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.
Vile Lasagna@Gargron Back in my pretentious high schooler days I read Dante's Comedy and, don't know where from, the version I found was one that was like... fully translated as poetry, like in the Italian* original, going as far as trying to replicate the rhyme structure
No computer's ever going to pull off anything even remotely that mad
maco@VileLasagna @Gargron oh that’s probably John Ciardi’s translation
K M Lawrence@maco @VileLasagna @Gargron oh, I would have assumed the Dorothy L Sayers translation. Good lord, are there two rhyming translations into English?
arrbee@kludgekml @maco @VileLasagna @Gargron
I think are quite a few such translations ( even Clive James had a go ! ), but afaik none that attempt to replicate the same rhyming scheme Dante used - which may well be impossible in English.
I think are quite a few such translations ( even Clive James had a go ! ), but afaik none that attempt to replicate the same rhyming scheme Dante used - which may well be impossible in English.