| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Faulty machine translations litter the web Thread poster: philgoddard
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| | Jean Lachaud 
United States
Local time: 16:43
English to French
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| Now there's a scoop! | Jan 25 |
!
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:43
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| | A very big (and dark) village | Jan 25 |
"Mordor, a fictional village in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings"
I never understood Mordor was a village and always thought of it as a kind of country.
Seems like the article was generated by AI as well. Imagine it making a study about how weak its own texts are, flooding the poor Internet. Then one day we find out the AI commited suicide. It could not live with itself after producing all that badly written stuff.
[Редактировалось 2024-01-25 16:11 GMT]
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MollyRose
United States
Local time: 15:43
English to Spanish
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| AI hallucinations and shame | Jan 25 |
The article mentions AI hallucination (an interesting word to use in this context). Unfortunately, it doesn't have, and never will have, any sense of morality or remorse, so it can't ever right any wrongs.
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"The low quality of these … translations indicates they were likely created using machine translation," the authors report.
Is this really a valid inference? Were there no bad translations on the web before the advent of MT?
I remember reading about examples of amusingly bad translation long before the internet. One was the interpreter who mistranslated some banal remark by then US President Jimmy Carter on a visit to Poland, saying that he had "... come to Poland, never to return."
I think human beings are probably quite capable of producing bad translations without any help from computers.
In any case, if the internet is getting flooded with bad translations that are messing up the training of AI bots, isn't that good news for us?
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 22:43
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
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Philip Lees wrote:
I think human beings are probably quite capable of producing bad translations without any help from computers.
I would even dare to say that AI and MT are a (for some probably a welcome) distraction from the reality that a lot of translators aren't capable of delivering high-quality translations.
That's what you get if an industry welcomes every hat-wearing monkey without any specific linguistic talent to join.
| | | | Peter Motte
Belgium
Local time: 22:43
Member (2009)
English to Dutch
+ ...
Philip Lees wrote:
"The low quality of these … translations indicates they were likely created using machine translation," the authors report.
Is this really a valid inference? Were there no bad translations on the web before the advent of MT?
Yes, of course. I even know a comic books forum which calls itself "De getekende reep" because in the beginning "bande dessinée" was wrongly literally translated as "getekende reep" instead of "stripverhaal" or "strip" or "beeldverhaal" on a website.
But the problem mentioned by the authors in that article is that LLM's are partly based on wrong translations on the internet, and as the internet gets and is flooded by bad translations by machines since some years now, that will impact the quality of the AI translations.
Actually, the same happened with Google Translate before. Alphabet thought the quality of the GT translations would improve over time, but the opposite happened: they got worse.
Moreover, the ease with which e.g. ChapGPT produces texts, will increase the amount of machine generated texts and translations enormously. AI training will become like a snake biting its own tail.
[Edited at 2024-01-26 11:58 GMT]
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Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:43
Serbian to English
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| Machines mimicking humans, nothing more. | Jan 26 |
Bad translations / texts full of "hallucinations" do not need MT, some humans are quite good at it even without any MT/AI help.
Even before the MT and AI "... (insert your preferred marketing BS buzzword)", the Web was already littered with "sources of information" that are, let's say, sub-optimal. Whole websites full of "content" rehashed from other websites, themselves rehashed from other websites, themselves rehashed from ... And the start of this chain was often a biased source,... See more Bad translations / texts full of "hallucinations" do not need MT, some humans are quite good at it even without any MT/AI help.
Even before the MT and AI "... (insert your preferred marketing BS buzzword)", the Web was already littered with "sources of information" that are, let's say, sub-optimal. Whole websites full of "content" rehashed from other websites, themselves rehashed from other websites, themselves rehashed from ... And the start of this chain was often a biased source, biased in one direction or another, just to make it more interesting. Who ever said you'll get reliable/useful information served on a plate?
The "progress" brought by MT and AI was in this pollution being now enhanced, i.e. automated ...
Old news, but still not good news. Will keep getting worst before it gets better? Maybe. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Gregory Thomas (X)
United States
Local time: 15:43
Member (2023)
English to Greek
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| These translations will never be "Paid projects" anyway... | Jan 26 |
Nobody would have paid any translator to do them. The only reason someone "AIed" them, is that it's free.
Same reason social media is so popular - it's free.
Ask any shop owner who AIed his webpage - they'll tell you "sorry, we are not interested in translating our web site, we only AIed it because it was free...".
Among the limited translations to be produced for a fee, a 5000 word project used to be $600 for the translator 20 years ago, then it became $400 because age... See more Nobody would have paid any translator to do them. The only reason someone "AIed" them, is that it's free.
Same reason social media is so popular - it's free.
Ask any shop owner who AIed his webpage - they'll tell you "sorry, we are not interested in translating our web site, we only AIed it because it was free...".
Among the limited translations to be produced for a fee, a 5000 word project used to be $600 for the translator 20 years ago, then it became $400 because agencies utilized fuzzy counts, now you're lucky if you're paid $180. I've seen projects on PM screens offered at 1.5 cents/word PMTE to 18 supposedly "selective and highly paid" translators (according to their proz profiles), and they all claim availability and acceptance within seconds or minutes. From the perspective of the project manager, it looks like famished children near a UN truck.
The problem for us is not "AI". The problem is traditional MT and how quickly it became so good. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Quentin NEVEN
Belgium
Local time: 22:43
Member (Jan 2024)
English to French
+ ...
It's funny, when I was a student, I always assumed I would have to compete with more experienced translators in my fields, not machines...
| | | | Gregory Thomas (X)
United States
Local time: 15:43
Member (2023)
English to Greek
+ ...
| You're not competing with the Machine | Jan 26 |
I always assumed I would have to compete with more experienced translators in my fields, not machines...
You're not competing with the machine, the machine (MT) already took its share before the project reached you. You are competing with other translators. Good news is that in your language pair most translators live in expensive countries, and the volume is large, thus the overall rate is almost never pushed too low.
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Peter Motte wrote:
But the problem mentioned by the authors in that article is that LLM's are partly based on wrong translations on the internet, and as the internet gets and is flooded by bad translations by machines since some years now, that will impact the quality of the AI translations.
I can see how that would be a problem for people or organisations that would like to see AI replace human translators altogether.
But we don't belong to that group, do we? So for us, it's not a problem. In fact, it's the opposite.
I suppose that in some areas where bad translation has been accepted as the norm for a long time now, regardless of AI - e.g. restaurant menus - it's just going to cement that perception. But is there really a risk of that acceptance spilling over into other, previously uncontaminated areas?
Maybe, as part of the general race to the bottom on the part of translation agencies.
| | | | Peter Motte
Belgium
Local time: 22:43
Member (2009)
English to Dutch
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Lefteris Kritikakis wrote:
I always assumed I would have to compete with more experienced translators in my fields, not machines...
You're not competing with the machine, the machine (MT) already took its share before the project reached you.
That's false perspective.
No machine translations, more to translate for the translator.
| | | | Jeff Whittaker
United States
Local time: 16:43
Spanish to English
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