One very simple benefit is that it's unencumbered by copyright.
I do value the work of human translators; when they're really in harmony with the original work, they can be fantastic. But they can also be disastrous, like Alfred Birnbaum's translations of Murakami, which radically reshapes the protagonist and threw out nearly 20% of the original work.
If the Murakami was undertranslated then how will having more translations that crowd out the potential revenue of future translators help produce better quality translations?
The problem is that (we have every reason to believe) models like Claude were trained on existing translations. Now they're being used to generate things that are direct replacements for those translations in the marketplace.
This is basically an anti-AI author or lawyer's dream case.
And, seeing this uncanny-valley-of-slop output, I kind of hope they go for it.
Comments
One very simple benefit is that it's unencumbered by copyright.
I do value the work of human translators; when they're really in harmony with the original work, they can be fantastic. But they can also be disastrous, like Alfred Birnbaum's translations of Murakami, which radically reshapes the protagonist and threw out nearly 20% of the original work.
If the Murakami was undertranslated then how will having more translations that crowd out the potential revenue of future translators help produce better quality translations?
The problem is that (we have every reason to believe) models like Claude were trained on existing translations. Now they're being used to generate things that are direct replacements for those translations in the marketplace.
This is basically an anti-AI author or lawyer's dream case.
And, seeing this uncanny-valley-of-slop output, I kind of hope they go for it.