I think we need Community Notes for translations now.
Imagine Tweets that had this translation problem.
Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations
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Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been playing with it a bit... the other day I asked ChatGPT the name of a certain animal in Urdu and it with complete confidence threw the name of a fruit at me. That said ChatGPT is better at picking up dialect nuances. I can ask it to tell me how to say something in Egyptian Arabic, vs most translation tools will use Modern Standard.
Which animal?
"wasp". IIRC it returned "shahtoot" which is a kind of berry.
I just tried again and it said "shahbaz" which is a name or at best an adjective. The correct translation would be "bher" which Google Translate displays as the "alternative" translation.
Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations
#53This is cut off for me.
The article seems to be doing some wordplay. Is it actually translating that one phrase to the terrorist thing? Or is it translating a passage that includes that phrase and is semantically much closer to the terrorist thing?
Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like it when arabic phrases are changed to be more palatable to western know-nothings. Ask the guy saying "alhamdulillah" if he means Allah or if he means God.
Isn't this the usual "accurate translation vs. localization" issue? There was a more poetic name for it, IIRC. It's an old problem.
This is an even more subtle point. In Arabic, Allah is simply the word for "God". As it turns out, Allah is also the English word for "Muslim God".
To take an English example, imagine a Christian saying "God is great", with an option to translate it as either: "God (generic) is great"; or "The Christian God is great".
Sure, he was probably thinking of the Christian God when he spoke, but making that explicit in the translation still changes the meaning.
Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations
#55more outrage bait from 404media.... It's bad sure, but this has been possible/happening with user-sourced translation 'correction' systems for years like in Google Translate. Anyone could have influenced the translation to include those phrases. And similar effects have been absorbed into automated engines
Yeah, when they first launched I was excited to subscribe because I thought paying for tech journalism instead of it being ad-driven would eliminate the clickbait and sensationalism. I unsubscribed after receiving a month of absolute drivel and headlines full of half-truths.
404 was sprouted out of Vice News. What were you expecting?
Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations
#56Performed a quick search for ex-cia working at instagram and came up with a ton of hits related to general information about ex-government agents working in key positions at many tech firms. https://start.duckduckgo.com/?q=ex+cia+working+at+instagram&... I'm not saying this translation error is related to that. I'm also not saying it isn't.
After the twitter files I just assume the government has their grimy little fingers in every company that has access to a large amount of eyes, prime for manipulation
Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations
#57This is cut off for me. The article seems to be doing some wordplay. Is it actually translating that one phrase to the terrorist thing? Or is it translating a passage that includes that phrase and is semantically much closer to the terrorist thing?
It's translating "alhamdulillah" to "Terrorist".
"Alhamdulillah" is Arabic for "Praise be to god" and (edit: to my ear at least) is used by Muslims (edit: by Arabic speakers more often) nowadays as an alternative to Allah u Akbar, Takbir, or Narai-e-Takbir because (edit: I think) those 3 terms have increasingly been co-opted.
This is the equivalent of translating "Praise Jesus" to "I love god and hate abortions"
Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations
#58[dead]
Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations
#59On a tangent to the main point, I like the subtle acknowledgement of our new reality - or at least of the one of many sudden shifts in common software tooling: > Google Translate translates the phrase to “Praise be to God.” ChatGPT translates it to "Praise be to Allah" or "All praise is due to Allah." LLMs turned out to be pretty good at translating, and ChatGPT (especially GPT-4) went straight into competing toe-to-…
I like it when arabic phrases are changed to be more palatable to western know-nothings. Ask the guy saying "alhamdulillah" if he means Allah or if he means God.
"Alhamdulillah" is Arabic for "Praise be to god" and is used by Muslims nowadays as an alternative to Allah u Akbar, Takbir, or Narai-e-Takbir because those 3 terms have been co-opted by Jihadists.
This is the equivalent of translating "Praise Jesus" to "I love god and hate abortions"
Also, Allah to Arabic native speakers can be used to mean "The Lord" in general. Levantine Christians and even some older Mizrahis will use Allah in daily parlance for "God" or "Lord". For example, in colloquial Hebrew, Yalla/Ya Allah is a common expression similar to "Oh God" or "Jesus" or "Come On" when annoyed.
Re: Instagram apologizes for inserting 'terrorist' into Palestinian bio translations
#60This is cut off for me. The article seems to be doing some wordplay. Is it actually translating that one phrase to the terrorist thing? Or is it translating a passage that includes that phrase and is semantically much closer to the terrorist thing?
It's translating "alhamdulillah" to "Terrorist". "Alhamdulillah" is Arabic for "Praise be to god" and (edit: to my ear at least) is used by Muslims (edit: by Arabic speakers more often) nowadays as an alternative to Allah u Akbar, Takbir, or Narai-e-Takbir because (edit: I think) those 3 terms have increasingly been co-opted. This is the equivalent of translating "Praise Jesus" to "I love god and hate abortions"
Is that the whole passage? It probably doesn’t matter. I’m just curious because the exact claim I see is
> The "see translation" feature for user bios was auto-translating phrases that included "Palestinian" and “alhamdulillah” into "Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom."
Which reads oddly