alt Hacker NewsAI will definitely not take over translation for a long time. Machine translation has improved to the point it's mostly no longer incoherent, but for non-formulaic content it's still very hit-and-miss, not that much better compared to 10-20 years ago. For example, something they still struggle with is consistently translating terms coined within the text with consistent phrases.
>A budding painter or a musician could support themselves off commissioned / commercial work while working on their grand opus... but now, the customers just prompt gen AI.
Are you joking? The only people I see using generative AI are either companies, shitposters, and spammers. Who are all these people who have stopped paying commissions and moved over to prompting AIs?
Replies
There's another translation use case worth considering. For non-native English speakers, AI can help express ideas they already have in a language they're less comfortable with.
Especially on forums like HN, the AI isn't generating the person's views - it's helping them say that what they already mean more clearly in English.
But what share of translation dollars are non-formulaic content? To me it seems that there are tons of manuals for dishwasher and such to translate (where from my experience quality basically doesn't matter) and only a limited amount of diplomatic communiques.
> For example, something they still struggle with is consistently translating terms coined within the text with consistent phrases.
Harness issue, just explicitly tell them to maintain a vocabulary as they go for proper nouns and novel terms.