DeepL's LLM Outperforms Google Translate, ChatGPT-4, and Microsoft

Averaged paired preference is not necessarily transitive.

It’s true. DeepL is based in part on the linguee data, which has long been the highest quality real world language use database. It excels at not translating literally, but actual meaning. While not being impaired by also having to be a general chat model with a conservative system prompt and fine tuning (GPT4)

Presumably Google have not updated their Translate product to use the latest LLM technology - I gave it some Russian text and it produced a very poor translation that was literal garbage in parts. When I fed the same text to Perplexity I got an excellent translation.

> The quality of translation using the traditional DeepL varies; sometimes it is better than Google Translate, other times it is worse. They are both quite terrible for Chinese, since they provide literal translation: The product is essentially someone speaking English with Chinese words, disregarding natural expression, nuance, and distiction between spoken and written language.

There's no machine translation that can churn natural sounding results from Chinese->English, but I find Google Translate better than DeepL for certain niches, because DeepL seems to have been fed nothing but traditional literature, while Google has a certain awareness of many niche topics and can accurately translate made up names from video games for example.

Here's a paragraph from the Chinese wikipedia on a video game :

>《崩坏3》[b]是中国大陆游戏开发商米哈游开发的的手机3D角色扮演动作游戏。《崩坏》系列的第3作，沿用了前作《崩坏学园2》角色[4]。故事背景、剧情和世界观与《崩坏学园2》有所不同。讲述了女主角琪亚娜·卡斯兰娜和她的朋友们的冒险[5]。为ACT类型游戏

Google Translate:

>Honkai Impact 3[b] is a 3D role-playing action game for mobile phones developed by Chinese game developer MiHoYo. It is the third game in the Honkai series and uses the characters from the previous game, Honkai Gakuen 2[4]. The story background, plot and world view are different from Honkai Gakuen 2. It tells the story of the adventures of the heroine Kiana Kaslana and her friends[5]. It is an ACT game.

DeepL:

>Crackdown 3[b] is a 3D role-playing action game for cell phones developed by mainland Chinese game developer Miha Tour. The 3rd installment of the Crackdown series follows the characters of its predecessor, Crackdown Academy 2[4]. The setting, plot, and worldview are different from that of Wipeout 2. It follows the adventures of the female protagonist Kiana Kaslana and her friends[5]. For the ACT genre of games

Crackdown, Wipeout, Miha Tour are all wrong in this context.

And here's the free chatGPT (3.5?)

>'Honkai Impact 3rd' is a mobile 3D action role-playing game developed by miHoYo, a game developer from Mainland China. It is the third installment in the 'Honkai' series, continuing the characters from the previous game 'Honkai Gakuen 2'. The story background, plot, and world view are different from 'Honkai Gakuen 2'. It tells the adventures of the heroine Kiana Kaslana and her friends. It is an action-type game.

Since chatGPT is more than a tool for translation, here's the result from asking it to rewrite the paragraph into more natural sounding English :

> 'Honkai Impact 3rd' is a 3D action role-playing mobile game developed by miHoYo, a game developer from Mainland China. It is the third installment in the 'Honkai' series, featuring characters from the previous game, 'Honkai Gakuen 2'. The story, plot, and world are different from 'Honkai Gakuen 2'. The game follows the adventures of the heroine Kiana Kaslana and her friends. It belongs to the action game genre

I'd consider ChatGPT a winning tool overall, were it not for the occasional (rare in practice, but it happening even once is enough to make me angry) "I can't do that, Dave" from the AI safety bull. Google Translate doesn't attempt to filter speech. I can only speak from trying the free chat version of GPT. I have no idea as to whether the API is prone to this nonsense or not.

While it's very good, and I do use Linguee frequently, by being a LLM it also confabulates. Invent a word in the source language, and it will try very hard to invent a translated word by using parts of the source. Use it but don't blindly trust it.