4 ms·

I kind of wonder what it is that giving false impression to NA English speakers, that machine translations is something that works or something less worse than

I kind of wonder what it is that giving false impression to NA English speakers, that machine translations is something that works or something less worse than humans, when it isn't quite. By wonder, I don't necessarily mean it as in euphemism for "it is infuriating to me that X is Y" wonder: I've seen translation horror stories that, there allegedly are weird dogmatically motivated English translators that constantly abuse their power to just use foreign content as vehicles for their agendas, while original authors being unable to proofread themselves or chalking up noted oddities to their own skill issues until all is too late. That kind of weird translation is not a typical experience for me relying translations to my primary language, and I suspect nor it is to most various non-English language speakers, but especially the recent wide and big push on MT as well as high praises on GPT translations seems to roughly in line with that abusive translator horror stories. And here I wonder; is _that_ it, or am I overthinking it?

pjc50 3y ago
> there allegedly are weird dogmatically motivated English translators that constantly abuse their power to just use foreign content as vehicles for their agendas, while original authors being unable to proofread themselves or chalking up noted oddities to their own skill issues until all is too late. I've seen references to this as well, but I've not seen a source that isn't themselves trying to stir up some sort of drama or bait a particular fandom. Could you elaborate? I suspect the underlying phenomenon is simply English monolingualism - educated people around the world are generally expected to understand at least one second language, which is usually English due to the Internet and Hollywood. So they're familiar with being able to read both sides of a translation and judge it. While the monoglots simply regard the production of a piece of text they can't read by a machine as job done.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  Not GP, but an example that comes to mind is the trend of Victorian-era (British) translators bowdlerizing texts to align them with typical Victorian values and writing quirks. Although obviously not machine translated in those days :P

pjc50 3y ago

> there allegedly are weird dogmatically motivated English translators that constantly abuse their power to just use foreign content as vehicles for their agendas, while original authors being unable to proofread themselves or chalking up noted oddities to their own skill issues until all is too late. I've seen references to this as well, but I've not seen a source that isn't themselves trying to stir up some sort of drama or bait a particular fandom. Could you elaborate? I suspect the underlying phenomenon is simply English monolingualism - educated people around the world are generally expected to understand at least one second language, which is usually English due to the Internet and Hollywood. So they're familiar with being able to read both sides of a translation and judge it. While the monoglots simply regard the production of a piece of text they can't read by a machine as job done.

spondylosaurus 3y ago
Not GP, but an example that comes to mind is the trend of Victorian-era (British) translators bowdlerizing texts to align them with typical Victorian values and writing quirks. Although obviously not machine translated in those days :P