5 ms·

Gizmodo fires Spanish staff amid switch to AI translator

58 points by stalfosknight 3y ago

throwaway888abc 3y ago
You can't stop evolution ?
- Whatever13 3y ago
  we could have a social system to reduce or even eliminate the human suffering it causes, but i guess the powerful prefer to repeat the 19th century process of steam engines basically eliminating the previous middle class of artisans into poverty. It is also getting hard to preview what is not going to be automated in the middle or beginning of a career... PS: Not to mention, Gizmodo also cut ORIGINAL spanish language journalism, when at least this part still would add value alongside the translated articles. Maybe they really don't care about the spanish speakers.
- lostgame 3y ago
  I say this to all the artists who attack the very existence of AI. The cat's out of the bag already, we're either going to move with the times or they will keep moving without us, as they always have.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - JambalayaJim 3y ago
    Why should AI artists be content with having their work stolen from them? It would be one thing if they simply got out-competed; but AI necessarily involves stealing their labour to get there! Some “AI artists” even specify the name of a real life artist in their prompts.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Your post evokes imagery of this [1] video (Pearl Jam - Do the Evolution). [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI
crop_rotation 3y ago
Having seen GPT4 translation quality, it translates to and from english better than me in a language I am very fluent in. So unfortunately translation jobs are mostly going away. The problem is that this is all going to be very sudden. And people working these industries just don't have any time at all to prepare.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Definitely not my experience or other people I know who use it, at least for Mandarin / Japanese. Also doesn't seem to preserve a writing style, which is important for branding / marketing.
  - WiSaGaN 3y ago
    In my experience, GPT-4's Chinese-to-English translation is the best I've seen, easily surpassing Deepl and Google Translate. However, its English-to-Chinese translation performs at a level similar to Deepl.
- famouswaffles 3y ago
  Yup. For a couple dozen languages, GPT-4 is by far the best translator you can get your hands on (better than deepl, google, papago etc). also current MT benchmarks are completely broken for whatever reason (benchmark itself and/or evaluation model ). They don't reflect reality at all.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >For a couple dozen languages, GPT-4 is by far the best translator you can get your hands on (better than deepl, google, papago etc). Yeah, I have no idea how the likes of DeepL and other paid-for translators are going to survive long term when "GPT-4 and friends" are that good. What's their business plan? DeppL tried to compensate by making their front-end more annoying and hijacking clicks and highlights which invalidate the browser spell checker, making it impossible to correct a word via click, which I guess is one way of expediting their demise. The sad part is, in my small town there's the office of another small ML driven translation start-up that was way better than Google when it launched a few years ago, but now when I check their careers page, they're not hiring anymore which I guess says enough about their business and future growth plans. Dead man walking.
mortureb 3y ago
Sad, working as a translator many years ago was a job I found easy, relaxing and pressure free.
Moldoteck 3y ago
Imo at least translators of documents will not be affected in near future
- tommek4077 3y ago
  Because no one uses a scanner? Or how did you come to this conclusion? Or do you mean official verified and stamped translations?
  - jacooper 3y ago
    Probably the latter.
keiferski 3y ago
GPT gets basic things wrong frequently. This is merely a bloated media site looking to cut down on staff while blaming “technology.” Translation as a field is going nowhere; most likely, translators will be the primary users of ChatGPT in translation work, as it is useful for an initial rough draft.
- esperent 3y ago
  I've used GPT-4 extensively for translation to Vietnamese and it's _incredible_. It's the one use case where, after my wonderment wore off, I'm still consistently amazed. Vietnamese is extremely difficult to translate to and from English - every other system I've used sucks badly. It doesn't give us a rough first draft. It gives us the equivalent of a second or third draft. The equivalent to the final result we'd get back from translators after a lot more back and forth. Honestly, it's better or equivalent to any human service I've used. Usually when it translates badly, a human would also translate badly and it means that section needs rewriting. It handles all kinds of things that I wouldn't expect, idioms, jokes, technical writing. There are very few mistakes. I can only imagine it's even better at Spanish. We don't pay for human translation anymore. The workload is reduced enough that we do the final editing ourselves. We still use human translation for legal stuff because that has to be done by an official translator. So I guess that's safe.
happytiger 3y ago
If your argument is that it sucks, realize it’s progress will be inconceivable to your monkey brain.

58 points by stalfosknight 3y ago

throwaway888abc 3y ago

You can't stop evolution ?

Whatever13 3y ago
we could have a social system to reduce or even eliminate the human suffering it causes, but i guess the powerful prefer to repeat the 19th century process of steam engines basically eliminating the previous middle class of artisans into poverty. It is also getting hard to preview what is not going to be automated in the middle or beginning of a career... PS: Not to mention, Gizmodo also cut ORIGINAL spanish language journalism, when at least this part still would add value alongside the translated articles. Maybe they really don't care about the spanish speakers.
lostgame 3y ago
I say this to all the artists who attack the very existence of AI. The cat's out of the bag already, we're either going to move with the times or they will keep moving without us, as they always have.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- JambalayaJim 3y ago
  Why should AI artists be content with having their work stolen from them? It would be one thing if they simply got out-competed; but AI necessarily involves stealing their labour to get there! Some “AI artists” even specify the name of a real life artist in their prompts.
somenameforme 3y ago
Your post evokes imagery of this [1] video (Pearl Jam - Do the Evolution). [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI

crop_rotation 3y ago

Having seen GPT4 translation quality, it translates to and from english better than me in a language I am very fluent in. So unfortunately translation jobs are mostly going away. The problem is that this is all going to be very sudden. And people working these industries just don't have any time at all to prepare.

ChatGTP 3y ago
Definitely not my experience or other people I know who use it, at least for Mandarin / Japanese. Also doesn't seem to preserve a writing style, which is important for branding / marketing.
- WiSaGaN 3y ago
  In my experience, GPT-4's Chinese-to-English translation is the best I've seen, easily surpassing Deepl and Google Translate. However, its English-to-Chinese translation performs at a level similar to Deepl.
famouswaffles 3y ago
Yup. For a couple dozen languages, GPT-4 is by far the best translator you can get your hands on (better than deepl, google, papago etc). also current MT benchmarks are completely broken for whatever reason (benchmark itself and/or evaluation model ). They don't reflect reality at all.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >For a couple dozen languages, GPT-4 is by far the best translator you can get your hands on (better than deepl, google, papago etc). Yeah, I have no idea how the likes of DeepL and other paid-for translators are going to survive long term when "GPT-4 and friends" are that good. What's their business plan? DeppL tried to compensate by making their front-end more annoying and hijacking clicks and highlights which invalidate the browser spell checker, making it impossible to correct a word via click, which I guess is one way of expediting their demise. The sad part is, in my small town there's the office of another small ML driven translation start-up that was way better than Google when it launched a few years ago, but now when I check their careers page, they're not hiring anymore which I guess says enough about their business and future growth plans. Dead man walking.

mortureb 3y ago

Sad, working as a translator many years ago was a job I found easy, relaxing and pressure free.

Moldoteck 3y ago

Imo at least translators of documents will not be affected in near future

tommek4077 3y ago
Because no one uses a scanner? Or how did you come to this conclusion? Or do you mean official verified and stamped translations?
- jacooper 3y ago
  Probably the latter.

keiferski 3y ago

GPT gets basic things wrong frequently. This is merely a bloated media site looking to cut down on staff while blaming “technology.” Translation as a field is going nowhere; most likely, translators will be the primary users of ChatGPT in translation work, as it is useful for an initial rough draft.

esperent 3y ago
I've used GPT-4 extensively for translation to Vietnamese and it's _incredible_. It's the one use case where, after my wonderment wore off, I'm still consistently amazed. Vietnamese is extremely difficult to translate to and from English - every other system I've used sucks badly. It doesn't give us a rough first draft. It gives us the equivalent of a second or third draft. The equivalent to the final result we'd get back from translators after a lot more back and forth. Honestly, it's better or equivalent to any human service I've used. Usually when it translates badly, a human would also translate badly and it means that section needs rewriting. It handles all kinds of things that I wouldn't expect, idioms, jokes, technical writing. There are very few mistakes. I can only imagine it's even better at Spanish. We don't pay for human translation anymore. The workload is reduced enough that we do the final editing ourselves. We still use human translation for legal stuff because that has to be done by an official translator. So I guess that's safe.

happytiger 3y ago

If your argument is that it sucks, realize it’s progress will be inconceivable to your monkey brain.