6 ms·

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

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.
  - circuit10 3y ago
    Well GPT-4 is very expensive (though that could change) Less so than hiring a human but not cheap enough that you’d want it to automatically translate long websites as a browser extension or anything like that
- justinclift 3y ago
  Wonder how it'll handle Korean? A friend who translates Korean has pointed out that it's kind of special, in that the symbols used are exactly the same for many different things. So the only way to know the actual meaning is from context, which is what then needs translating. Apparently online translators from Korean to other languages are truly, horribly bad due to this.
  - famouswaffles 3y ago
    Korean is the language I know. What I said is the same for it. Hangul(Korean writing system) is not a logograph like Chinese/Japanese but an alphabet. Many words do have different meanings but all languages have this to an extent. I don't think that's the reason Korean is context dependent. The bigger reason is that Korean is very pro drop. Strictly speaking 친구 있어요 ? means Friend Have ? And you would say exactly that for any of these English equivalents "Do they have friends ?" "Do you have a friend ?" "Do you have friends ?" "Does he have a friend ?" And so on. Plurality as a special marker doesn't really exist. Possessive and Article Determiners don't really exist either. Articles don't exist at all. Possessive markers are few and only used when surrounding context might not be enough to convey the needed information. Subject/Object/Topic markers exist but are regularly omitted. You might ask, well how would you know which of those equivalents 친구 있어요 means ? There is no way to tell before reading or hearing the surrounding context. Traditional models are unable to decipher this context and translations are only good with close language pairs. Google translate can be very good for English to French and Japanese to Korean but fail on Korean to English.
mistrial9 3y ago
I am amazed that this statement is unqualified. There is not one ounce of doubt that some strains of language thought are very well suited to translation, while others really are not. On tech forums, so much is assumed to be formal writing for work. That is not the only kind of writing. As much as I believe you, and I do, there are realms of written words that just will not yield to fast-spinning tumblers IMHO. (those with formal linguistic and grammar training maybe jump in here.. )
- famouswaffles 3y ago
  No OP but it's really not just "formal writing". I personally haven't even tested it on formal writing yet (mostly passages of fiction) and it's target language to English is miles ahead of any other machine translator out there. and Frankly, better than most human translations i've come across.
- AaronNewcomer 3y ago
  It really is pretty remarkable. I research and write about a historic topic that has its roots in France so I had always had the idea of some day localizing my site into French. And it is shockingly good at translating full articles. It understands the context of what is written and knows which words to use to keep the same meaning when literally humans can’t even do it well as there are terms and phrases used 200 years ago that just aren’t used anymore. But are correct and relevant in the context of these antiques.
somenameforme 3y ago
There's a fun way to test translation systems. Have it translate something to another language, and then translate it back (after starting a new chat/clearing its memory) and compare. It's best done with some sampling of text that has style, metaphor, parable, etc. After all I think we should be more adversarial than promotional when testing such things. Here [1] is the first paragraph of a human translation of Hantsel and Gretel: --- "Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. He had little to bite and to break, and once when great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily bread. Now when he thought over this by night in his bed, and tossed about in his anxiety, he groaned and said to his wife: 'What is to become of us? How are we to feed our poor children, when we no longer have anything even for ourselves?' 'I'll tell you what, husband,' answered the woman, 'early tomorrow morning we will take the children out into the forest to where it is the thickest; there we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one more piece of bread, and then we will go to our work and leave them alone. They will not find the way home again, and we shall be rid of them.' 'No, wife,' said the man, 'I will not do that; how can I bear to leave my children alone in the forest?--the wild animals would soon come and tear them to pieces.' 'O, you fool!' said she, 'then we must all four die of hunger, you may as well plane the planks for our coffins,' and she left him no peace until he consented. 'But I feel very sorry for the poor children, all the same,' said the man." --- And here is GPT 3.5's final rendition of it, after converting it to Japanese and back: --- "Near a large forest, a poor woodcutter lived with his wife and two children. The boy was named Hansel, and the girl was Gretel. They had little to eat, and during a severe famine in the country, they could no longer even provide daily meals. One night, as he lay in bed pondering this, the woodcutter, filled with anxiety, said to his wife, "What will become of us? How will we feed our poor children when we no longer have anything for ourselves?" His wife replied, "Husband, tomorrow morning, let's take the children into the forest. There, we will light a fire and give each of them one more piece of bread. Then, we will go to work and leave the children on their own. They won't be able to find their way back, and we will be freed from them." The man said, "No, wife, I cannot do that. How can I leave my own children alone in the forest? Wild animals will come and tear them apart." She retorted, "You fool! In that case, we will all four perish of hunger, and you can just as well plane the boards for our coffins," and she didn't leave him in peace until he agreed. "But the poor children are so pitiful," the man said." --- It's a generally terrible translation with a simple (though heavily stylized) text. Not only is absolutely all style, imagery, and character eliminated from the writing, but it's also overtly nonsensical in parts. Lighting a fire for the children ends up translated as simply lighting a fire, as if the goal is to start a forest fire. Similarly the man's sorrow for the children ends up being completely lost, and is translated as him simply calling his children pitiful. I'd be curious to see GPT4's output on this, or ideally even more challenging paragraphs. [1] - http://www.literaturepage.com/read/grimms-fairy-tales-72.html http://www.literaturepage.com/read/grimms-fairy-tales-72.htm...
nvm0n2 3y ago
They didn't? Machine translation has been steadily improving for many years. It's not like yesterday computers couldn't translate and today they can. All translators must have known this day would finally arrive.
BasedAnon 3y ago
Even GPT-3.5's translation quality is overwhelmingly good. I can literally throw chunks of text at it and most of the time it's a reasonable translation. I basically don't use Google Translate anymore except to cross-reference (and even then it's not particularly good at that) along with a dictionary.

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.
- circuit10 3y ago
  Well GPT-4 is very expensive (though that could change) Less so than hiring a human but not cheap enough that you’d want it to automatically translate long websites as a browser extension or anything like that
justinclift 3y ago
Wonder how it'll handle Korean? A friend who translates Korean has pointed out that it's kind of special, in that the symbols used are exactly the same for many different things. So the only way to know the actual meaning is from context, which is what then needs translating. Apparently online translators from Korean to other languages are truly, horribly bad due to this.
- famouswaffles 3y ago
  Korean is the language I know. What I said is the same for it. Hangul(Korean writing system) is not a logograph like Chinese/Japanese but an alphabet. Many words do have different meanings but all languages have this to an extent. I don't think that's the reason Korean is context dependent. The bigger reason is that Korean is very pro drop. Strictly speaking 친구 있어요 ? means Friend Have ? And you would say exactly that for any of these English equivalents "Do they have friends ?" "Do you have a friend ?" "Do you have friends ?" "Does he have a friend ?" And so on. Plurality as a special marker doesn't really exist. Possessive and Article Determiners don't really exist either. Articles don't exist at all. Possessive markers are few and only used when surrounding context might not be enough to convey the needed information. Subject/Object/Topic markers exist but are regularly omitted. You might ask, well how would you know which of those equivalents 친구 있어요 means ? There is no way to tell before reading or hearing the surrounding context. Traditional models are unable to decipher this context and translations are only good with close language pairs. Google translate can be very good for English to French and Japanese to Korean but fail on Korean to English.

mistrial9 3y ago

I am amazed that this statement is unqualified. There is not one ounce of doubt that some strains of language thought are very well suited to translation, while others really are not. On tech forums, so much is assumed to be formal writing for work. That is not the only kind of writing. As much as I believe you, and I do, there are realms of written words that just will not yield to fast-spinning tumblers IMHO. (those with formal linguistic and grammar training maybe jump in here.. )

famouswaffles 3y ago
No OP but it's really not just "formal writing". I personally haven't even tested it on formal writing yet (mostly passages of fiction) and it's target language to English is miles ahead of any other machine translator out there. and Frankly, better than most human translations i've come across.
AaronNewcomer 3y ago
It really is pretty remarkable. I research and write about a historic topic that has its roots in France so I had always had the idea of some day localizing my site into French. And it is shockingly good at translating full articles. It understands the context of what is written and knows which words to use to keep the same meaning when literally humans can’t even do it well as there are terms and phrases used 200 years ago that just aren’t used anymore. But are correct and relevant in the context of these antiques.

somenameforme 3y ago

There's a fun way to test translation systems. Have it translate something to another language, and then translate it back (after starting a new chat/clearing its memory) and compare. It's best done with some sampling of text that has style, metaphor, parable, etc. After all I think we should be more adversarial than promotional when testing such things. Here [1] is the first paragraph of a human translation of Hantsel and Gretel: --- "Hard by a great forest dwelt a poor wood-cutter with his wife and his two children. The boy was called Hansel and the girl Gretel. He had little to bite and to break, and once when great dearth fell on the land, he could no longer procure even daily bread. Now when he thought over this by night in his bed, and tossed about in his anxiety, he groaned and said to his wife: 'What is to become of us? How are we to feed our poor children, when we no longer have anything even for ourselves?' 'I'll tell you what, husband,' answered the woman, 'early tomorrow morning we will take the children out into the forest to where it is the thickest; there we will light a fire for them, and give each of them one more piece of bread, and then we will go to our work and leave them alone. They will not find the way home again, and we shall be rid of them.' 'No, wife,' said the man, 'I will not do that; how can I bear to leave my children alone in the forest?--the wild animals would soon come and tear them to pieces.' 'O, you fool!' said she, 'then we must all four die of hunger, you may as well plane the planks for our coffins,' and she left him no peace until he consented. 'But I feel very sorry for the poor children, all the same,' said the man." --- And here is GPT 3.5's final rendition of it, after converting it to Japanese and back: --- "Near a large forest, a poor woodcutter lived with his wife and two children. The boy was named Hansel, and the girl was Gretel. They had little to eat, and during a severe famine in the country, they could no longer even provide daily meals. One night, as he lay in bed pondering this, the woodcutter, filled with anxiety, said to his wife, "What will become of us? How will we feed our poor children when we no longer have anything for ourselves?" His wife replied, "Husband, tomorrow morning, let's take the children into the forest. There, we will light a fire and give each of them one more piece of bread. Then, we will go to work and leave the children on their own. They won't be able to find their way back, and we will be freed from them." The man said, "No, wife, I cannot do that. How can I leave my own children alone in the forest? Wild animals will come and tear them apart." She retorted, "You fool! In that case, we will all four perish of hunger, and you can just as well plane the boards for our coffins," and she didn't leave him in peace until he agreed. "But the poor children are so pitiful," the man said." --- It's a generally terrible translation with a simple (though heavily stylized) text. Not only is absolutely all style, imagery, and character eliminated from the writing, but it's also overtly nonsensical in parts. Lighting a fire for the children ends up translated as simply lighting a fire, as if the goal is to start a forest fire. Similarly the man's sorrow for the children ends up being completely lost, and is translated as him simply calling his children pitiful. I'd be curious to see GPT4's output on this, or ideally even more challenging paragraphs. [1] - http://www.literaturepage.com/read/grimms-fairy-tales-72.html http://www.literaturepage.com/read/grimms-fairy-tales-72.htm...

nvm0n2 3y ago

They didn't? Machine translation has been steadily improving for many years. It's not like yesterday computers couldn't translate and today they can. All translators must have known this day would finally arrive.

BasedAnon 3y ago

Even GPT-3.5's translation quality is overwhelmingly good. I can literally throw chunks of text at it and most of the time it's a reasonable translation. I basically don't use Google Translate anymore except to cross-reference (and even then it's not particularly good at that) along with a dictionary.