Comment by silvertab
9 hours ago
> but it's also a terrible idea that nobody should actually use, because Japanese kanji readings are famously ambiguous and context-dependent
Seems a bit drastic. Don't use it as the main font in a japanese textbook, sure, but use it with the disclaimer that it's not perfect and will get some readings wrong? Why not, still pretty useful. Should people also not use Google Translate? (also, you can stuff an entire llm in a font, it's been done).
The point of furigana is to be exact - it's a pronunciation guide, and its purpose is to distinguish or to teach. If it's wrong, then nothing makes sense.
If I asked you 'are you a sewer (pronounced "soo-er")?', would that make sense? Maybe if you looked at it hard enough and thought about it, but in the meantime, I would probably get some very strange looks for asking.
As far as I know, all the automated options out there (wether it's Furiganator, the chrome extension, or Google Translate's pronunciation) are far from 100% accurate. I still find both to be very useful, I just don't rely on them to be the absolute truth; they still help me on a daily basis. The web page for this font mentioned it didn't show any furigana if it was ambiguous (I haven't verified),and someone else here mentioned it was ~80% accurate. I respectfully disagree with the fact that it's useless if not perfect; I've personally found all these tools useful, and have not learned a single "wrong reading" because of them because I don't use them as a tool to learn kanji readings to begin with.
It's funny to see LLMs being mentioned, because this is yet another case where "good enough" is, after all, not good enough once you know how "good enough" should be.
> Why not, still pretty useful
Stumbling on names is fine, name litteraly have no logic, there is no system that will get them 100% correct by definition.
Screwing meaning is on a whole different level and Google Translate or even the built in screen reader of your OS will do an extremely good job given enough context (a whole phrase).
In real world use there is little space for sloppy hacks IMHO.
> Google Translate or even the built in screen reader of your OS will do an extremely good job given enough context
Google translate does not - I see it get readings wrong on very basic sentences with plenty of context on a daily basis. It doesn't make it useless. The website mentioned the font wouldn't show furigana if the reading was ambiguous so I was basing my judgement on that, obviously if it's just always wrong, that's not useful.
You're underestimating how wrong this is going to be on average. This is going to be nonsense like half the time. It's not comparable to Google Translate, it's more comparable to Babel Fish circa 1997.