Comment by tikkun
2 years ago
I'm generally excited about something I'm calling "English to English translation" - and this is a good example.
Previously translation has focused on going between languages.
I think there's just as much benefit to translating within a given language.
* Translate corporate speak to plain English.
* Translate passive aggressive to calm and peaceful.
* Translate sensationalist to neutral (like the OP).
* Translate implicit and heavy with subtext to direct and assertive.
I am looking forward to a tool to summarize a 10 page long Terms of Service into a list of points about what I really need to beware of. Same for legal contracts.
Still generated by humans afaik, but in the neighbourhood:
https://tosdr.org/
There's already countless tools you can find online that will summarize text for you, but here's a more recent one:
https://www.chatpdf.com/
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35256007
TI have been thinking on similar lines. I have access to my own freelancers. However, do you have any pointers to algos/libraries I should be using? My NLP skills are not great!
My favorite is pasting something into the chat with "ELI5"
What you described is known as "sequence-to-sequence learning", or seq2seq. Google it or ask ChatGPT. It's a very common NLP technique that can do almost everything you mentioned.
Of course the utility will depend on the training data you collect. For example to go from corporate speak -> english you would need thousands of pairs of "translated" sentences. Or you could use an LLM to translate for you, paying as you go
The same concept applies to so many things
One time, local-dialect subtitles completely changed a movie experience for me
It was an American movie. Where I was, they usually watch movies with english audio and neutral Spanish subtitles
This time, instead of neutral Spanish, they used local Spanish with slang… wow, what a difference in the way the movie felt
Having local language and slang can convey meaning and emotions so much more effectively
Proper translation is an art form... if you have the budget.
Otherwise, it's someone typing as fast as the movie goes on the first viewing.
Another use case in the arts: interpreting literature and finding connections within and between books
I love this.
you are missing "rewrite email i don't want to read in the style of <author i like> influenced by <other thing i like>"