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I blame it on machine translation. DeepL, for example, fails hilariously with certain inputs. I once got it to mistranslate things like these: - "孔明" (Kongmin

by k_sze 4y ago

I blame it on machine translation. DeepL, for example, fails hilariously with certain inputs. I once got it to mistranslate things like these: - "孔明" (Kongming, the genius strategist/statesman from China's Three Kingdoms period) got translated as "Confucius" - "chage and aska" (a Japanese pop music duo) got translated as "曹操" (Cao Cao, founder of the Wei state during China's Three Kingdoms period) or even "ちんちん" (literally "penis" in Japanese)

plonk 4y ago
> "孔明" (Kongming, the genius strategist/statesman from China's Three Kingdoms period) got translated as "Confucius" AI finally reached the level of a lazy high school history student who didn't study enough.
oefrha 4y ago
Google Translate once translated 万 (ten thousand in Chinese) to “million” for me. I was shocked it could make such a basic mistake. It wasn’t even that long ago, maybe 2018? Machine translation has a loooong way to go.
- JPLeRouzic 4y ago
  Not so bad for a machine, I once met a French Telco guy in charge of buying/selling minutes at a large operator who thought that "billion" meant "two million"
  - paradite 4y ago
    i remember reading something similar (unit conversion) on HN. Maybe someone can link.
  - rypskar 4y ago
    Maybe because France use the long scale, so a billion is a million millions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale#French-speaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale#French-sp...
    - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
      Same in Norway. I'm from the US and the large numbers always take some thought. I didn't realize that I'd have to relearn counting when moving here, but honestly it is easier than trying to relate the time of day.
    - JasonFruit 4y ago
      The fact that international confusion over billions doesn't arise more often points out how bad people are at thinking about large numbers. We mostly don't notice the difference between a billion and a trillion.
- eunos 4y ago
  IIRC even this error seeps into a publication made by the GOP. Something about HVAC system in Wuhan.
- transthrowawayy 4y ago
  It was like that in 2020 as well -- I remember being really confused trying to see how many views a Daoko video on billibilli had. IIRC at that point it would translate e.g. "23 万" correctly, but 23万 would go to 23 million. I tried reporting the error, no idea if they actually pay attention to those! > Machine translation has a loooong way to go. Since large numbers on e.g. streaming sites are often reported in multiples of 万 in Chinese, but a million in English, I did wonder if the machine "learned" that they were equivalent.

by k_sze 4y ago

plonk 4y ago

> "孔明" (Kongming, the genius strategist/statesman from China's Three Kingdoms period) got translated as "Confucius" AI finally reached the level of a lazy high school history student who didn't study enough.

oefrha 4y ago

Google Translate once translated 万 (ten thousand in Chinese) to “million” for me. I was shocked it could make such a basic mistake. It wasn’t even that long ago, maybe 2018? Machine translation has a loooong way to go.

JPLeRouzic 4y ago
Not so bad for a machine, I once met a French Telco guy in charge of buying/selling minutes at a large operator who thought that "billion" meant "two million"
- paradite 4y ago
  i remember reading something similar (unit conversion) on HN. Maybe someone can link.
- rypskar 4y ago
  Maybe because France use the long scale, so a billion is a million millions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale#French-speaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scale#French-sp...
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    Same in Norway. I'm from the US and the large numbers always take some thought. I didn't realize that I'd have to relearn counting when moving here, but honestly it is easier than trying to relate the time of day.
  - JasonFruit 4y ago
    The fact that international confusion over billions doesn't arise more often points out how bad people are at thinking about large numbers. We mostly don't notice the difference between a billion and a trillion.
eunos 4y ago
IIRC even this error seeps into a publication made by the GOP. Something about HVAC system in Wuhan.
transthrowawayy 4y ago
It was like that in 2020 as well -- I remember being really confused trying to see how many views a Daoko video on billibilli had. IIRC at that point it would translate e.g. "23 万" correctly, but 23万 would go to 23 million. I tried reporting the error, no idea if they actually pay attention to those! > Machine translation has a loooong way to go. Since large numbers on e.g. streaming sites are often reported in multiples of 万 in Chinese, but a million in English, I did wonder if the machine "learned" that they were equivalent.