Eugen RochkoMachine 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.
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.
aeva@Gargron I think anglophones experience start difference between good and bad translations more often through video games
Gustavo
Leea@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...