To be fair, LLMs do really good translations, but as with everything you use them for, you need to be familiar with the subject so you catch their mistakes.

I’m thinking beginner level so the LLM can support instead of replacing you while you get better.

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 5 points 11 hours ago

To be fair, LLMs do really good translations

Speaking as a multi-lingual person, they really don't.

but as with everything you use them for, you need to be familiar with the subject so you catch their mistakes.

Yeah, which is precisely why they're rubbish at translating things. In order to effectively use it to translate things, you need a good grasp on the source and target language, effectively making the tool useless.

[–] myotheraccount@lemmy.world 14 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

LLMs do not do translations, they approximate something similar to the original statement in another language. They are very accurate when given a common piece to translate, but wildly accurate when given a sentence which is highly improbable.

[–] kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 hours ago

they approximate something similar to the original statement in another language.

The funny thing is, for translating sentences or longer text, that's what translation is. You can't translate things 1:1, because different languages have different words, different phrases, different structures. You have to make some sacrifices somewhere, and the more you try to stick to a literal translation, the more stilted the result gets.

This isn't to say LLMs are a good choice, but translation is an art more than it is a science, so to speak.

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 10 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

If it makes more mistakes than humans and therefor requires humans to check all of their work, and it's been shown to not be very cost-effective, then what's the point? Better to just not use the AI at all.

[–] ranzispa@mander.xyz -2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Human revision of a text is way faster than human writing of the same. A human can review way more translations than he can translate in the same time.

If that is your job, as long as the LLM can generate a decent translation, that is a good trade. This is not to say that there may not be better tools than LLMs, I'm not much into the business of translations.

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 points 11 hours ago

I kinda don't agree, for me personally it's faster to write than it would be to read and comprehend.
Companies buy employees time the same way they buy tokens, the humans cost about the same for better results, so quickness isn't really a factor here unless you're willing to lower quality for speed and generally that isn't the case with translation work.