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And yet it's still massively behind DeepL on the languages that they support. Why is it still so bad at the top languages like Spanish?

by dbbk 2y ago

seanhunter 2y ago
I understand the impetus behind keeping dying minority languages alive but it just makes no sense to devote even a second to implementing Manx[1] for example if you're not excellent at Spanish which is the second language in the world after Mandarin in terms of total population of speakers[2]. [1] one of the languages they just added, which is a language where the last native speaker died in 1974 and there are currently less than 2000 speakers in total all of whom use it as a second language after English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_language [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of...
- nxrabl 2y ago
  I don’t think that follows. Most users of a translation app don’t have any ability to judge the quality of the translations it produces, so the only distinguishing feature is ubiquity - if every language you can think of is in Google Translate, you might never go looking for other apps. Plus if you want to keep the best linguists employed, you have to give them fun things to do. Hard to write papers making Spanish translations a fraction of a percent better.
  - rrr_oh_man 2y ago
    > Plus if you want to keep the best linguists employed, you have to give them fun things to do. Hard to write papers making Spanish translations a fraction of a percent better. Shipping shiny stuff also more visible in the performance review.
triceratops 2y ago
> Why is it still so bad at the top languages like Spanish? Which Spanish? I thought South America, North America, and Europe Spanish all have their own peculiarities.
- debugnik 2y ago
  Just Spanish translation to/from English in general, really. In my experience, the problem is not regional nuance, but how it simply falls way too often for false friends or overly literal wordings that miss the original meaning.

And yet it's still massively behind DeepL on the languages that they support. Why is it still so bad at the top languages like Spanish?

by dbbk 2y ago

And yet it's still massively behind DeepL on the languages that they support. Why is it still so bad at the top languages like Spanish?

seanhunter 2y ago

I understand the impetus behind keeping dying minority languages alive but it just makes no sense to devote even a second to implementing Manx[1] for example if you're not excellent at Spanish which is the second language in the world after Mandarin in terms of total population of speakers[2]. [1] one of the languages they just added, which is a language where the last native speaker died in 1974 and there are currently less than 2000 speakers in total all of whom use it as a second language after English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_language [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of...

nxrabl 2y ago
I don’t think that follows. Most users of a translation app don’t have any ability to judge the quality of the translations it produces, so the only distinguishing feature is ubiquity - if every language you can think of is in Google Translate, you might never go looking for other apps. Plus if you want to keep the best linguists employed, you have to give them fun things to do. Hard to write papers making Spanish translations a fraction of a percent better.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  > Plus if you want to keep the best linguists employed, you have to give them fun things to do. Hard to write papers making Spanish translations a fraction of a percent better. Shipping shiny stuff also more visible in the performance review.

triceratops 2y ago

> Why is it still so bad at the top languages like Spanish? Which Spanish? I thought South America, North America, and Europe Spanish all have their own peculiarities.

debugnik 2y ago
Just Spanish translation to/from English in general, really. In my experience, the problem is not regional nuance, but how it simply falls way too often for false friends or overly literal wordings that miss the original meaning.