Last Thursday a German company, DeepL, announced with great fanfare that it had once again set a new record for translation quality based on artificial intelligence (AI). What’s more, the aforementioned company pointed out that it is far ahead of Google’s translator and Microsoft’s Bing translator in terms of quality. And he said that it is the first time that a new system allows everyone to translate even long and complex texts without error. He also dared to point out that professional translators chose DeepL translations four times more than any other translator.
To check the quality of your translation, in front of others, I proposed an exercise that I have carried out and that I am going to show below. DeepL asked him to choose any text and paste it to each of Google’s translators, Microsoft’s Bing and his own, DeepL’s. And it is what I have done and I show below so that whoever reads this article draws their own conclusion. At the end, I also include the correct translation from a professional translator.
The text that I have chosen is a text in Russian, a language of which I am totally unaware, chosen at random on the Internet. It is as follows: Девя́тое ма́я – э́то осо́бый день для всех ру́сских люде́й. Э́то День Побе́ды. ?
If we check the translations of the different systems that use artificial intelligence, there are some differences. DeppL translates the text as follows: ‘The ninth month of May is an important day for all the Russian people. This is Victory Day. It is the day the Great Patriotic War (as World War II is called in Russia) ended. ‘
For its part, Google Translator does the following translation: ‘May 9 is a special day for all Russians. This is the day of victory. This is the day the Great Patriotic War (as they call WWII in Russia) ended. ‘
And Microsoft’s Bing AI translator says: ‘The last day is a day for the entire People of the Republic. It’s Pobeda’s day. This is the day that the Great Father’s War (as Russia calls World War II) has started. ‘
The correct translation is: ‘May 9 is a special day for all Russians. It is Victory Day. It is the day when the Great Patriotic War ended (as they call World War II in Russia). ‘
Which of the three translations is closest to reality? In my opinion, it seems that Google’s is closer to that made by the professional. And DeepL’s, it seems, doesn’t quite fit the correct one. The one from Micrsoft does not seem the most appropriate either. Who is guilty? The artificial intelligence that each one uses? Its algorithms? The neural networks that each one uses? Or the people who have programmed the algorithms and developed the application?
DeepL says its new translation system has been scientifically evaluated through “blind” tests. 119 passages of considerable length and from different fields were translated using the DeepL translator and other competing systems, such as Google or Microsoft translators. The translations were presented to professional translators to evaluate them and choose the best of them without knowing the system from which each one came. The translators opted for DeepL translations. What do you think?
