Comment on Duolingo Fires Translators in Favor of AI

• addie@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨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 ⁨9⁩ ⁨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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    • addie@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s almost exactly the problem. English uses helper words exclusively for future tense, and indeed, helper words like ‘to’ to form an infinitive. ‘Will’ is the helper word to show that something is a fact, that it is definite - grammatically, it is indicative. (The sun will rise tomorrow.) ‘Would’ is the helper word to show that something is an opinion, or dependent on something else - grammatically, it is subjunctive. (If you push that, it would fall; if it was cheaper, I would buy it.)

      Spanish has both helper words for future tense (conjugations of ‘ir’, analogous to ‘going to’, often used in speech) and straight-up conjugations for future tense (doesn’t exist in English; often used in writing). It also conjugates verbs differently if they’re indicative, subjunctive, or imperative (asking or telling someone to do something). This is how Spanish manages to have fifty-odd ways to conjugate every verb, which is very confusing to English speakers who make do with three ways and helper words.

      Translating a ‘future tense sentence’ for Duolingo requires you to have psychic powers about whether something is fact or opinion, which helper words are wanted, and so on, and it usually comes down to guessing between multiple ‘correct’ answers, which Duo will reject all but one of.

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