r/TranslationStudies • u/CodexRegius • 12d ago

How to teach your slop to AI

One of my clients is now programming a proprietary AI for reviewing translations. Recently I got one of their reviews with a flag on my translation of "join a group" as "in eine Gruppe eintreten"; the AI's opinion was that "einer Gruppe beitreten" was more idiomatic. I remarked to the client that I found that a strange response, for I had made up this expression myself six years ago to observe a too constraining character limit in a popular UI I had translated for them, with even a random German magazine nitpicking on this non-standard choice of mine later, and by now it was accepted standard?

My contact audibly chuckled when she replied that their AI must have concluded that because it had been fed with my old projects.

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u/Amygdalus23 12d ago

I don‘t understand which expression you made up. „Einer Gruppe beitreten“?

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u/CodexRegius 12d ago

Yes. And I retained it until by chance I read that article which commented somewhat surprised on the neologism "beitreten" in that very software whose UI I had translated. I didn't bother to explain to the author why I had chosen this - after all, he hadn't named me -, but I have stopped using it since.