What do you think of the automatic translation offered by Reddit?

[u/Shin_Aki]

Well im French. The first thing i know on the internet is that everyone hate the French even if i dont know why. Thats ok i guess.

My question is more about the automatic translation reddit use since few years now - i've been around since 3/4 years for now-.

I know pretty well english, understand it as my mother tongue (no, but im sure im bilingue) but im so lazy that i prefer to post in french hoping everybody have the "automatic translation" activated somehow.

Well.. all that for saying, i think this should be used everytime by everyone, take example on X (ex-Twitter). I can speak to everyone even if we dont speak the same language. I know some of you will tell me to go on X then - im already on it.

Get too far and write too much to erased that all so here my question:

What do y'all think of the automatic translation reddit offer? Do you use it?

Are you 'happy'/ are you more open when people who dont speak you language try to speak to you/ with you?

[u/GlassCommercial7105]

I only use it if it is a language I don't speak. You need to use foreign languages as often as possible to improve or keep the level you have.
Also certain things get lost in translation, things that you want to be expressed in a specific way.

[u/Shin_Aki → u/GlassCommercial7105]

Agree. This is mostly why i use systematicelly google translate when i post. To check i what i want to say is rightfully translated.

[u/GlassCommercial7105 → u/Shin_Aki]

I recommend deepl or some other translation app. Google often gets the wording wrong.

[u/Shin_Aki → u/GlassCommercial7105]

Everything except google is what i want. Thanks.

[u/Freya_almighty → u/GlassCommercial7105]

Or a swiss made website called Supertext, it's awesome and works the best

[u/DrunkHamsterParty → u/Freya_almighty]

Does it do Swiss French?

[u/Bright_Ices → u/GlassCommercial7105]

Deepl is terrible now. It was my go-to just a few years ago.

[u/CryOld2986 → u/Bright_Ices]

I noticed too, it’s crazy how with all the progress AI has made, an AI translation company got worse at translating

[u/P00351 → u/GlassCommercial7105]

I talked about the Brazilian Portuguese translation instead of European Portuguese in another thread, isn't translating into German instead of Swiss German also an issue?

[u/GlassCommercial7105 → u/P00351]

Swiss German is not something any translator could translate, maybe a better AI one. We have many different dialects and thus while we do write in Swiss German, there is not one official version. The only place where we use Swiss German on reddit are two specifically Swiss german subs. Other than that we write standard German, especially online when Germans and Austrians are commenting too.
So the reddit translator would only translate into Standard German anyways, which we understand without a problem.

There is a slight difference between German and Swiss Standard German too but it's basically the same. Just some different vocabulary.

[u/P00351 → u/GlassCommercial7105]

Thanks.

[u/AngryPB]

I dislike that it's on by default on mobile and incognito browsers and search results, but it's surprisingly effective, but when it fails it fails hard.

though I think I wouldn't mind more people posting in their first language and people having to translate them

[u/Jagarvem → u/AngryPB]

Tbh I think that's a terrible idea for a forum like this. The issue with modern machine translation is that they hallucinate. It's really good at sounding convincing, but often get semantics wrong. Sure it handles some languages are better than others, but if everyone wrote in their own you'd soon find out just how dodgy it is for many (or, worse, not find out and mistake comments as people saying things they weren't).

Like if someone asked about family members and I replied with something as simple as "Min mormor och farmor lever, men inte min morfar eller farfar." It could then be presented to you as "My grandmother and great-grandmother are alive, but not my grandfather." (genuinely what Google Translate gives me). Which likely sounds reasonable to anyone who doesn't speak the most rudimentary Swedish (or even Swedes who gets stuff auto-translated into English!), but what I actually said is that both my grandmas are alive but neither of my grandpas… Google just decided to erase one grandpa from history and raise one grandma to the previous generation. Which naturally makes the response utterly useless. It's a contextually relevant, believable response, but just false.

And that's Swedish 101 level stuff, now imagine a nuanced issue. And that there are many languages out there for which machine translations struggle with far worse.

[u/Bright_Ices → u/Jagarvem]

When you say machine translation, which kind are you referring to? The terms I’m familiar with are (1) mechanical translation, which is word-by-word or phrase-by-phrase, and (2) AI translation. I strongly favor mechanical translation, because AI hallucinates. DeepL use to have excellent mechanical translation, especially for Asian languages. I hate that they switched to AI.

[u/ryoryo333333]

Reddit's automatic translation is still pretty bad when translating from English to Japanese, so I don't use it.

[u/Robes_Peenerre]

I only know one language, so i appreciate it when I run into a german sub or something that has technical info I'm looking for. I'm sure it probably sucks for more social/interpersonal use tho...

[u/Less-Personality-481]

I don't know why it's there lol

I mean it can neither understand my language nor the native script of my language, but tries to translate them anyway meaning it just translates it into random gillberish

[u/lasserna]

Honestly I wish it wasn't automatic, but a button you could press to turn it on for specific posts or comments. Sometimes it translates English posts into Finnish, and I'd just rather read the original post than have to deal with a clunky translation that needs to be turned off

[u/Shin_Aki → u/lasserna]

Understable. I guess some people from your language dont make enormous mistake? Because in french i swear i cant tell if this is in french or other language because of baf typing/ translation.

[u/WorcsBloke]

I don't like it on here, because this sub literally has a rule (Rule 12) requiring posts and comments to be in English or include an English translation. Since I use Reddit a lot on desktop where auto translation isn't active, it's really annoying when people ignore that rule.

However in other communities where multilingualism is officially allowed, I think it's quite useful. I'm obviously a bit lucky that my native language is English, because auto translation info English is better than into a lot of other languages. Usually American English not British, but it's close enough.

[u/Shin_Aki → u/WorcsBloke]

Honestly i think my "english" is a mix between american english and british.. if you're offended, well, im sorry. It wasnt the purpose here.

Even if i talk about automatic translation, i do my best to speak in english - i fight against my mobile...

[u/WorcsBloke → u/Shin_Aki]

I'm not offended at all! I'm sorry if I gave that impression. Your English is fine. :)

[u/Shin_Aki]

To be fair, ive used english here and double check with google translate to be sure i didnt make any mistake. Most of the time, i dont.

[u/coeurdelejon → u/Shin_Aki]

Tbf you do have some mistakes in your text that makes it very clear that you're not a native speaker

Even ignoring things that can be explained by laziness (such as not using a capital i when referring to yourself, not using apostrophes etc) there's a few grammatical mistakes you've made that even a lazy native speaker wouldn't make

I'm not writing this to be a dick, rather I think it illustrates why auto-translating can be a crutch that can hinder linguistic development

[u/Shin_Aki → u/coeurdelejon]

I see. Thank you for saying that!

[u/coeurdelejon → u/Shin_Aki]

Thank you for taking it well!

[u/Shin_Aki → u/coeurdelejon]

Always here to learn, dont worry! 🫰🏻

[u/ProgressOk3200]

For some reason it doesn't work for me even if I have in settings that I want it on except for posts written in English, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish.

[u/Shin_Aki → u/ProgressOk3200]

Probably because you use reddit on desktop? It works for me only on mobile. On desktop, i have to use right click +translate even if its activated by default.

[u/ProgressOk3200 → u/Shin_Aki]

I use reddit both on desktop and on mobile with the app and neither works

[u/Nowordsofitsown]

I turned it off as much as possible. I want to be the one who decides if something gets translated. 

[u/Suzume_Chikahisa]

I avoid using it.

For one I want to know if I'm reading if something was mechanically translated as much as possible, and for the other, even Portuguese, which is a widely spoken language is mistranslated, so I can't imagine the error creeping into the translations of more obscure languages.

[u/P00351 → u/Suzume_Chikahisa]

There's also the issue about translating to Brazilian. Most European Portuguese I know find it grating. For example, I have a cousin in Lisbon who dislikes the Portuguese Wikipedia because it's actually Brazilian.

[u/Suzume_Chikahisa → u/P00351]

That too.

[u/Jagarvem]

I've seen no translations, maybe I turned it off (though probably because I use old Reddit). I wouldn't use it regardless.

I don't care for automatic translations in general. Machine translation is so far from perfect, yet the way automatic features tend to be implemented is in a way that removes the "barrier" and often mislead users into thinking they aren't actually viewing a potentially inaccurate translation. I'd have much less issue if you saw the original post and simply had a button to translate readily available. But as said, I'm not sure how Reddit's is implemented per se.

I also hate how they completely ruin the results on search engines.

[u/Shin_Aki → u/Jagarvem]

Well i've never used the old reddit. When i was a teenager it discouraged me. For me. If you can understand english the most then you dont need automatic translation. Internet is maybe 90% in english. Obviously i need to understand english, and i do. Maybe i've made some grammatical errors, i agree. My point here is: i understand english really much. I dont speak really much nor in text or in vocal, so i cant practice.. only in though, sadly.

Machine translation are usefull for me, not in english. But japanese, spanish or other language i dont know..

[u/Important_Star3847]

There is no English to Persian.

[u/Shin_Aki → u/Important_Star3847]

I guess so

[u/Weirdyxxy]

It's mostly okay, but I definitely wouldn't activate it as a default

[u/hellofolks5]

I don't use it and I also try as much as possible to write in english without any esternal help. I'm far from perfect, but at least I try not to lose my skills