I find it quite insulting that you seem to think that non-native english speakers are incapable of reading the outputs of LLMs to asses if it still means what they intended to say.
Telling me you're insulted by my comment makes me question whether it is worth the time to reply. In the spirit of goodwill, let me provide some context that your emotional response might not have given you time to consider:
I work in a multilingual healthcare field and my output is often translated into different languages. Forms. Posters. Take-home advice following surgery. We provide all of this in every language where more than about 5% of customers speak that, so English, Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog and Mandarin.
In addition to English, I speak and read one of these other languages fluently and have since I was about 9 years old, but I don't live in the culture and don't understand the conveyed meaning of translated health-related phrases.
Do you think I use an LLM or an editor that does? No–because that would be silly and could convey information incorrectly to the audience who can only speak that language.
If you want to be quite insulted, turn on the news and get a realistic perspective on what is going on in the world. The people hurt by text going through LLMs is going to be those in extreme poverty and minorities subjected to machine generated translations without human review. You're fighting on a site where most of us would likely be on the same side of so many issues. Let's discuss and not make this facebook full of thoughtless responses.
Especially because it's so much easier to understand text than to produce it. I can read difficult authors in a foreign language and understand perfectly but there's no way I could write like them.
This just tells me you don't work with multiple languages very often.
I have spoken a second language fluently since about 9. I produce work that is translated into that language regularly... by a translator.
Being able to read words does not means I understand the meaning they convey to a person who only speaks that language. These are scientific papers we're talking about, conveyed meaning is valuable and completely lost when a non-native speaker publishes machine generated output that the writer could not have written themselves.
I don't have academic paper publishing peers with bad language skills, but I do have colleagues with bad language skills, and the misunderstandings and petty catfights they get themselves into over poorly worded sentences, missing linguistic cues, and misinterpretations, is utterly bonkers.
All otherwise perfectly smart capable people, they just happen to have this as a gap in their skillset. And no, they don't notice if transformative details get added in or left out.
> I do have colleagues with bad language skills, and the misunderstandings and petty catfights they get themselves into over poorly worded sentences, missing linguistic cues, and misinterpretations, is utterly bonkers.
Is this a widespread systemic issue within the organization, or do you work somewhere large enough that it is easy to find examples like this due to the number of people involved?
If it is the former, I would not want to work somewhere that people get into petty catfights over editing and have no abiity to write a sentence or understand linguistic cues. I don't remember working anywhere I would describe in the way you do in your second paragraph.
> And no, they don't notice if transformative details get added in or left out.
I guess I don't have to tell you not to select them as the people to review your work output?
Again, all the examples I'm reading make me think it would be beneficial for folks to include competent team members or external support for projects that will be published in a language you don't speak natively.
leakycap|8 months ago
I work in a multilingual healthcare field and my output is often translated into different languages. Forms. Posters. Take-home advice following surgery. We provide all of this in every language where more than about 5% of customers speak that, so English, Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog and Mandarin.
In addition to English, I speak and read one of these other languages fluently and have since I was about 9 years old, but I don't live in the culture and don't understand the conveyed meaning of translated health-related phrases.
Do you think I use an LLM or an editor that does? No–because that would be silly and could convey information incorrectly to the audience who can only speak that language.
If you want to be quite insulted, turn on the news and get a realistic perspective on what is going on in the world. The people hurt by text going through LLMs is going to be those in extreme poverty and minorities subjected to machine generated translations without human review. You're fighting on a site where most of us would likely be on the same side of so many issues. Let's discuss and not make this facebook full of thoughtless responses.
stackbutterflow|8 months ago
leakycap|8 months ago
I have spoken a second language fluently since about 9. I produce work that is translated into that language regularly... by a translator.
Being able to read words does not means I understand the meaning they convey to a person who only speaks that language. These are scientific papers we're talking about, conveyed meaning is valuable and completely lost when a non-native speaker publishes machine generated output that the writer could not have written themselves.
perching_aix|8 months ago
I don't have academic paper publishing peers with bad language skills, but I do have colleagues with bad language skills, and the misunderstandings and petty catfights they get themselves into over poorly worded sentences, missing linguistic cues, and misinterpretations, is utterly bonkers.
All otherwise perfectly smart capable people, they just happen to have this as a gap in their skillset. And no, they don't notice if transformative details get added in or left out.
leakycap|8 months ago
Is this a widespread systemic issue within the organization, or do you work somewhere large enough that it is easy to find examples like this due to the number of people involved?
If it is the former, I would not want to work somewhere that people get into petty catfights over editing and have no abiity to write a sentence or understand linguistic cues. I don't remember working anywhere I would describe in the way you do in your second paragraph.
> And no, they don't notice if transformative details get added in or left out.
I guess I don't have to tell you not to select them as the people to review your work output?
Again, all the examples I'm reading make me think it would be beneficial for folks to include competent team members or external support for projects that will be published in a language you don't speak natively.