this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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This is very important. I'm in a situation where the work I used to do is supposed to be taken over by the shitrobot. On a job platform now 15% of the job offers are the original work, 85% is AI slop fixing in one way or another. This led me on a 2-year odyssey of trying manual work (too weak), being really poor (getting better at that), and finally deciding that if I'm forced to serve the shitrobot to avoid starving I'll serve it badly. Btw so far I've managed to avoid these jobs, may it remain so.
That said, if you are in need of a real human translator for tech or creative EN-DE projects do contact me, I'd be glad to keep doing work that makes sense!
I absolutely despise morons who smugly pronounce language learning and translation work "solved", while at the same time not bothering to learn any language beside their native one. And most often not bothering to use that one well, as well. You can tell so easily they have no idea what they are missing out on.
I hope it's all going to end in style of tower of Babel event. I know that it won't, but hey.
Wish you the best for your field of work.
Language is in a peculiar decline these days - there's the process of English becoming the most badly spoken and written language ever, because all of us non-natives use it online and often also at work. Together with the inescapable avalanche of slop being churned out.
Also, language used to carry authority and this is getting lost for more and more people. We have been bombarded with advertising, propaganda, lies for many generations now and it's becoming stale. Longer texts used to carry more authority, now a topic can be communicated very precisely through a meme, and why not? For a translator I am getting awfully distrustful of words I'm afraid. I believe we are already standing right under the crumbling tower and will have to learn to communicate through shrugs and grunts. And again, why not?
That’s an interesting view, because one way I always looked at it was it became a gating function (in a negative way). Just like the rich raise the barrier to entry, I always thought that there were people who were dismissive of others because you couldn’t speak their language perfectly.
Coupled with the hundreds of unique languages (let alone dialects) it created artificial pockets and barriers of understanding and power.
I do understand some of the cultural nuances of specific languages, but overall having a single common language understood and used by everyone can help unite us globally, rather than keeping us siloed.
I think that's more or less the same idea as language carrying an authority. You can only use language for gating an ivory tower if the plebs believe your expensive terminology describes real and relevant facts. I think an insider language that doesn't carry this authority gets called other names, slang maybe? Also used for gating, just not as a barrier towards rising towards a higher status position in academia or rich circles.
English and the internet have this potential of bringing people together, it's quite powerful. You suddenly find out how your situation relates to people on other continents. I remember that before there was a much stronger feeling of 'other' towards people from other countries and cultures, and often the only information you could get about these others would be through the eyes of someone else. To be honest, even if the powers that be fuck up the internet beyond recognition now, that's a kind of devil difficult to stuff back into the box.
Is this supposed to be a meta comment to show that machine translation can't help us read it?
Edit: If it is, well DeepL manages a pretty coherent translation:
I'm guessing "sub-rhythm" should be "algorithm" and "pros" probably means software and not people. The last sentences could use some more context. But otherwise this sounds kinda logical.
Now Google Translate…
…yeah.
Actually lets break it down, so it is clearer what the accuracy was. I will not talk about the mistranslations, though.
I have come to the same conclusion as the previous poster. DeepL identifies correctly I agree with them, but fails to pick up the nuance of it. Pretty good.
I am indirectly taking part in mocking techbros for thinking AI has solved language learning. This is referencing the previous post, so DeepL could not know that without context. It somewhat picks up I am saying AI-stuff has not solved anything.
It correctly picks up I learned something about language yesterday and that someone fails at it, but it fails to identify I am talking specifically about dialects and fails to clearly convey it is AI that fails. It translates correctly I mistakenly thought the previous thing was true.
I am saying AI could not properly answer to talking in dialect, referencing indirectly I am talking in dialect in the message. DeepL picks up that I am saying something is failing, but does not convey anything else correctly.
I'm telling Google was the worst at translating, and that I found that hilarious. DeepL fully fails to translate the meaning, but translates the word "shit" acceptably, and conveys correctly something is funny.
So what was lost in translation?
Talking in dialect, and AI failing to translate dialects properly - Core part of the message, so really bad, that it was about dialects, was not conveyed.
I am laughing at Googles translation abilities being the worst - Fails to convey this completely. Not a core part of the message, but still relatively important information.
Nuance about thinking before agreeing - Leaving that out does not matter in casual conversation. If this was translation for a more "proper" thing, this could be bad though.
Mocking techbros - This required context that wasn't offered.
Okay, so it was in dialect. I honestly would not have expected translation programs to be able to do that at all. Or are Finnish dialects actually written language? In German they aren't, but there are books written in a phonetical way in dialect, so there may be something for the AI to reference.
I was just at a networking/research technology conference in Helsinki (TNC26) where the topic of nordic languages— especially minority ones—being under-represented by current automated transcription/translation tools came up in one of the side talks I attended. There's some effort by various European NRENs and universities to train models on these languages so those tools can be more widely available to students, academics, and the public. The talk was about "Scribe" by SUNET (Swedish Research Network) hosting whisper models for this purpose.
That said, I do believe that learning a language by studying, immersion in the culture, and actually having conversations with people who speak it natively is the only way to really experience another language. There's always something lost in translation if you can't internalize a language by living it. In some ways language is one of the parts of the human experience that's unique and irreproducible by LLMs (despite the name). Language is more than rote communication of information; it conveys ideas, emotions, the weight of memory and history.
Also, Finnish is fucking hard lol. I can usually pick up a bit of language wherever I travel, basic phrases usually. But DAMN trying to nail the epiglottal sounds of even "Hyvää yötä" threw me!
I only got to see Helsinki, but it was a beautiful city. The Finnish people I met were lovely with a great dry sense of humor, and I would love to visit again someday.
Kippis
Well, it is always fun to play with the balls and the girls.
I went from mobile apps programmer to school bus driver. 100X happier even if I make 1/6 what I used to.
I saw a talk recently of somebody translating manuals for new medical devices. She said translating software is not helpful because it’s a very specific field and the devices are brand new. Maybe give it a try.
Our company decided to build our own ai translation system because the human translators we've been hiring started using AI... Quality dropped immensely, trust is lost. CEOs don't feel like shopping around. So sad.
Here's the thing: human translators have been using 'AI' for over a decade. It used to be called machine translation, and for anything but the dumbest stuff it's a dumb idea, first nail in the coffin of translation. Translation agencies loved the shite, of course, because they could now pay a translator 0.05€ per word instead of 0.10€, arguing that now the same work took less time (it did, and also a lower quality translation was produced with a lot of costly bullshit software in the middle). The translators, as is to expect, hated it, but were forced to accept it or starve. We are now very slowly reaching the point where we are hired back as esteemed professionals after AI-caused communication mishaps and business fuckups keep piling up ...
Imho nothing wrong with AI use by professionals, as long as it's verified. That obviously wasn't the case.
I've got a friend who used to translate for the U.N.
Sometimes you do not want to mess up that translation and it's worth any price.
Believe me, in too many cases somebody thinks that a lower price can somehow be had without compromising quality. What if we let a bot do it and a human quickly checks the result? It's like proofreading, right?
For some time I worked for Microsoft on their Copilot AI (outsource, I did not know I was signing up to work for Microsoft).
I cannot tell you how many good translators Microsoft hires just to rate Copilot's responses in various languages. They often had interesting insights to share, but whenever I asked my managers where to put it, they said we don't care. It's just rated 1 to 5, and that's it. Nobody even cares about language-specific nuances.
Technically none of the translators are ever 'hired', let alone 'employed'. All the work is based on shit contracts through several proxies. Some people weren't even sure that they were doing work for Microsoft. Hell, as a junior manager even I never had contact with anybody from Microsoft. Only our seniors.
It's an overall incredibly depressing environment. Very knowledgeable and passionate people still try to do their jobs as well as possible and provide insightful feedback, despite the fact it's supposed to completely replace them. Only to be ignored and ghosted when a given language is deemed not worth the cost by microslop.
I was literally the only person who ever responded to translators labeled as no longer useful. Even though they still had their contracts active. And I know that, because several of them told me that. Nobody else bothered to even respond as people asked for any available jobs when struggling to make a living.