• Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    How sure are you that idioms which don’t even have good translations will be accurately translated by the AI? How sure are you that there won’t be cultural misunderstandings which go beyond translation?

    • Kalothar@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      While I’m not a native Italian speaker. This is the result of having GPT4 translate the meaning not the words themselves.

      These are the results:

      Prompt: “Can you translate the meaning of an idiom in English to an equal idiom in Italian?

      Example 1: A hard nut to crack

      Response: Certainly! The English idiom “a hard nut to crack” can be translated to the Italian idiom “un osso duro,” which also conveys the idea of something or someone being difficult to understand or solve.”

      Then I did some research and that is an actual idiom and it translate to the words A Hard Bone literally, but it means a like “this is a touch cookie, a tough one” so I would say it’s the same meaning.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I can tell you’re not an Italian speaker. That’s not the proper Italian idiom, lol.

        The actual idiom is “osso duro de roer”, without the verb it is not the idiom. And no, it doesn’t mean “tough cookie” in the same way that tough cookie is used in English. Nor does it mean Hard nut to crack either. Nuance is really lost with the technocrats, eh.

      • NekuSoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de
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        1 year ago

        What would be interesting to know is whether this would also work when translating the idiom as part of a larger text or if this only works when specifically prompted to translate a single idiom.