands in sample code
And back then it was all human, went downhill recently (though machines are useful for small snippets)
Never regretted this decision.
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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 safety of food ingredient translations went down like a rock when machine translation went over to llm. It's equally plausible for an ingredients list to contain or not contain an allergen, but only one is true.
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@Gargron
And on the other hand, Maths people have always been saying stay the hell away from it!
https://dotnet.social/@SmartmanApps/116000100388648367@SmartmanApps @Gargron unfortunately, not all of them.
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@VileLasagna @Gargron oh that’s probably John Ciardi’s translation
@maco @VileLasagna @Gargron oh, I would have assumed the Dorothy L Sayers translation. Good lord, are there two rhyming translations into English?
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@kevin @df @Gargron small models are well and good and hopefully will be focused on actually useful things, as I'm personally still not convinced that LLMs are really that useful at all, and are taking winds out of the sail out of other AI avenues that have been very useful, things that we would classify as machine learning.
But if we want general models... those might just take too many resources to build and I honestly think society will be better off with no new ones of those anyway, while letting stuff like ollama collect enough bitrot that it loses most of its damaging potential.
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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 this!!
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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.
That is absolutely correct if one refers to the essence of art.
Yet I would distinguish between art itself and the functional quality of artistic work: i.e. creative work in the service of capitalism. I believe this is where the displacement has already happened and continues to unfold.
Unfortunately, this kind of creative work puts food on the table for many artists and often enables the creation of art.
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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 I completely agree with you on this—this lack of understanding is so bad. -
human, is fine. perfection is a scam sold by ponzi schemers who have no useful skill. second sons of the british empire looking for some purpose that makes daddy approve of their existence.
maybe... just maybe... talk to a human and ask them how you can help them, with your actual meat space body. then maybe you could find some meaning in life instead of trying to get techbros to think you are pretty.
There's also the problem of your essentialist thinking that decides only terrible human beings could find any value in LLMs, because use of LLMs is proof of same. QED. It's like thinking poor people must be morally bankrupt. It's a non-sequitur.
Anti-LLM posts quickly turns to deep pronouncements about the personality and motives of people who do things you don't like, not an honest discussion of the harms of the tech, because it's a purity test, not a position.
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That is absolutely correct if one refers to the essence of art.
Yet I would distinguish between art itself and the functional quality of artistic work: i.e. creative work in the service of capitalism. I believe this is where the displacement has already happened and continues to unfold.
Unfortunately, this kind of creative work puts food on the table for many artists and often enables the creation of art.
@AwetTesfaiesus Mixing something together from old content and then talking about intelligence—that's just nonsense. @Gargron -
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.
I think the biggest difference is in the rate of change. At every step people are making eternal pronouncements of what LLMs can and can't do when it's a moving target.
I agree with you 100% about translation, it's an art. It's a great example. You can't simply replace one human translator with another, let alone a machine.
The difference is I would add "yet". Looking at the arc of LLMs over less than ten years, it doesn't seem an impossibility to me, it seems a likelihood.
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@khleedril it's not. But it seems it is a little worse for having you. And you missed the message of my post.
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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 arent the subtitles so bad because the audio is translated … so understanding words in an audio recording is the problem?
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imagine for a moment, the billionaires have been beheaded and the yachts sunk into the sea. the value in the output of workers 100% reinvested into local communities. all of it. none for colonial masters far away. the 20 hour work weeks and all human workers hands full of the satisfaction their efforts are meaningful... no more busy work for shareholders to skim value out of. only meaningful work. custom artisanal everything. housewares repaired by local handicrafters. clothes sewn and tailored to each body. homes and townhomes and communal living spaces built and maintained by cooperative owners. neighboring towns and regions and nations translating with loving care between the communities of meaning... interconnected with care.
And that lasts 1-2 generations before new people who don't understand the problems that lead their parents to create the paradise chafe under their constraints and begin changing the system to something its originators wouldn't like, this creating conflict, diversity of thought, and continuing the cycle of history.
See: reality.
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@cwdolunt I do not appreciate being thrown quotes at. If you want to say something say it directly, in your words.
That said, I was not suggesting that corporations have divine power. I was saying that expecting something that happened 50 years ago (banning of asbestos) to happen today is ignoring the change of the world in the meantime.
Back then, you could fight asbestos. Now you need to fight capitalism.
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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
But I'm sure we'll be seeing books written by LLMs translated to all the different languages - by LLMs.Oh, and then you won't even have to read the LLM translated LLM written book, because you can just ask an LLM to summarize it for you.
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@Gargron I'm willing to guess that machine translation of prose may serve two uses: firstly, as an assist for human translators (by preparing a very rough first cut, which they then have to refine), and secondly, as an assist for human editors in figuring out which foreign-language-works to pay a human translator (with or without AI assistance) to work on (translation costs money: knowing where to spend it is important). But those are assistive roles, not human-replacing ones.
I sometimes translate text (bilingual German-English). And I have edited a machine-translated book, and let me tell you it does NOT save time.
I basically had to go back and rewrite almost every sentence. It was so bad the publisher actually put me on the cover as translator.
DeepL is good for short non-fiction stuff, and even that needs to be polished if you want to use it for anything serious.
Do not rely on anything AI. Never.
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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.
I'm seeing more and more "translations" that are just run through machines (DeepL etc.). Even reading the descriptions for those books (some of which are favorite comfort books) in "German" makes me shudder.
It's not German. It's basically English dressed up as German.
Those "translations" are a rip-off for everyone involved except the agencies doing the "translations".
I've refused to read translations for years, but they are now becoming completely unreadable.
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Technology is not inevitable. We've decided not to have asbestos in our walls, lead in our pipes, or carginogenic chemicals in our food. (If you're going to argue that it's not everywhere, where would you rather live?) We could just not do LLMs. It's allowed.
@Gargron Much like lead, it makes people dumber. Which might be what certain people want.
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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
The things is that only people who speak the translated language sufficiently well, can assess the validity of the translation. So in specialist's hands the machine translation has some value. Still a nogo for literature.
Edit: typos
