4 ms·

Survey reveals translators and illustrators losing work to AI

33 points by geox 3y ago

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I'm surprised it's only a third of translators. The translation capabilities of ChatGPT are shockingly good in my opinion. And it's probably the first machine translation where you explain the context to it in order to get the best translation.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Yep. Transformers were originally developed for language translation, not chatbots or image generators. The fact that they proved useful in so many other contexts was serendipitous.
- morkalork 3y ago
  There's still translators needed for legal stuff like contracts, official government documents, etc. Not sure how much of the profession they make up but it sounded like they were the only ones not dwindling in numbers before ChatGPT came along.
  - postepowanieadm 3y ago
    I once worked on a contract translated with ChatGPT from German to Polish and it was the most infuriating experience. Text for a layperson seemed to be ordinary legal speak, but in reality it made no sense(or even less than ordinarily). I had to explain meaning of every legal term used and why it made no sense in given context.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  I agree, since the pogrom on October 7th in Israel, I've been able to get translations from all the gory telegram channels from the respective sides of the conflict, and the superimposed foreign words on both the captions as well as images and videos. let alone the comments. a lot of it turns out to be slang, and I've been able to ask ChatGPT for nuanced context on how its used, immediately. I've never been able to do that in history. Duolingo would never do that, formal education wouldn't either. A dictionary wouldn't. Google translate couldn't. can search more content and conversations using the topical slang as the keyword.
melagonster 3y ago
AI let mpre people lost jobs again. Hope we can see its benefits for society soon.
- dasyatidprime 3y ago
  What is “let mpre”?
  - FridgeSeal 3y ago
    I assume they’re trying to say “let more”, which would be a pretty depressing read as it’s a very “ai maximalist” “gosh I hope everyone loses their job and the world magically adapts and we all live in a work-free paradise”, which I think has about as much likelihood as me winning the lottery tomorrow…
    - weikju 3y ago
      Or not a native English speaker. “AI has led to more people lose their job and still no visible benefit to society” doesn’t sound like AI maximalism to me
  - from-nibly 3y ago
    Probably "yet more"
autumnstwilight 3y ago
I made a career switch from translation (JP > EN) into tech in 2022, and since ChatGPT was released very shortly after I made that decision I feel I got lucky with the timing. Many, many jobs are now "machine translation post-editing", which means you spend almost as much time manually checking and re-translating, but get paid significantly less. Machine translation certainly has improved a lot, but still has the usual AI issues- namely that the AI confabulates details in places where a human translator would realize that something is unclear and refer to context, other parts of the text or external research for clarification. A common example in Japanese to English is that Japanese often omits pronouns, while the English version of the sentence requires "he"/"she"/"me"/"you" to be grammatical. A human translator can check this, but AI will often autofill whatever is the most common in its dataset, which could be completely wrong in context. So I think the risk with machine translation is that it can seem reliable and trustworthy 90+% of the time, but if you have no ability to read the original text and compare, you're rather quickly going to get caught out by something that looks like a professional, clean, correct translation, but is a total misrepresentation of what was actually said.
- gedy 3y ago
  I imagine Japanese is probably the "last mile" for machine translation given the nuance compared to other languages.
  - minebreaker 3y ago
    IMHO those people who claim that the AI translation is perfect are only using it between Indo-European languages.
    - postepowanieadm 3y ago
      ... and don't proofread AI generated translations.
  - re-thc 3y ago
    There are nuances in many languages. Japanese isn’t the only 1. It’s not just the language itself but the culture. Same words can be used differently or have different meaning.
deleted 3y ago
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33 points by geox 3y ago

I'm surprised it's only a third of translators. The translation capabilities of ChatGPT are shockingly good in my opinion. And it's probably the first machine translation where you explain the context to it in order to get the best translation.

CamperBob2 3y ago
Yep. Transformers were originally developed for language translation, not chatbots or image generators. The fact that they proved useful in so many other contexts was serendipitous.
morkalork 3y ago
There's still translators needed for legal stuff like contracts, official government documents, etc. Not sure how much of the profession they make up but it sounded like they were the only ones not dwindling in numbers before ChatGPT came along.
- postepowanieadm 3y ago
  I once worked on a contract translated with ChatGPT from German to Polish and it was the most infuriating experience. Text for a layperson seemed to be ordinary legal speak, but in reality it made no sense(or even less than ordinarily). I had to explain meaning of every legal term used and why it made no sense in given context.
yieldcrv 3y ago
I agree, since the pogrom on October 7th in Israel, I've been able to get translations from all the gory telegram channels from the respective sides of the conflict, and the superimposed foreign words on both the captions as well as images and videos. let alone the comments. a lot of it turns out to be slang, and I've been able to ask ChatGPT for nuanced context on how its used, immediately. I've never been able to do that in history. Duolingo would never do that, formal education wouldn't either. A dictionary wouldn't. Google translate couldn't. can search more content and conversations using the topical slang as the keyword.

melagonster 3y ago

AI let mpre people lost jobs again. Hope we can see its benefits for society soon.

dasyatidprime 3y ago
What is “let mpre”?
- FridgeSeal 3y ago
  I assume they’re trying to say “let more”, which would be a pretty depressing read as it’s a very “ai maximalist” “gosh I hope everyone loses their job and the world magically adapts and we all live in a work-free paradise”, which I think has about as much likelihood as me winning the lottery tomorrow…
  - weikju 3y ago
    Or not a native English speaker. “AI has led to more people lose their job and still no visible benefit to society” doesn’t sound like AI maximalism to me
- from-nibly 3y ago
  Probably "yet more"

autumnstwilight 3y ago

I made a career switch from translation (JP > EN) into tech in 2022, and since ChatGPT was released very shortly after I made that decision I feel I got lucky with the timing. Many, many jobs are now "machine translation post-editing", which means you spend almost as much time manually checking and re-translating, but get paid significantly less. Machine translation certainly has improved a lot, but still has the usual AI issues- namely that the AI confabulates details in places where a human translator would realize that something is unclear and refer to context, other parts of the text or external research for clarification. A common example in Japanese to English is that Japanese often omits pronouns, while the English version of the sentence requires "he"/"she"/"me"/"you" to be grammatical. A human translator can check this, but AI will often autofill whatever is the most common in its dataset, which could be completely wrong in context. So I think the risk with machine translation is that it can seem reliable and trustworthy 90+% of the time, but if you have no ability to read the original text and compare, you're rather quickly going to get caught out by something that looks like a professional, clean, correct translation, but is a total misrepresentation of what was actually said.

gedy 3y ago
I imagine Japanese is probably the "last mile" for machine translation given the nuance compared to other languages.
- minebreaker 3y ago
  IMHO those people who claim that the AI translation is perfect are only using it between Indo-European languages.
  - postepowanieadm 3y ago
    ... and don't proofread AI generated translations.
- re-thc 3y ago
  There are nuances in many languages. Japanese isn’t the only 1. It’s not just the language itself but the culture. Same words can be used differently or have different meaning.

deleted 3y ago

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