[lstamour]

I doubt I can train myself to do better than ChatGPT can, this late in the game. When I last needed to communicate in Chinese, which I often have to for products I’ve ordered or other mishaps, all I did was use ChatGPT and compare the result in other translation apps to make sure it approximated what I wanted to say. I also included the English version for completeness and accuracy. While it’s true I should learn other languages… right now it’s simply easier to assume computers can take on this role in the near future, at least until ChatGPT can be trusted as an education tool.

[Noumenon72]

I am stunned that only one of 99 comments here mentions ChatGPT. If computers can transform one language into another as fast as I can type, why would I try to learn to do it with my brain? It's like majoring in the abacus.

[hititncommitit]

I think it depends on your goal. If it’s to communicate, I think it’s fine to use machine translations especially in limited situations like directions or something like that. But language is also a social act, and you can’t really build the same rapport with someone using a translator as you can by speaking their language- especially in person.

But the machine translations are not (and will probably never be) perfect I’ll show you why:

Habló con su jefa y le dijo que le tiene ganas.

Google translate: He spoke to his boss and told her that he feels like it.

Well in Spanish this could mean:

(He/she/you) talked to (his/her/your) (boss/wife) and told (him/he)r that (he/she/it/you) (somewhere between wants and craves) (him/her/you/it).

This sentence mind you, isn’t especially contrived. It’s just how people talk in Spanish. And while all of these potential translations are good, only one is actually accurate. The only thing that it certainly doesn’t mean is:

He spoke to his boss and told her that he feels like it.

Which is what Google said it meant.

The problem is that what may be and can be ambiguous in one language, often needs to be explicit in another language. And when it must be explicit, the translator or whatever’s translating makes a choice and you don’t know what’s being said on your behalf. And while you can certainly improve a machines ability to guess what’s meant, you’d have to change the languages themselves to actually solve this problem.

What I find most amusing is when English speakers complain about why Spanish uses genders and say its pointless. Because Spanish uses genders for precisely the same reason English does. To add specificity and make things less ambiguous.

I realise this is a very long way to both agree with what you said and disagree.