Comment on Duolingo Fires Translators in Favor of AI

• Zworf@beehaw.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨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 ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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    • addie@feddit.uk ⁨8⁩ ⁨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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      • intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Isn’t English able to disambiguate by using helper words like “will” or “would”?

        What tenses can’t be translated completely?

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