Comment by cobbzilla
2 days ago
I don’t want to read AI slop, but how do you feel about translations?
I don’t mind when non-native speakers use it to express themselves, especially if disclaimed (but I give a pass even if not). Does it bother you?
2 days ago
I don’t want to read AI slop, but how do you feel about translations?
I don’t mind when non-native speakers use it to express themselves, especially if disclaimed (but I give a pass even if not). Does it bother you?
We've had machine translation for a while and I don't think anybody particularly thinks of it as a bad thing? Writing something and then having a machine directly translate it (possibly imperfectly) is a lot different than a machine writing the thing.
Personally I would like people to try learning other languages more (it's hard but rewarding) but you can't learn every language ever, and it is really hard to learn a language to fluency.
> We've had machine translation for a while and I don't think anybody particularly thinks of it as a bad thing?
Not all, but some machine translators can be comically (if not horrifically) bad sometimes. Search Twitter-become-X for examples. Native writers can't pick a working machine translator unless they are explicitly allowed to do so themselves.
I think it makes perfect sense.
But that a site might still want to discourage it, to avoid general degradation. It is a tradeoff.
If someone can write in the target language, just not well, a model could be asked to point out problems for the writer to fix. Rewrite a difficult sentence.
I suppose for me, it is the difference between a true “translation“ and having an LLM reinterpret intent and state “its” words.
Ideally, I want the speaker’s words translated “verbatim” to English, to the extent possible.