Comment on Duolingo Fires Translators in Favor of AI

sabreW4K3@lemmy.tf ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• sub_@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yeah, this is frustrating.

  I can handle absurd sentences like “The dog is cooking the dinner”, and actually finds them beneficial because it prevents me from guessing the whole sentence.

  But this is a sign that not enough human efforts are poured into create permutation of the answers.

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  • jarfil@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The full sentence was: “Last night we ate the dog cooked for dinner”… /s

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    • sub_@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      nope, “The dog is cooking a dinner” is that kind of absurdist sentence that works. So that I just don’t guess a human on the subject position. Or ‘eating’ for the verb

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  • tryptaminev@feddit.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I actually see a learning purpose in those ridicilous sentences.

    I’ll far more likely remember the cat that works at the small hospital than if Juan does it.

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• The_Terrible_Humbaba@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is frustrating, but it has always happened been an issue; and the more you advance in the language the more it happens, because fewer people have found the problem and reported it. It’s a human problem that comes with not considering every possibility when creating an exercise. I’d imagine that using AI (in addition to humans) would actually help reduce cases like this, since they could be detected before users run into them.

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• flora_explora@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Interesting, I usually question my English skills if something like this happens!

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  • Zworf@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s because a good translation is not literal.

    In the German version it says taglich in hamburg. In English you would indeed put an adverb (like daily) at the end.

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    • intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Not true at all. OP’s construction is perfectly valid english.

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      • addie@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Absolutely this. I’d have argued that ‘every day’ is a more idiomatic translation than ‘daily’, and what native speakers would say, but that’s irrelevant. English tends to emphasise the end of sentences as the most important part, so all these translations are correct depending on the nuance that you intend:

        • Daily in Hamburg, many ships arrive (as opposed to eg. cars, or few ships)
        • Daily, many ships arrive in Hamburg / Many ships arrive daily in Hamburg (as opposed to eg. Bremen)
        • Many ships arrive in Hamburg daily (as opposed to eg. weekly)

        Wouldn’t question any of those constructions as a native speaker. In fact, original responders’ example was why I gave up on Duolingo myself originally, some years ago. Translating ‘future tense’ sentences from Spanish into English or back again is always going to be a matter of opinion, since English doesn’t have the verb conjugations that Spanish does. Guessing the ‘sanctified answer’ is tedious, when a lot of the time it’s not even the most natural form of a sentence.

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