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As amusing as the Final Fantasy translation project is, it simply is not the right comparison. It's a case of using the wrong tool for the job. There are bette

As amusing as the Final Fantasy translation project is, it simply is not the right comparison. It's a case of using the wrong tool for the job. There are better systems for natural language translation that attempt to keep track of the subject, something that is very often implicit from context in Japanese. Additionally, that subject could be implicit based on the visuals of what is on screen. The enemy names are abbreviations due to artificial limits of the system... All in all, it's like using a hammer to drive a screw. It might sort of work, but you shouldn't be surprised when it fails. It's just a case of using the wrong tool for the job. That is hardly proof that Hammers are bad, or the screws can never be successfully inserted into a board.

cbanek 7y ago
Right, I get what you're saying about Japanese, I took a few years of Japanese in school, and it is a really interesting grammatical problem. (Which is why I love this example even more) If you read the released book about the project, one of the problems he brings up is that also the AI will pick words that start with the same letter as the first kana, seemingly at random, when it gets confused. While I don't disagree that using AI might not be the best tool for Japanese translation, or that there might be better specific Japanese translators that use AI, I think the idea that AI has "mastered translation" is honestly going a bit too far, which was the point I was attempting to make.