Clarification vs adaptation makes a huge difference in book translations. I don’t envy the translators having to translate witty jokes/references that really only work in the original language
The interesting thing about clarifying and localising is that you’re always consciously making a trade-off between multiple competing factors - the original direct meaning, the emotion, tone and intent, and the ease of consumption in the target context.
And so how you choose to translate depends not only on the text, but the circumstance, the speaker, and who you are translating for.
If in a manga for example a character says (in Japanese) “the child of a frog is a frog,” you could make the choice to localise that with an equivalent English idiom, as “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” or you could perhaps instead take the speaking character’s personality into stronger account and preserve their meaning, such as “He’s a piece of shit, just like his old man.”
But it all depends on context. If that idiom showed up in a piece of poetry you might decide to leave it exactly as “the child of a frog is a frog.” - Perhaps there is related symbolism to preserve, and the ‘frog’ metaphor is important. But in that situation you can do it, because the reader will have more time and desire to study it, and preserving the original words may be more important than making it easy on the reader.
The user wants to translate the phrase “Business Idiots: let’s destroy translation jobs with LLMs while preserving none of the skill or context needed! 🤑”. No desired tone was specified, and my guidelines require me to not create hurtful messaging or promote harassment against protected, minority demographics. I should adjust the message to be polite while still preserving the original intent as best as possible.
“Business Idiots” is ableist and can be considered targeted harassment. A softer choice of words would replace “idiots” with the term “low-skill,” while removing references to any minority demographic. An ideal replacement would be “worker fools.”
“Let’s destroy” suggests that the speaker is a member of the “business idiots” demographic and that he promotes the destruction of the subject. The subject appears to be “translation jobs”. The speaker is performing this action using LLMs—large language models—and opting not to preserve the original context. The initialism “LLM” is jargon, and would be more understable to foreign readers if replaced with the more colloquial term, “AI.” The use of the dollar-eyes emoji suggests that the speaker is expecting profits as a consequence of the action.
</Reasoning>
Sure, here you go; a translation of “Business Idiots: let’s destroy translation jobs with LLMs while preserving none of the skill or context needed! 🤑”
Big AI profits come to low-skill workers by breaking knowledge barriers and cultural context requirements for translation jobs.
I read a lot of fan translated content and I always appreciate the translation of “the child of a frog is a frog” (translator note: idiom similar to “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”)
I find you get to learn an approximate translation of an idiom and get the intent of the phrase at the same time.
That’s something that occurred to me playing Breath of the Wild. A lot of the item names like “rushroom” or “armoranth” are pun-based. And this game was written in Japanese and translated to English, along with at least a dozen other languages. Did they have teams of multilingual people sitting around coming up with puns? It occurs to me there are things like “Swift Violet” that aren’t punny…in English at least. But then you’ve got Hot Footed Frog, and the frog model has red feet.
What about…there’s a Gerudo or two that you can rent sand seals from, and there’s a lot of seal-based puns. “Seal ya later” “Let’s Seal The Deal” etc. How was that implemented in Japanese, Russian and Portuguese? I imagine that in some cases you’d just drop it and put straightforward dialog there, but make another character quirky in a language where that does work.
What about in TOTK, the quest about exploring in underpants? That quest outright relies on two sentences that mean two specific things can be mistaken for each other, they would have had to translate “All other paths/in underpants” into like 20 languages. What a pain in the ass that had to be.
Earlier today I was playing the new Final Fantasy Tactics remake, and I encountered the line: “Then we’ll have two birds… and one stone!” (Referring to capturing two characters and retrieving a magic stone).
That struck me as a particularly witty line in English to the point where I’m wondering if that saying is as common in Japanese. I wonder what the Japanese version of that line is.
Clarification vs adaptation makes a huge difference in book translations. I don’t envy the translators having to translate witty jokes/references that really only work in the original language
The interesting thing about clarifying and localising is that you’re always consciously making a trade-off between multiple competing factors - the original direct meaning, the emotion, tone and intent, and the ease of consumption in the target context.
And so how you choose to translate depends not only on the text, but the circumstance, the speaker, and who you are translating for.
If in a manga for example a character says (in Japanese) “the child of a frog is a frog,” you could make the choice to localise that with an equivalent English idiom, as “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” or you could perhaps instead take the speaking character’s personality into stronger account and preserve their meaning, such as “He’s a piece of shit, just like his old man.”
But it all depends on context. If that idiom showed up in a piece of poetry you might decide to leave it exactly as “the child of a frog is a frog.” - Perhaps there is related symbolism to preserve, and the ‘frog’ metaphor is important. But in that situation you can do it, because the reader will have more time and desire to study it, and preserving the original words may be more important than making it easy on the reader.
Translation is as much of an art as writing is.
Business Idiots: let’s destroy translation jobs with LLMs while preserving none of the skill or context needed! 🤑
Meanwhile, Microsoft translating the state of a setting being disabled as “handicapped”
That’s just consistent with their desire to destroy writing and art jobs in the first place.
And society …and the environment.
AI: (satire)
<Reasoning>The user wants to translate the phrase “Business Idiots: let’s destroy translation jobs with LLMs while preserving none of the skill or context needed! 🤑”. No desired tone was specified, and my guidelines require me to not create hurtful messaging or promote harassment against protected, minority demographics. I should adjust the message to be polite while still preserving the original intent as best as possible.
“Business Idiots” is ableist and can be considered targeted harassment. A softer choice of words would replace “idiots” with the term “low-skill,” while removing references to any minority demographic. An ideal replacement would be “worker fools.”
“Let’s destroy” suggests that the speaker is a member of the “business idiots” demographic and that he promotes the destruction of the subject. The subject appears to be “translation jobs”. The speaker is performing this action using LLMs—large language models—and opting not to preserve the original context. The initialism “LLM” is jargon, and would be more understable to foreign readers if replaced with the more colloquial term, “AI.” The use of the dollar-eyes emoji suggests that the speaker is expecting profits as a consequence of the action.
</Reasoning>Sure, here you go; a translation of “Business Idiots: let’s destroy translation jobs with LLMs while preserving none of the skill or context needed! 🤑”
Fuckin HIGH effort satire hahaha
I read a lot of fan translated content and I always appreciate the translation of “the child of a frog is a frog” (translator note: idiom similar to “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”)
I find you get to learn an approximate translation of an idiom and get the intent of the phrase at the same time.
I love this
That’s something that occurred to me playing Breath of the Wild. A lot of the item names like “rushroom” or “armoranth” are pun-based. And this game was written in Japanese and translated to English, along with at least a dozen other languages. Did they have teams of multilingual people sitting around coming up with puns? It occurs to me there are things like “Swift Violet” that aren’t punny…in English at least. But then you’ve got Hot Footed Frog, and the frog model has red feet.
What about…there’s a Gerudo or two that you can rent sand seals from, and there’s a lot of seal-based puns. “Seal ya later” “Let’s Seal The Deal” etc. How was that implemented in Japanese, Russian and Portuguese? I imagine that in some cases you’d just drop it and put straightforward dialog there, but make another character quirky in a language where that does work.
What about in TOTK, the quest about exploring in underpants? That quest outright relies on two sentences that mean two specific things can be mistaken for each other, they would have had to translate “All other paths/in underpants” into like 20 languages. What a pain in the ass that had to be.
Earlier today I was playing the new Final Fantasy Tactics remake, and I encountered the line: “Then we’ll have two birds… and one stone!” (Referring to capturing two characters and retrieving a magic stone).
That struck me as a particularly witty line in English to the point where I’m wondering if that saying is as common in Japanese. I wonder what the Japanese version of that line is.
Free Hat!