All translations, easy.

Discuss, plan, and make Translations for FreeOrion
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danieledel
Space Floater
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Joined: Mon Apr 03, 2017 4:11 pm

All translations, easy.

#1 Post by danieledel »

For your videogame I would like to point out that there is a facility for making translation files in various languages, not translating just a small text as with Google Translate, but entire pages. As? Using the artificial intelligence of Google Bard or ChatGpt, which can translate anything you want into Indonesian or Tamil, easily and quickly. If you can offer your video games in many different languages they will have a truly deep global reach.
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Ophiuchus
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Joined: Tue Sep 30, 2014 10:01 am
Location: Wall IV

Re: All translations, easy.

#2 Post by Ophiuchus »

danieledel wrote: Tue Jan 09, 2024 1:27 pm but entire pages.
we do not have entire pages of text. we have small text snippets mixed and reused in different context (many are also parametrized). i do not know if any of the LLMs or other AI currently are able to handle snippets. If you know about an example, please provide it.

This currently needs very thorough human interaction/validiation by a native speaker.
The necessary work could be probably decreased though

some ideas
  • find a way to get the resulting texts. e.g. dump of text with context information. E.g. resolve the mixing; also for each backend usage provide a wrapper which contains context information e.g. 'when displaying ship properties, XXX is used as label name for the fuel meter'. Or 'ENC_SHIP_DESIGN_DESCRIPTION_STATS_STR is the label name used when showing detailed ship design information for a given species'
  • let an translator program/AI translate/generate necessary texts or text snippets. I dont know 'Provide an associative list of all mentioned labels which uses the label name as a key and a short descriptive keyword in Tamil as a value. The value should not be longer than 25 characters.'
  • We probably could add some meta information to the pedia which helps establish context. E.g. "Ship designs have ship parts. Ship parts are of a certain part type. There are different part types in the game. The label names of the part types are 'PC_FUEL'... . A ship part has a capacity. For the PC_FUEL: the description label name is PC_FUEL_DESC, the associated ship meter label name is METER_FUEL, the associated ship meter description label is METER_FUEL_DESC"...
Probably this could be done in a generic way by integrating queries to AI into current internationalisation programs. Those programs already know about snippets and
different languages and how to make side-by-side comparisons for the same snippets in different languages for validation.

please do the needful
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

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danieledel
Space Floater
Posts: 42
Joined: Mon Apr 03, 2017 4:11 pm

Re: All translations, easy.

#3 Post by danieledel »

I tried but I didn't succeed, let's say I launched the idea but perhaps it will take some time before free online artificial intelligences are able to do this job. I'm sorry for the time I've wasted, but in the meantime I've launched the idea.
Good evening.

BlueAward
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Re: All translations, easy.

#4 Post by BlueAward »

Even human translators can do poorly getting just a file to translate without context. I've seen this happen multiple times, even saw an example in Windows itself.

A word without context, you may not even know if it is noun or verb, and translation may widely differ. You need to disambiguate somehow.

Sometimes even full sentences can be understood multiple ways. Stripped conductor running through a train cart, could be a naked person or some potentially dangerous piece of wire that could give you electric shock. If you saw a girl with a telescope, did the girl have the telescope, or were you a dirty voyeur using telescope to spy on people? Good luck figuring that out, though the generative neural network in your skull probably has a bias towards one meaning or the other, and so can an AI.

The context might also be subject matter knowledge in general. A friend of mine had some task in school to translate an RFC, asked me to check translation she had. It was full of errors that didn't make sense in technical context. Turns out she already gave that file to translate to some English major. But that person, supposedly good in English, had clearly zero understanding of technical context and jargon used in the RFC. But at least in such case, AI would have done better cause it would have the entire text and would understand it is a technical text, or could be prompted so, and likely has heaps of examples to learn from of already translated technical texts (this was time before current AI craze, now AI is doing heaps of homework I'm sure).

AI may be way better than nothing, but at present isn't the ultimate solution if you want it to be... Well, good.

Geez I even sometimes cringe at actual professional translations that the translator clearly didn't get some cultural reference for example. Like they did their best, but didn't understand what the original utterance was aiming to achieve. Best translation can even go off script and say something completely different than literal text, to preserve the pragmatic meaning, not the semantic meaning. And cultural references or idioms are prime example.

Translation of literature is an art in its own right an AI can ape the art but... miss the creative spark, deeper meanings. But it is surprisingly good at the aping process, I give it that.

I wanted to translate bits of FreeOrion and humored myself with what AI would suggest. It was Aria from Opera browser that time. And properly prompted, given the context, I was actually really surprised how well it did. It really was able to pick some nuances apart. But yeah it was still my, human work, to give it the proper context, ask for specific things, the nuances, how would it translate this or that, and pick the suggestion or prompt deeper. Based on the facts that I know my native language, English language, and the game itself. Great tool, but not something you can just put a file in and get a file out, ready to use.
Last edited by BlueAward on Thu Jan 11, 2024 1:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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LienRag
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Joined: Fri May 17, 2019 5:03 pm

Re: All translations, easy.

#5 Post by LienRag »

What's your native language ?

Also, you're aware of the famous translation of the phrase "Germanium is a well-known semi-conductor" in a Chemists' congress ?

Anyway, what are the copyright issues with translations made by AI ?
For images, it's still pending (that's why FreeOrion doesn't use them), but for translations I don't know.
And of course it would be quite difficult to prove that we used AI translation, but that doesn't mean that's a good idea to violate the law just because it is unenforceable.

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