ChinAI Newsletter

“ChinAI #258: Is translation already dead in the AI era?” by Jeffrey Ding

Mar 18, 2024

Delving into the impact of AI on translation, comparing AI tools like ChatGPT to Google Translate. Discussing how AI struggles with complex content and nuances. Drawing parallels between human translators as chefs and AI translators as fast-food providers.

07:15

Creator website

AI Summary

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

AI translation struggles with nuances and context, requiring human intervention for accuracy.

Human translators provide superior quality compared to AI, emphasizing the coexistence of both services in the industry.

Deep dives

Translation Challenges in the AI Era

The podcast explores the impact of AI on translation, highlighting the limitations and challenges faced by machine translation. It discusses how AI tools like chat GPT and Google translate struggle with nuances and context in translations, leading to inaccuracies and errors. Specific examples from the podcast illustrate how machine translations can misinterpret subtle meanings, such as equating 'limited evidence' to 'evidence with some limits'. Despite advancements in AI translation, human translators are still essential for maintaining translation quality, especially in complex or creative content.

Exploring the Future of Translation in the AI Era

4min

The Future of Translation in the AI Era and Related Resources

3min

Greetings from a world where…

translation is an art of disappointment

…***We’ve hit a bit of a lull in paid subscriptions lately, so please consider subscribing here to support ChinAI under a Guardian/Wikipedia-style tipping model (everyone gets the same content but those who can pay support access for all AND compensation for awesome ChinAI contributors). As always, the searchable archive of all past issues is here.

Feature Translation: Did AI kill the translator?

Context: This FT Chinese op-ed (link to original Chinese), authored by a translator who draws on her experience doing English-to-Chinese translation work, provides some fascinating insights into the future of translation in the AI age.

Key Passages: To jump straight in, I like how she illustrated the differences between ChatGPT and Google Translate for translators.