Dutch Publisher's AI Translation Plan Sparks Industry Backlash (theguardian.com) 38
Dutch publisher Veen Bosch & Keuning has announced plans to use AI for translating commercial fiction, drawing sharp criticism from literary professionals despite promises of human oversight and author consent.
Award-winning translator Michele Hutchison, who won the 2020 International Booker Prize, argues that translation extends beyond word conversion. "We build bridges between cultures, taking into account the target readership every step of the way," she said, noting that translators convey rhythm, poetry, and cultural nuances while conducting precise terminology research.
Award-winning translator Michele Hutchison, who won the 2020 International Booker Prize, argues that translation extends beyond word conversion. "We build bridges between cultures, taking into account the target readership every step of the way," she said, noting that translators convey rhythm, poetry, and cultural nuances while conducting precise terminology research.
"... convey rhythm, poetry, and cultural nuances" (Score:2)
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It does it quite well already. Not great, but enough for a lot of horrible, utterly incomprehensible Engrish in indie Japanese games being sold on Steam becoming actually comprehensible and even readable recently.
It seems to be the new "translator memory" level of breakthrough. For those not in the know, "translator memory" became a thing in 2000s, when instead of translating everything by hand, you would use translation software that would over time record your translations, and then look for similar phras
Translation can be an art (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking up words in a dictionary, looking up syntax in a style guide, are fine for translating grocery lists and simple news stories.
But once you hit more nuanced work (novels, poetry, etc.), translation can be a real art. I watch a fair bit of German-language television, though I'm a native-English speaker. And it's always interesting to hear what is said, then look at the subtitles. You get a feel for how a language is evolving.
Translation involves making choices about both the literal and implied meanings of words, grammar, syntax. It can even require a knowledge of the social, economic and cultural environment that the work was written in.
I have trouble believing that AI can interpret nuanced meanings. Humans need years of experience to convey meaning accurately.
Re: Translation can be an art (Score:1)
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AI is way better than humans at noticing nuance when it comes to a large body of text. Human vigilance is fleeting, machine endures.
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It can also be very culture specific. Imagine what most Brits think when they hear "biscuits and sausage gravy" vs. your typical American (especially if in the south) - and that isn't even changing languages....
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It can also be very culture specific. Imagine what most Brits think when they hear "biscuits and sausage gravy" vs. your typical American (especially if in the south) - and that isn't even changing languages....
That's just a ridiculous example. If you're reading a story or article from a different culture, it's up to you to learn the nuances of that culture, not to have the story pause and give a paragraph or two explanation of what the hell it's talking about. Or do you want Shakespeare "translated" into modern English (Be it British English or American English) just so you can understand what's going on.
I'm all for modernization, and this is one area where AI can shine. Keeping humans doing jobs that can easi
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Except some human translations are fucking atrocious. Or just mediocre.
Stop pretending humans are some exalted perfect being exhibiting perfect levels of performance. Most humans are just trying to do just about enough to not get fired and go home at 17:00.
Yes, some human translators will outperform LLMs, but I'm pretty confident that LLMs outperform most human translators in all the areas you mention. Don't forget that translations is the domain LLMs evolved for. It's the main fucking thing the transformer
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Except some human translations are fucking atrocious. Or just mediocre.
While that may be the case all AI / machine translations are fucking atrocious. Humans aren't perfect by any means, but that doesn't mean even people who aren't good at this can't do it orders of magnitude better than a computer.
Yes, some human translators will outperform LLMs, but I'm pretty confident that LLMs outperform most human translators in all the areas you mention.
And you'd be confidently incorrect. Especially as LLMs have a tendency to make up meanings from the translation. We use a professional translation service for work and one of their price tiers is currently an AI LLM translation. We got back translation of a document that said *exact
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Your wife's job is clearly a source of bias here. Your counterpoints are 2 anecdotes. Of very high level translations.
Note also that the second anecdote requires 2 humans working together to achieve a desirable result.
I've seen such shitty translations from Humans... (Score:1)
that an AI can not do worse.
And I'n not talking crap from Unknown authors, I am talking about the complete works of H.P. Lovecraft, and computer and math texts from reputable editorials.
I know is little consolation, but trust me, things will not get worse than what they already are...
Why the backlash? (Score:3)
Dutch Publisher's AI Translation Plan Sparks Industry Backlash
Why the backlash? If AI translations are indeed as good or even better than the work is in its original language without any need for human editing (not holding my breath) then human translators simply need to find a new line of work. If the translations need a significant amount of human editing, this publisher will either have wasted a lot of money to learn that lesson or go bankrupt.
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Backlash comes from the fact that this will very likely put most translators out of a job. You can already see this starting to happen for things like indie games sold on steam. Before they would grab one of the translators from fiver, or have to do with utterly incomprehensible Engrish. Nowadays ChatGPT 4 translations are good enough to be decently comprehensible, being close to being on par with fiver grade translators.
And it's getting better rapidly, as ChatGPT3 translations were only marginally better t
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Backlash comes from the fact that this will very likely put most translators out of a job.
Wanna back that authoritative assertion up with some real world data? Because if things like Google Translate are anything to go by combined with the fact that these AIs are known to make shit up by I'm going to remain unconvinced that all human translators and editors are going to be made redundant. This stuff may be used to translate mundane text like instructions for household appliances but works of literature as well as texts that can expose you to major lawsuits if the translating AI makes shit up and
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Sure. Go look at your favorite Japanese indie store for Japanese indie games in English.
It used to have basically three separate kinds of games. First, where there's someone who's American Japanese who did English version (very rare). Second, someone from fiver translated it, understandable but loses a lot of fine parts. Third, machine translated incomprehensible gibberish.
to
Now, we have two. First category, which is about the same as before. Second category which is quality wise almost on part because they
Re: Why the backlash? (Score:2)
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You are referencing a private lawsuit against a software company for what is essentially claimed to be a mismanaged product. That is neither here nor there.
As for translating in Canada, I recall at least one power plant translation related case (European French to Canadian French and Canadian English iirc) where translator decided to localize instead. They ended up ripping out a lot of stuff because either welds or bolts used were of incorrect grade as a result.
Re: Why the backlash? (Score:1)
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I am trying to find anywhere in my post where I talked about private company, and I cannot locate it. Please help me.
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Big criticism of this idea is coming from the authors themselves, not just translators. No author wants a shitty translation of their work. In the past shitty translations have meant poor sales, even poorer sales of other works of theirs that were translated well. Enough so that very often when there are two different translators for a book, the fans know which translator is good and which to avoid.
Case in point, comedy translates very badly. You need an expert for translated a humourous novel or it fal
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On the other end of it, humor is highly formulaic, which is why when you understand the formula, you can make a lot of comedy (hence existence the likes of Scott Adams who could have a new funny comic on workplace every day for decades).
And LLMs are very, VERY good at formulaic things. You just need to distill the formula for them.
I'm an anime fan (Score:1)
I can't even imagine trying to use LLMs to translate a book in the state that they are in now. If I was a author I would be appalled at the prospect and the only authors I could see allowing it are ones with extremely bad con
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If AI translations are indeed as good
They aren't. That's the fundamental problem. AI is a step up from what they had but a big step down in cost of doing a proper translation. The result is a cost cutting exercise that results in a significant degradation in the quality of texts.
This is McDonalds, a cheap burger that technically provides nutrition, but that doesn't mean every food company should be striving to achieve that level of quality. All that happens is that food for everyone starts tasting worse.
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Dutch Publisher's AI Translation Plan Sparks Industry Backlash
Why the backlash? If AI translations are indeed as good or even better than the work is in its original language without any need for human editing (not holding my breath) then human translators simply need to find a new line of work. If the translations need a significant amount of human editing, this publisher will either have wasted a lot of money to learn that lesson or go bankrupt.
If my employer were going to waste a lot of money on a stupid idea that might make them go bankrupt, I'd probably try to persuade them not to do the stupid thing—not least because my employer going bankrupt would be pretty inconvenient for me. Someone might call that a "backlash" :-)
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I think you're missing the third (and, in my mind, most likely) outcome: the translation is piss poor, and really ought to have a lot of hu
Translate Terry Pratchett (Score:3)
I have never read a Terry Pratchett book (heresy, I know), but I recently came across a blurb talking about breaking rules of language. The example given was the response from one of his characters:
!
To which someone in the comments asked if you could do that, which of course you could (if you're Terry Pratchett).
I defy a LLM to translate that response other than saying, "Exclamation point".
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There have been academic papers written about the difficulty of translation Pratchett to non English audiences. Even translating for Americans is a challenge!
As someone who did paid translation in his youth (Score:4, Interesting)
Fuck no. Absolutely not. We do NOT "We build bridges between cultures, taking into account the target readership every step of the way".
This sounds like "localizer" shit. The kind that wrecked quite a few good anime shows and Japanese game translations recently. Where they inject "Western sensibilities and buzz words" into it and think it makes it better.
It makes it strictly worse. In fact, doing this shit is exactly what they warn you against when they teach you how to do translations. You entire duty as a translator is to convey the original message as accurately as possible, with as little changes as possible.
I still remember minor "localizations" they gave us as examples for technical documents. Like "let's translate things to local measurement systems". And then it results in massive losses because there's an actual standard involved, and your "localization" caused a misunderstanding on what kind of screws were supposed to be used, or what kind of weld grade was supposed to be used, etc. Do not fucking localize. Translate only. That's your job.
I would argue the desperate need of translators to try to become "localizers" without informing clients properly about the damage this will cause to the material's accuracy is in a large part behind the move to translate using AI.
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You're completely ignorant what is being discussed here, especially when you compare it to anime. Anime is not long form text. The localization being talked about being bridged here is not the rubbish westernisation of anime (which is a very real problem, I agree with you, especially since it destroys the context of the Japanese culture of anime). It's a case of having to understand local context of language in order to translate it. Even translating British to 'Murikan can be a problem here.
Let's table thi
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And you missed the final portion of his message where he describes issues surrounding a translated maintenance manual.
His upset is at the possibility of them having the AI make the translation more local to the target language rather than using the exact translation (tweaked, of course to read grammatically in the target language). He objects to any cultural changes to make the content closer to that of the target culture, which is fucking stupid, since that's why people want the original translated: To vie
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Reminds me of Dharma Bums (Kerouac) (Score:3)
I wouldn't trust AI to understand the true nuance - not yet anyway - it reminded me of this passage in Dharma Bums (full text online) [avalonlibrary.net]
"One night I explained the little bit I knew about haikus to Alvah Goldbook in the big kitchen of the shack...
'A real haiku's gotta be as simple as porridge and yet make you see the real thing.' ‘Here’s the most famous haiku of them all, written by Bash the Great Japanese poet two hundred and fifty years ago:
Furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto.
Which does not mean, as most people think, "The old pond, a frog jumps in, kerplunk!" but means "The old pond, a frog jumps in, the sound of water."
You see the difference? In English we’d say "the splash of water" just to make it sound better but in Japanese it’s just ‘the sound of water.’ A frog jumps in, splash.
It’s pretty simple to our way of thinking. In other words, haiku doesn’t have to explain everything, only imply it. The haiku was invented to give you a sudden sensation, a feeling of understanding of something there, a rush of feeling.
We have some silly plans for that in the UK (Score:2)
After our conservatives were very strongly rejected at our recent election they have been getting nuttier and crazier.
One of the biggest failures was their default loathing of healthcare. They keep coming up with ideas to damage it. They have driven our healthcare up to nearly half what is spent per person in the USA!
One of their latest bright ideas is to use IT to translate the many languages patients need. If you have ever used Google Translate you will not be too keen to trust it with your life. If
When you are bi-lingual you DON'T translate jokes (Score:3)
It almost never works and people end up with a question mark on their face
Translations of anything more complicated than a todo list is hard.
When you hear a bad translation it stinks from a mile away!
Translation as Art (Score:2)
There are multiple translations of the bible, epic greek poems, Kamasutra etc. If you have read different translations, each one is its own art form. An AI version of the Iliad may misfire, but I would actually be curious to read an AI translation of the bible.
On the other hand, there are a whole lot of translations that lack any real need for artistry and an AI version would probably be as good or better than a human one.
As a translator and fiction lover.. (Score:2)
Okay I can come down on both sides of this thing. I have done a lot of professional translation, including patents, biotech, automotive engineering, and a good deal of manga. Though I am not doing it anymore. I wouldn't trust an LLM. That said, I would be willing to use it as one of my tools to see how something should be translated. There are sites that provide sentences from some corpus and it can help.
The thing is, good translations cost money unless it is a labor of love. A translation company typically
Beautiful sentences or beautiful stories? (Score:1)