Mastodawn

This worries me:

CNN translates politicians using AI.

In this clip, Macron is speaking French, but if you do not speak French, YouTube will switch the sound to an AI voice which sounds a bit like Macron.

So now, when an American politician is listening to the President of France, he is no longer hearing what a real, human translator KNOWS Macron is saying. He is hearing what AI GUESSES Macron is saying.

What happens, if AI gets it wrong?

https://youtube.com/shorts/ps6lQxqOq5w?si=DxmFRNqHdnMWDEn1

'This is not a show': Macron criticizes Trump for Iran war and NATO comments

YouTube

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gnaddrig 1d ago

@randahl
The question is not "if" but "how often" and "how bad". If my experience with state-of-the-art machine translation is anything to go by, there'll be enough mistranslations to cause a few adrenaline bursts in foreign ministries and presidential administrations.

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Khleedril

@gnaddrig @randahl Not only that, but incorrect inflexions can change the meaning of messages, turning questions into statements for example. I'm not sure many American politicians are smart enough to understand that they will need to separate the meaning of the message away from its verbal delivery.

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gnaddrig 1d ago

@khleedril @randahl
Absolutely. I translate technical texts, there is essentially just one register and nothing between the lines, but every now and then the machine pretranslation gets the facts wrong, sometimes dramatically so. Political speech is much harder to translate, and the stakes can be enormous, so this is not a good idea at all.