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End of Japanese community

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Re: End of Japanese community

#441

Post by tw04 »

eloisant wrote: post #392
sarreph wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it's very rude and a no-no in Japanese culture What, specifically, about that phrasing is "very rude" and a "no-no" in Japanese culture? I am genuinely curious.

Politely say "I don't care what you think but I won't change anything" is perfectly fine in Japanese culture. Taking an issue privately instead of showing disagreements in public is also perfectly fine for Japanese people. The issue has nothing to do with Japanese culture, but with how you work with a community of volunteers over the web. "Let's jump on a call" is what you say to a coworker, not to a volunteer in an…

> "Let's jump on a call"

Let’s jump on a call is something you say when you feel that the tone and intention of your communication is getting lost in text. And whether it’s common in all cultures or not, tone and intention getting lost in text is universal.

Re: End of Japanese community

#442

Post by toyg »

arjie wrote: post #174

I understand the matter in theory, but I don't understand the matter in practice. Clicking through on the user, I couldn't identify any machine-translated overwrites of his work. What is an example of this? And if the community that manages the site objects, why not apply a batch temporary revert, and then re-run once/if everything is solved. This is a trivial operation for me to do on MediaWiki with a bot, so it mus…

> "Ask forgiveness, not permission" is fine in order to move things forward

No, in a community of peers that's a great way to burn goodwill, particularly among volunteers.

One should "ask forgiveness" when managing upwards, and "ask permission" when managing across or downwards. That's what you do if you respect people.

Re: End of Japanese community

#443

Post by ehnto »

ninkendo wrote: post #121
ehnto wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I don't think you quite understood the issue. This issue is specifically centred around the human element of the work and organisation. The translators were doing good work, they wanted to continue that work. Why it's important that the work done is by a human is probably only partially about quality of output and likely more about authenticity of output. The human element is not recorded in the final translat…

> The human element is not recorded in the final translation output, but it is important to people that they know something was processed by a human who had heart and the right intentions Not that I entirely disagree with the conclusion here, but… It feels like that same sentiment can be used to justify all sorts of shitty translation output, like a dialog saying cutesy “let’s get you signed in”, or having dialogs wi…

Oh I wasn't really referring to tone or language like that, I also don't particularly like it and prefer concise clear language. While LLMs can totally achieve that, I want to know a human decided to do it that way. At some point this mindset is going to look very silly, and perhaps even more so for software. But ultimately it's a human feeling to want that and humans are also not deterministic or logical.

Re: End of Japanese community

#444

Post by glimshe »

bayindirh wrote: post #427
glimshe wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reaction baffles me and feels like online indignation culture. All I could see, as a Latin American English speaker, is someone who's sincerely trying to help and picked their words carefully. Your proposed phrasing sounds unnatural and AI-like.

This is exactly what cultural difference looks like. What sounds rude here sounds perfectly fine over there. While I have written that comment somewhat quickly, that's not AI at all, I can assure you about that. :)

You're touching the heart of the question, but not in the way you think. Any arbitrary statement could be construed as offensive by SOME culture out there. But people prefer to immediately assume the worst and be offended instead of giving others the benefit of the doubt.

For instance, if I followed the principles of indignation culture, I could be offended by your "I can assure you about that :)" statement. I could say "Are you making fun of me?!?!"

To be clear, your statement is perfectly fine. I understand what you're saying, despite disagreeing.

Also, this happened in an English language forum. It's reasonable to expect that foreign speakers would be somewhat versed in the conventions of the English language and see that the comment was not offensive at all.

Re: End of Japanese community

#445

Post by Levitz »

xxs wrote: post #318
1over137 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking a second language live is much harder than taking your time and writing something.

That's not necessary true. Regardless the response is totally trash and the timezone (US west coast) likely doesn't help, either Also I'd expect if a person volunteers as translator they'd be pretty decent at speaking.

The only context I can think of in which it wouldn't be true is if someone learned the language through full immersion with no text involved, it's a bizarre situation.

There's also no reason as to assume that a volunteer translator is good at speaking, especially in regards to English, which pronunciation is not explicitly stated in its writing (like, say, Spanish).

You can't really ascertain how good I am at speaking, for an obvious example.

Re: End of Japanese community

#446

Post by tsimionescu »

apexalpha wrote: post #359
tsimionescu wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were some small bug report, even from someone pretty ticked off, I'd agree. But this is a response to someone who has just announced that they are quitting an organization they had spent 20 years of their life volunteering for, because of the disrespect they have felt from the org. This is not a "hop on a call" moment. This is a "please accept to meet so I can apologize in person, and see if we can repair thi…

I don't know the original author but as a non-native speaker I guess I miss the cultural connotation surrounding "hop on a call". Doesn't seem weird to me, seems apt to ask to escalate the method of communication when a serious issue like this arises. Would you consider it more respectful to deal with this issue just by posting in the thread?

Hop on a call is very informal language, and suggests that this is just a small problem we can quickly workaround. The issue isn't so much the idea of getting in a direct call (though there are problems with that as well, especially the tendency to remove this from the record). It's the wording that suggests this is a tiny issue that we can just "hop" on a call to address.

Re: End of Japanese community

#447

Post by tw04 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #353
apexalpha wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone from the Netherlands I read absolutely 0 condescending or patronising behaviour in this. It just looks like someone trying to get in contact and help out. I could've written this myself, genuinely trying to help.

If this were some small bug report, even from someone pretty ticked off, I'd agree. But this is a response to someone who has just announced that they are quitting an organization they had spent 20 years of their life volunteering for, because of the disrespect they have felt from the org. This is not a "hop on a call" moment. This is a "please accept to meet so I can apologize in person, and see if we can repair thi…

And I’d say claiming that she should hop on an 8 hour flight from Jakarta to Japan to apologize for a decision she didn’t make is more than a bit overly dramatic.

Re: End of Japanese community

#449

Post by yahoozoo »

nozilla wrote: post #252

> Hi Marsf, > I'm sorry for how you and the Japanese community feel about the MT workflow that we just recently introduced. Would you be interested to hop on a call with us to talk about this further? We want to make sure we trully understand what you're struggling with. > My timezone is UTC+7, so it should be easier for us to set up time. Let me know how that sound! What a horribly condescending and patronising resp…

what

Re: End of Japanese community

#450

Post by Jach »

int_19h wrote: post #366
avadodin wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the LLMs are to blame here. Not yet, at least. This is caused by people active in English-speaking communities translating memes literally and spreading them in their native language communities as-is. As the meme spreads, monolingual speakers begin using the same format and eventually they reference it off-line.

Not really. I have observed the same thing in Russian, and no, it's not for expressions that are translated literally. Having said that, SOTA models got much better at this kinda stuff. They're quite able to write in a way that is indistinguishable from a native speaker, colloquialisms and all, with the right prompting. But SOTA models are also expensive. Most automated translations are done with something way cheape…

That's basically my complaint about all these AI translations being shoved around in places. If they were better, I'd complain less. I suppose they'll get better eventually, but that's not really guaranteed. Google Translate is still somehow terrible and has stagnated for a long time -- things got a little bit better with DeepL but now SOTA LLMs (e.g. ChatGPT) are quite good (even if they still have quite some ways to go) and so far beyond the old stuff, and allow you to actually discuss the translation itself with nuances kept/lost rather than just a straight one-shot A to B.
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