RIP translators. But also, damn, this technology is going to make language barriers obsolete.

Going to be speaking about AI translation + the full OpenAI event (and Google IO for good measure) on Big Technology Podcast this week. Apple: Spotify:

Translators will never be eliminated. Good translation requires human touch. It's going to make the job easier for the translators, because they can just translate a draft with AI, and then put in the human touch to make it more natural and deliver the right emotions.

@TunguskaGame Good point, thank you

So... not trying to be a hater, but can y'all stop using this click-baity sensationalist "RIP ______!" headline? It's tired. I'm tired of it. It also diminishes much of what humans do, and that has a lot of implications.

Nah, with no ability to use offline, it’s not the wave. Translators are most often needed for me when in a new country and before able to get internet or cell service active.

wait..where have I seen this before? remember Google Translator ??

Translators are living their best lives rn, thanks More content than ever *expected* to be translated, and that is only the first step before localization Linguists are working on all this tech and there is a lot more work to do

You're wrong about translators. For high-visibility copy, human review/editing is always a requirement, and LLMs just make it much faster. Fortune 100 companies do not take risks with their branding and legal matters.

Kind of, I found this translation a little off. The prompt was "when you hear Italian, say it in English, and if you hear English say it in Italian. But instead the AI responded first with an observation, "Mike, she wonders" - this is NOT a translation and wasn't what it was asked to do.

imho, this stuff is still quote weak when it comes to the idiomatic and subtle distinctions that are key to deep communications across languages.