5 ms·

How Translation Works, Book Title Edition

61 points by janpio 2y ago

IsaacZerh 2y ago
"Common phrases in one language don’t exist in another; cultural references in one country mean nothing elsewhere, and so on. This is why a computerized translation is fine for a bland business email but will utterly fail for a novel." I'm sure it's going to be indistinguishable very soon, if not already.
- barlog 2y ago
  yes, WIP :)
- numpad0 2y ago
  Sure, translations work better for bland, unpleasant, and redundant text, regardless of purposes. So if business emails gets creative and dramatic, there will be heightened need for resources and risk for mistranslations, or if a novel would be written like law text, there will be less ambiguity or processing cost. Or if were to be written relying on English-centric LLM, it'll do worse in languages other than en_AI.
RheingoldRiver 2y ago
This is the only thing I think of now when I hear "that's amore" - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/science/moray-eels-eat-land.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/science/moray-eels-eat-la...
tkgally 2y ago
This is a nice essay, with an excellent example of the challenges and art of literary translation. But the author seems to assume that "computer translation" is limited to services like Google Translate or DeepL: put in a text, get a translation, with no consideration of the context or purpose. Properly prompted LLMs yield much better results and are already helping human translators produce better translations than they could on their own. Whether a completely automated workflow is possible for translating literary texts in an artful and engaging way—I don't know. But I wouldn't reject that possibility out of hand. Addendum: The above comment has received at least two up votes and two down votes: in the hour after I posted it, I saw it go from 1 point to 3 points and back to 1. Perhaps people who disapprove of it could say why?
- ericrallen 2y ago
  Not an up or down here, but I’d be curious to see some sources for this claim: > Properly prompted LLMs yield much better results and are already helping human translators produce better translations than they could on their own.
  - tkgally 2y ago
    Thank you for the question. A few days ago, I posted several comments explaining my own use of LLMs in translation and related issues in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42894215#42895610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42894215#42895610 I didn’t mention it there, but I have had quite a few discussions with professional translators about LLMs over the last two years. Their reactions and attitudes towards AI are definitely mixed, but I do know translators other than myself who are using LLMs productively as part of their translation process.
- jonathanlb 2y ago
  I've been out of the translation game for quite a while, but I remember there being more to translating as a profession than just communicating ideas from one language to another. Sometimes precision and consistency is needed; complex scientific manuals come to mind. I recall using translation tools (e.g., translation memory) being essential to providing quality translations. TMs would help ensure that the same terms were used consistently throughout the text, and that similar phrases were translated similarly as well. The TM was an essential part of the workflow, because the first line of translators would pass their translation and the TM off to an editor, who would make suggestions in the text and TM, and the translator would update the TM based on those suggestions. It's been a while so I might have gotten a detail or two wrong, but that's the gist of the workflow. I'm curious what sorts of prompts can replicate this. Again, there's a lot I've missed in the decade or so that I've been out of the industry. Does translation memory now become part of the context window? Does the context window self-actualize with new translations? What sorts of prompts can help produce quality translations?
  - tkgally 2y ago
krisoft 2y ago
That being sad human translators are very often under imense time pressure and that sadly leaves a mark on the translations. To stay with hungarian example: in the original of Fifty Shades Of Grey Christian is a big fan of the band Kings of Leon. Somehow the translator managed to translate the band name as Lion King. Which drastically changed the vibe of some scenes. Most probably the translator wasn’t familiar with the band and had to translate it super fast. Similarly in the hungarian translation of Harry Potter Slytherin's Locket was translated as Slytherin's Lock. And when in the next book the context made it clear that indeed we are talking about a locket not a lock they just changed the name of the item like nothing happened. :)
- jszymborski 2y ago
  I know it got a lot of praise, but I couldn't help but feel the English translation of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a bit awkward. Among the instances I distinctly remember, the phrase "boy toy" was used in some fairly awkward ways. While the awkwardness might be intentional or a failing of the original author, it accompanied some very alien-sounding prose that always made me feel it was a product of the translation.
- laurieg 2y ago
  I love catching these little translation flubs. Japanese movie and TV subtitles seem to have quite a few, probably because of the aforementioned time pressure. For example, I saw Oppenheimer in the theater and "crown" had been mistranslated as "clown". Perhaps my favorite subtitle mistake of all time is in the subtitles of Brooklyn 99. One of the characters talks about getting someone a "boogie board" (a small surfboard) as a present. This is translated as "electronic memo pad". I couldn't work out how that had happened until I googled "boogie board" and half of the results are for an electronic writing pad with that name.
  - lmm 2y ago
    You might enjoy the notorious Star War the Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West. At turns ludicrous and oddly poetic.
romaaeterna 2y ago
On this subject, it is worth reading Tolkien's letters to publishers and translators about the translation choices regarding his works. His philology comes into full play.
phatnguyen 2y ago
Tech is evolving fast, and while current AI struggles with nuance, humor, and emotional weight, future advancements might surprise us. Maybe the best approach isn’t ‘humans only’ but a synergy where AI handles structure and humans refine the feel?
rererereferred 2y ago
Sometimes translators make weird decisions. Ocean's eleven in Latam Spanish was "La gran estafa" (The great swindle), which to me sounded much more generic, then came Ocean's twelve and they called it "La nueva gran estafa" (The new great swindle). On the 3rd movie they had to give in and called it "Ahora son 13" (Now they are 13), losing the connection to the others completely. For the next one they didn't even bothered and called it "Ocean's 8: las estafadoras" (Ocean's 8: The swindlers). Bonus: the original movie from the 60s was named "Once a la medianoche" (Eleven at midnight). I would have preferred they kept that name.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
thomassmith65 2y ago
We're already not far from being able to do something like... (Dean Martin "That's Amore") - (English) + (Hungarian) https://kawine.github.io/blog/nlp/2019/06/21/word-analogies.html https://kawine.github.io/blog/nlp/2019/06/21/word-analogies....

61 points by janpio 2y ago

"Common phrases in one language don’t exist in another; cultural references in one country mean nothing elsewhere, and so on. This is why a computerized translation is fine for a bland business email but will utterly fail for a novel." I'm sure it's going to be indistinguishable very soon, if not already.

barlog 2y ago
yes, WIP :)
numpad0 2y ago
Sure, translations work better for bland, unpleasant, and redundant text, regardless of purposes. So if business emails gets creative and dramatic, there will be heightened need for resources and risk for mistranslations, or if a novel would be written like law text, there will be less ambiguity or processing cost. Or if were to be written relying on English-centric LLM, it'll do worse in languages other than en_AI.

RheingoldRiver 2y ago

This is the only thing I think of now when I hear "that's amore" - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/science/moray-eels-eat-land.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/science/moray-eels-eat-la...

tkgally 2y ago

This is a nice essay, with an excellent example of the challenges and art of literary translation. But the author seems to assume that "computer translation" is limited to services like Google Translate or DeepL: put in a text, get a translation, with no consideration of the context or purpose. Properly prompted LLMs yield much better results and are already helping human translators produce better translations than they could on their own. Whether a completely automated workflow is possible for translating literary texts in an artful and engaging way—I don't know. But I wouldn't reject that possibility out of hand. Addendum: The above comment has received at least two up votes and two down votes: in the hour after I posted it, I saw it go from 1 point to 3 points and back to 1. Perhaps people who disapprove of it could say why?

ericrallen 2y ago
Not an up or down here, but I’d be curious to see some sources for this claim: > Properly prompted LLMs yield much better results and are already helping human translators produce better translations than they could on their own.
- tkgally 2y ago
  Thank you for the question. A few days ago, I posted several comments explaining my own use of LLMs in translation and related issues in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42894215#42895610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42894215#42895610 I didn’t mention it there, but I have had quite a few discussions with professional translators about LLMs over the last two years. Their reactions and attitudes towards AI are definitely mixed, but I do know translators other than myself who are using LLMs productively as part of their translation process.
jonathanlb 2y ago
I've been out of the translation game for quite a while, but I remember there being more to translating as a profession than just communicating ideas from one language to another. Sometimes precision and consistency is needed; complex scientific manuals come to mind. I recall using translation tools (e.g., translation memory) being essential to providing quality translations. TMs would help ensure that the same terms were used consistently throughout the text, and that similar phrases were translated similarly as well. The TM was an essential part of the workflow, because the first line of translators would pass their translation and the TM off to an editor, who would make suggestions in the text and TM, and the translator would update the TM based on those suggestions. It's been a while so I might have gotten a detail or two wrong, but that's the gist of the workflow. I'm curious what sorts of prompts can replicate this. Again, there's a lot I've missed in the decade or so that I've been out of the industry. Does translation memory now become part of the context window? Does the context window self-actualize with new translations? What sorts of prompts can help produce quality translations?
- tkgally 2y ago

krisoft 2y ago

That being sad human translators are very often under imense time pressure and that sadly leaves a mark on the translations. To stay with hungarian example: in the original of Fifty Shades Of Grey Christian is a big fan of the band Kings of Leon. Somehow the translator managed to translate the band name as Lion King. Which drastically changed the vibe of some scenes. Most probably the translator wasn’t familiar with the band and had to translate it super fast. Similarly in the hungarian translation of Harry Potter Slytherin's Locket was translated as Slytherin's Lock. And when in the next book the context made it clear that indeed we are talking about a locket not a lock they just changed the name of the item like nothing happened. :)

jszymborski 2y ago
I know it got a lot of praise, but I couldn't help but feel the English translation of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a bit awkward. Among the instances I distinctly remember, the phrase "boy toy" was used in some fairly awkward ways. While the awkwardness might be intentional or a failing of the original author, it accompanied some very alien-sounding prose that always made me feel it was a product of the translation.
laurieg 2y ago
I love catching these little translation flubs. Japanese movie and TV subtitles seem to have quite a few, probably because of the aforementioned time pressure. For example, I saw Oppenheimer in the theater and "crown" had been mistranslated as "clown". Perhaps my favorite subtitle mistake of all time is in the subtitles of Brooklyn 99. One of the characters talks about getting someone a "boogie board" (a small surfboard) as a present. This is translated as "electronic memo pad". I couldn't work out how that had happened until I googled "boogie board" and half of the results are for an electronic writing pad with that name.
- lmm 2y ago
  You might enjoy the notorious Star War the Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West. At turns ludicrous and oddly poetic.

romaaeterna 2y ago

On this subject, it is worth reading Tolkien's letters to publishers and translators about the translation choices regarding his works. His philology comes into full play.

phatnguyen 2y ago

Tech is evolving fast, and while current AI struggles with nuance, humor, and emotional weight, future advancements might surprise us. Maybe the best approach isn’t ‘humans only’ but a synergy where AI handles structure and humans refine the feel?

rererereferred 2y ago

Sometimes translators make weird decisions. Ocean's eleven in Latam Spanish was "La gran estafa" (The great swindle), which to me sounded much more generic, then came Ocean's twelve and they called it "La nueva gran estafa" (The new great swindle). On the 3rd movie they had to give in and called it "Ahora son 13" (Now they are 13), losing the connection to the others completely. For the next one they didn't even bothered and called it "Ocean's 8: las estafadoras" (Ocean's 8: The swindlers). Bonus: the original movie from the 60s was named "Once a la medianoche" (Eleven at midnight). I would have preferred they kept that name.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

thomassmith65 2y ago

We're already not far from being able to do something like... (Dean Martin "That's Amore") - (English) + (Hungarian) https://kawine.github.io/blog/nlp/2019/06/21/word-analogies.html https://kawine.github.io/blog/nlp/2019/06/21/word-analogies....