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Maybe you live in a monolinguistic bubble, or speak every language fluently, but when is the last time you hired a human being to translate a language you don't

Maybe you live in a monolinguistic bubble, or speak every language fluently, but when is the last time you hired a human being to translate a language you don't understand instead of using AI like Google Translate? AI is already so ubiquitous and useful that you blindly take it for granted without even thinking.

bannedbybros 3y ago
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bobthepanda 3y ago
Most companies will at least hire a human to check translation work, or at least contract one. Bad translations are something that can quickly destroy a brand in a market, and translation tools are not so fine grained to take into account dialect. Spanish, for example, has many examples of words that are innocuous in one dialect and profane in another.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  > Bad translations are something that can quickly destroy a brand in a market Bad translations are present in product names & descriptions of at least 70% of all products on Amazon and Ebay I've seen, and it doesn't look like it hurts the business in any way.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    Have you seen their sales revenues? Big difference between "buy this $5 plastic crap widget despite its product description being barely coherent because there's only so many seconds you're willing to spare searching for 'Plastic Crap Widget' because Familiar Tech Company's algorithm puts CBSPOO ahead of VRIENGLU in this particuar search parameter combo" and "hello professionals in niche market. You will recognise the name of our product whenever you next have $xx,xxx to spend on these services, because we were the one whose ad was inadvertently extremely sexist"
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I think that people who are fine with buying crappy products don't care about crappy translations. Others, however, do care. I, for one, will pass on something that has bad translation because I take that as a proxy for the quality of the product overall.
LordShredda 3y ago
Dealing with any international company requires having a translation office with a distinguishable stamp on every single letter. Might be slow, but they can be held accountable unlike your number soup AI
JohnFen 3y ago
> when is the last time you hired a human being to translate a language you don't understand instead of using AI like Google Translate? Last year, for an important letter that had to be written in Japanese, a language that I don't know. Using Google Translate for that was unthinkable, because Google Translate is pretty poor and I had no way of checking and correcting the translated text.

bannedbybros 3y ago

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bobthepanda 3y ago

Most companies will at least hire a human to check translation work, or at least contract one. Bad translations are something that can quickly destroy a brand in a market, and translation tools are not so fine grained to take into account dialect. Spanish, for example, has many examples of words that are innocuous in one dialect and profane in another.

alpaca128 3y ago
> Bad translations are something that can quickly destroy a brand in a market Bad translations are present in product names & descriptions of at least 70% of all products on Amazon and Ebay I've seen, and it doesn't look like it hurts the business in any way.
- notahacker 3y ago
  Have you seen their sales revenues? Big difference between "buy this $5 plastic crap widget despite its product description being barely coherent because there's only so many seconds you're willing to spare searching for 'Plastic Crap Widget' because Familiar Tech Company's algorithm puts CBSPOO ahead of VRIENGLU in this particuar search parameter combo" and "hello professionals in niche market. You will recognise the name of our product whenever you next have $xx,xxx to spend on these services, because we were the one whose ad was inadvertently extremely sexist"
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I think that people who are fine with buying crappy products don't care about crappy translations. Others, however, do care. I, for one, will pass on something that has bad translation because I take that as a proxy for the quality of the product overall.

LordShredda 3y ago

Dealing with any international company requires having a translation office with a distinguishable stamp on every single letter. Might be slow, but they can be held accountable unlike your number soup AI

JohnFen 3y ago

> when is the last time you hired a human being to translate a language you don't understand instead of using AI like Google Translate? Last year, for an important letter that had to be written in Japanese, a language that I don't know. Using Google Translate for that was unthinkable, because Google Translate is pretty poor and I had no way of checking and correcting the translated text.