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Show HN: Unlimited machine translation API for $200 / Month

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Re: Show HN: Unlimited machine translation API for $200 / Month

#21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how GPT3 translate it: I am a 34-year-old man with no fixed address. I am a nice guy who is a little overweight and middle-aged. Until three hours ago, I was a veteran hikikomori who was not homeless, but when I realized that my parents had died, I was treated as if I did not exist because I did not attend the family meeting, and I was caught in the scheme of my brothers and sisters, and I was expelled from my ho…

I really like that GPT3 translation, it seems to flow a lot better just reading wise and doesn't make me pause. Is there a dedicated GPT3 translation service?

The problem with using GPT3 for a straightforward translation service is the cost of the underlying API. You would never be able to compete at scale with Deepl which generally does a great job and cost a few dollars for unlimited usage.

Re: Show HN: Unlimited machine translation API for $200 / Month

#22
post #15
post #3

I've been following machine translation for the past 8 years or so just as a consumer and I still haven't found anything that provides out-of-the-box good results, everything requires still heavy manual editing/complete rewrites of sentences. Source Text: 俺は34歳住所不定無職。 人生を後悔している真っ最中の小太りブサメンのナイスガイだ。 つい三時間ほど前までは住所不定ではない、ただの引きこもりベテランニートだったのだが、気付いたら親が死んでおり、引きこもっていて親族会議に出席しなかった俺はいないものとして扱われ、兄弟たちの奸計にハマり、見事に家を追い出された。 Machine…

I have also been following machine translation, as a former professional translator and currently an academic supervising research on the use of machine translation in language education. For some real-world applications, MT can get the job done while saving a lot of time and money, though the users must understand its weaknesses. I did my own comparison now of Japanese-to-English translation by LingvaNex, DeepL, Goo…

Adding GPT3 translation:

In North Korea, where strict regional lockdowns have been imposed following confirmation of infections with the new coronavirus, the lockdowns in Pyongyang and other areas are gradually being eased, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation in North Korea. The aim is to avoid a shortage of labor for agricultural work, which is a "matter of life and death," in the face of food shortages and to finish necessary civil engineering work before the rainy season and typhoon season.

Once again, I find that Deepl has the most precise translation. GPT3 is good with very natural text but it does not follow the original text as closely.

Here "という" at the end of the last sentence was properly translated as it is said by Deepl, but was omitted by GPT3.

Both GPT3 and Deepl translation are vastly superior to all the others though...

Re: Show HN: Unlimited machine translation API for $200 / Month

#24
post #17

My litmus test for translation services is to see if the ambiguity between "turkey" (the bird) and "Turkey" (the country) manifests itself. Many European languages have two separate words for the two concepts that can't possibly be confused, so I think this is a good unit test. My Dutch test sentence is: "de kalkoen bezoekt Turkije" (the bird visits the country). Most of them get it wrong for most European languages:…

i get "der Truthahn besucht die Türkei" with google.

Re: Show HN: Unlimited machine translation API for $200 / Month

#25
post #17

My litmus test for translation services is to see if the ambiguity between "turkey" (the bird) and "Turkey" (the country) manifests itself. Many European languages have two separate words for the two concepts that can't possibly be confused, so I think this is a good unit test. My Dutch test sentence is: "de kalkoen bezoekt Turkije" (the bird visits the country). Most of them get it wrong for most European languages:…

Really interesting. I tried out "Hey, how are you? I don't understand how it can be so warm today." in my native language, and systran is the only one that got it 100% correct. Google was close, but reversed an article and a noun. The others mixed up "don't understand" with "don't know", which are similar but different enough to sound unnatural. I've always thought that the best way to assess these systems is how the…

I've put this exact comment and asked for a Korean translation:

> 정말 흥미 롭습니다.

Almost correct, but "흥미롭습니다" (lit. be interesting with an implied to me) should be a single word.

> "이봐, 잘 지내? 오늘 어떻게 따뜻해질 수 있을지 모르겠습니다. "모국어로 systran이 100 %을 얻은 유일한 언어입니다. 구글은 가까웠지만 기사와 명사를 뒤집었다. 다른 사람들은 "알지 못한다"와 "알지 못한다"를 섞었다.

"I tried out" is completely missing, and "in my native language" is joined to the next sentence "and systran is...".

The quoted sentence is, when translated back to English, something like "Hey, are you going well? I don't know how [something] can get warm today." Like most other machine translators LingvaNex is clueless about Korean honorifics (the first sentence is informal while the second is formal here). It does get a colloquial Korean expression for "I don't understand" (lit. 이해가 안 된다) but doesn't get the dummy pronoun, so it somehow assumes an unspecified entity as a subject. The position of the closing quote is also off.

The first quasi-sentence after that quotation became something like "[it] is the only language that systran got 100 % in a native tongue". Even after ignoring the inconnectly joined "in a native tongue", the dummy pronoun seems a culprit again here where "the only one" got interpreted as a language, not systran.

The next sentence reads like "Google was nearby but swapped a post with a noun." A Korean word 가깝다 (lit. nearby) has a slightly different nuance from English "close" so it has to be paraphrased. LingvaNex interpreted an article as, uh, a newspaper article which is not a synonym in Korean (the correct word should be 관사). And it somehow also switched back to informal expressions.

The final sentence reads like "other people mixed 'don't know' and 'don't know'." This is kinda hilarious; LingvaNex actually understands both expressions are more or less equivalent in Korean but doesn't know when they have to be distinct.

> 나는 항상 이러한 시스템을 평가하는 가장 좋은 방법은 구어체 연설을 처리하는 방법, 우리가 종종 당연하게 여기는 것이지만 "문자 그대로"번역하는 것은 정말 이상하다고 생각했습니다". 나는 대부분의 언어가 그 정확한 감정에 대한 문구를 가지고 있다고 확신하지만 그 단어 ( "당연한 것으로 받아들이십시오")조차도 번역하기가 어려울 것입니다.

The first half is so hopelessly mangled that I can't give an English equivalent. I mean, each part is reasonably translated (including the phrase "stuff that we often take for granted" which translation is pretty much correct) but the wrong ordering messes everything up.

The second half is more reasonable: "I'm confident that most languages have phrases for the exact feeling but even that word ('take it to be natural') would be hard to translate." What is "the exact feeling" is unclear due to the reordering, and "take it granted" got translated too literally, but otherwise sounds fine.

Re: Show HN: Unlimited machine translation API for $200 / Month

#26
post #24
post #17

My litmus test for translation services is to see if the ambiguity between "turkey" (the bird) and "Turkey" (the country) manifests itself. Many European languages have two separate words for the two concepts that can't possibly be confused, so I think this is a good unit test. My Dutch test sentence is: "de kalkoen bezoekt Turkije" (the bird visits the country). Most of them get it wrong for most European languages:…

i get "der Truthahn besucht die Türkei" with google.

I also get this with deepl

Re: Show HN: Unlimited machine translation API for $200 / Month

#27
post #24
post #17

My litmus test for translation services is to see if the ambiguity between "turkey" (the bird) and "Turkey" (the country) manifests itself. Many European languages have two separate words for the two concepts that can't possibly be confused, so I think this is a good unit test. My Dutch test sentence is: "de kalkoen bezoekt Turkije" (the bird visits the country). Most of them get it wrong for most European languages:…

i get "der Truthahn besucht die Türkei" with google.

Including the correct capitalization of nouns? Impressive!

I did a side-by-side test with a coworker, looking at the results in various European languages. We did get the same answers, and some languages did get the correct translation (Ukranian, Polish, Czech, but not Slovak), but that you get a different translation than I did is weird.

Re: Show HN: Unlimited machine translation API for $200 / Month

#28
post #17

My litmus test for translation services is to see if the ambiguity between "turkey" (the bird) and "Turkey" (the country) manifests itself. Many European languages have two separate words for the two concepts that can't possibly be confused, so I think this is a good unit test. My Dutch test sentence is: "de kalkoen bezoekt Turkije" (the bird visits the country). Most of them get it wrong for most European languages:…

My favorite example:

"Yesterday I went to the beach on Long Island. The sound was beautiful."

versus

"Yesterday I went to the symphony. The sound was beautiful."

The trick of maintaining the context of "sound" is difficult.

Re: Show HN: Unlimited machine translation API for $200 / Month

#29
post #27
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i get "der Truthahn besucht die Türkei" with google.

Including the correct capitalization of nouns? Impressive! I did a side-by-side test with a coworker, looking at the results in various European languages. We did get the same answers, and some languages did get the correct translation (Ukranian, Polish, Czech, but not Slovak), but that you get a different translation than I did is weird.

Yes, that is the 1:1 copy. I don't know German capitalisation rules. Was on mobile though.

Here's an interesting thing that might be due to their ML or whatever:

Try:

- de kalkoen bezoekt Turkije

- De kalkoen bezoekt Turkije

- de kalkoen bezoekt Turkije.

- De kalkoen bezoekt turkije.

- De kalkoen bezoekt turkije[space] with an extra trailing space

Re: Show HN: Unlimited machine translation API for $200 / Month

#30
post #18
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes significantly more sense. This is what human translators came up with. "I was a thirty-four-year-old man with no job and nowhere to live. I was a nice guy, but I was on the heavy side, didn't have good looks going for me, and was in the midst of regretting my entire life. I'd only been homeless for about three hours. Before that, I'd been the classic, stereotypical, long-time shut-in who wasn't doing anyth…

Not knowing Japanese and just having seen the translations posted here, I'm inclined to trust the machine ones more. "No fixed address" seems to be more accurate than "nowhere to live". Not sure if the first two sentences should be past tense. Again, unsure about "homeless" and 住所不定 appears to be a catchphrase which should always translate to the same thing. The vibe I get from machine translations is it refers to th…

For the context, this paragraph is the beginning of Mushoku Tensei [1], a popular light novel series. (That's why there are human translators for this otherwise obscure bit of text!) I haven't exactly read it, but the subsequent text [2] suggests that the protagonist got expelled from his family and indeed became homeless. The machine translator might lack this exact context but ideally could still recognize that just having no fixed address here wouldn't fit the mood.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushoku_Tensei

[2] https://ncode.syosetu.com/n9669bk/1/ (it's a norm for recent light novel series to be serialized in free web sites and then get published)

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