Machine translations are often brought up as a gotcha whenever I criticize LLMs. It's worth pointing out two things: Machine translations existed decades before LLMs, and yes, machine translations are useful. However: I would never in my life read a machine translated book. Understanding what a social media post is talking about in rough terms? Sure. Literature? Absolutely not. Hell, have you ever seen machine translated subtitles? It's absolute garbage.
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Janeishly
in reply to Eugen Rochko • • •It's not so much that translated literature doesn't exist, it's that *publishers* think anglophone readers are scared of translated literature (I'm a professional translator, at the London Book Fair this week, and this subject has come up several times).
But yes, machine translation is bloody awful, and it's terrible to work with as a human translator too - it doesn't "make our lives easier", you have to throw it all out and start again from scratch. Except obviously you're only being pad a fraction of your normal translation rate because "it's easier".
It is not easier. It's never possible to merely edit a machine translated text and end up with something as good as a competent human translator could have produced.
Another conversation I'm having this week is how translators can convey their value to publishers and agents, but now I'm wondering whether we shouldn't also be asking how readers can convey their desire for human translated literature, and lots more of it.
Inevitably, translated literature is opening up a new world, new experiences, new ways of
... Show more...It's not so much that translated literature doesn't exist, it's that *publishers* think anglophone readers are scared of translated literature (I'm a professional translator, at the London Book Fair this week, and this subject has come up several times).
But yes, machine translation is bloody awful, and it's terrible to work with as a human translator too - it doesn't "make our lives easier", you have to throw it all out and start again from scratch. Except obviously you're only being pad a fraction of your normal translation rate because "it's easier".
It is not easier. It's never possible to merely edit a machine translated text and end up with something as good as a competent human translator could have produced.
Another conversation I'm having this week is how translators can convey their value to publishers and agents, but now I'm wondering whether we shouldn't also be asking how readers can convey their desire for human translated literature, and lots more of it.
Inevitably, translated literature is opening up a new world, new experiences, new ways of thinking and seeing, to the reader. We all need more of that to fight back against the narrow-minded control freakery of the right wing.