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by InsideOutSanta 618 days ago
I've been talking to a lot of Chinese people using machine translation recently, and noticed that inserting and removing "not" is very common for all translation tools I've used, from Google Translate to DeepL to ChatGPT. I'm not sure if it's particular to Chinese ←→ English, or if it's a common problem across all languages.

A priori, it seems like a pretty huge issue, because it changes a sentence's meaning to its opposite. Fortunately, it's usually easy to notice. But then again, I obviously wouldn't know about any instances I haven't noticed.
1 comments
082349872349872 618 days ago
Chinese ←→ English? any chance you might be willing to recommend a better test for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41696289 ?
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InsideOutSanta 617 days ago
I don't have a good idea on how to objectively test this, but subjectively, my impression is that most regular people in China don't know a lot about any countries outside of East and Southeast Asia.

Even something like Halloween, which apparently triggered this discussion, is not something most people, including kids, seem to be particularly familiar with. When I mentioned to a Chinese friend that we were celebrating Halloween last year, she advised me to be careful when inviting ghosts into my home. She was unaware that it is mostly a fun children's holiday where they dress up and get candy.

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skeledrew 617 days ago
Halloween is of Western, Christian origination and so knowledge of it wouldn't be something to expect in places not heavily influenced by the West or Christianity.
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082349872349872 617 days ago
Despite already having our own (week-long, springtime) holiday involving dressing up in costumes, Halloween has taken a firm hold here over the last couple of decades. Kids have never yet showed up at our door, but they're definitely out trick or treating.

I'd blamed chinese factories needing more places to sell their plastic halloween gear, but now it sounds like it just comes down to US media saturation?

Then again, we should all be stealing more holidays from each other; a more syncretic world is a less boring one.

[My german teacher in high school said the best thing about growing up in southern germany was that they got all the holidays (both protestant and christian) off from school]

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