31–40 of 67 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not what I use to translate. It was the first version to create usable output, and intentionally implemented in a code-free manner (today I have an extensive body of code in addition to the Claude Code harness instructions). Read my origin story, linked to in another comment, for more background.
Reiterating what I wrote above, sharing these would have been more interesting imo than sharing the pipeline output.
"All translations in this collection are © Scott Weisman. All rights reserved, except as granted by the license below." Does copyright actually belong to Scott Weisman if all the words are outputs of LLMs? Is there any relevant case law here? I'm very curious about whether LLM outputs are copyrightable by the LLM user (I'm guessing potentially it varies throughout the world).
An original human-authored translation is a derivative work that can hold copyright, but it is the human-authored parts that give it protection.
No amount of human authored pipelines that are automated (no human input) would give it this status as that is not human authorship (the pipeline itself can be however). The prompts for the LLM can also be copyright (again…human authorship), however they would be difficult to enforce since the direct output can’t be copyrighted.
While it's really cool that this is possible now, this project seems to be a thin wrapper around running Claude. Presumably, someone who wanted to read one of these books could just run it through Claude themselves with comparable results. Sharing some artifact of your own added value, or things you learned in the process, would be more interesting to me than the output.
Why was the comment of the author of the translation-site that explains the methodology flagged / dead? The mere fact that the translation was AI-assisted shouldn't be a reason to flag a comment. AI translations, especially supervised translations, can actually achieve a reasonable level of quality. Disagreement on AI philosophy shouldn't be a reason to flag a contribution.
A professional book editor and Hebrew translator said the translation of the one work he checked out was "impressive". Others have responded equally positively to the Latin translations. AI as a panacea is overwrought, but there are genuine positive uses of it. Would critics rather have NO translations of these pivotal works?
I sent a Classicist the link because it's adjacent to his area of interest, and by chance he addressed this question. I don't think he'll mind me quoting him:
"There's a lot of this shite popping up at the moment. [...] There seems to be some idea that publishing a shit translation of an untranslated work is better than no translation, but that's obviously wrong."
Speaking for myself: Some of the anomaly rules are obviously patches to deal with a specific situation, and might be better off in code. But relying on the chatbot to flag wider anomalies is odd. How does it know what it doesn't know?
At a minimum, I'd use a spread of models to gain binocular vision, and I wouldn't publish until a human was prepared to sign their reputation to it.
In other words, I think what you've got there is a first draft of a translation, not a translation. Given that, if you are going to publish, I think the NoDerivatives restriction is a mistake. But that's a minor issue.
Why was the comment of the author of the translation-site that explains the methodology flagged / dead? The mere fact that the translation was AI-assisted shouldn't be a reason to flag a comment. AI translations, especially supervised translations, can actually achieve a reasonable level of quality. Disagreement on AI philosophy shouldn't be a reason to flag a contribution.
A professional book editor and Hebrew translator said the translation of the one work he checked out was "impressive". Others have responded equally positively to the Latin translations. AI as a panacea is overwrought, but there are genuine positive uses of it. Would critics rather have NO translations of these pivotal works?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A professional book editor and Hebrew translator said the translation of the one work he checked out was "impressive". Others have responded equally positively to the Latin translations. AI as a panacea is overwrought, but there are genuine positive uses of it. Would critics rather have NO translations of these pivotal works?
> Would critics rather have NO translations of these pivotal works? I sent a Classicist the link because it's adjacent to his area of interest, and by chance he addressed this question. I don't think he'll mind me quoting him: "There's a lot of this shite popping up at the moment. [...] There seems to be some idea that publishing a shit translation of an untranslated work is better than no translation, but that's obv…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Would critics rather have NO translations of these pivotal works? I sent a Classicist the link because it's adjacent to his area of interest, and by chance he addressed this question. I don't think he'll mind me quoting him: "There's a lot of this shite popping up at the moment. [...] There seems to be some idea that publishing a shit translation of an untranslated work is better than no translation, but that's obv…
So, he's commenting on something he didn't read and compares it to shit? Good to know. I'll ignore him. I understand his point. Still, obviously my rhetorical question had in mind that what I do is good enough quality to make the question worthwhile. Better than a "first draft". As mentioned in another comment, some works were translated up to four times as I refined the process.
Translations of human language have no analogous mechanism. So yes, the translation might be perfect, but until a human puts their reputation on the line and says "I certify this translation is accurate", it's still shit. It's shit because of the way it was created, not its absolute accuracy (or otherwise). He doesn't need to read it.
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to upset you, and I know I won't change your mind. We just have different philosophical positions on this, I think.
Why was the comment of the author of the translation-site that explains the methodology flagged / dead? The mere fact that the translation was AI-assisted shouldn't be a reason to flag a comment. AI translations, especially supervised translations, can actually achieve a reasonable level of quality. Disagreement on AI philosophy shouldn't be a reason to flag a contribution.
That may be true, but also not really what i'm worried about. With AI on an ancient book written from a world view very different from the contemporary one, i'd worry more about misleading translations.