Why? Would a incorrect but literal translation be closer or further from what the author is trying to communicate?

I've been seeing this take on HN a lot recently, but when it comes to translation current AI is far, far superior to what we had previously with Google Translate, etc.

If the substack was written in broken English there's no way it would even be appearing on the front page here, even less so if it was written in Chinese.

An incorrect but more authentic translation would seem more real, like an human earnestly trying to tell a story. We would accept the imperfections and have a subjective feeling of more authenticity.

Of course, even this can be faked, sadly.

When the translation differs so much from what the author is trying to say in their native language, it loses its earnestness.

That's why translation is a job in the first place and you don't see publishers running whole books through Google translate. No one, least the authors, would accept that.

We don't know how much the imperfect translation would differ from the author’s intent, but we would sure try to meet him halfway. Nobody would criticize his broken English.

Contrast this with the faux polite, irritating tone of the AI, complete with fabrications and phrases the author didn't even intend to write.

Authenticity has value. AI speech is anything but authentic.

I mean, you're making assumptions about the author's intent going one way, but not the other. What if the polite tone is what they intended? And how do you know they didn't review the output for phrasing and fabrications?

The author acknowledged they used AI to translate. Is the translation they decided to publish among the given tools they had available to them not by definition the most authentic and intentional piece that exists?

All of this aside, how do you think tools like Google Translate even work? Language isn't a lookup table with a 1:1 mapping. Even these other translation tools that are being suggested still incorporate AI. Should the author manually look up words in dictionaries and translate word by word, when dictionaries themselves are notoriously politicized and policed, too?

The first version was translated by google and it's wordy, sometimes doesn't make sense, so I used Gemini this time. I sent the first version to many people and no one could finish it ;)