AI or not to AI

Ok here is my problem. English is not my first language. I don't use it daily (other than my work, engineering stuff). So when time comes and I need to write something about gardening, permaculture etc I struggle to express myself. I can write 10 times more, express myself 5 times better in Turkish.

What I have been doing recently is that, I write whatever comes to my mind, Turkish, English, any language. Then feed it to AI and ask it to translate and edit it. At the end I need to edit AI's version too, because it is usually full with junk. Nevertheless it is like 10 times less stress for me. I can create a post in 10 minutes, instead of  an hour of correcting vocab and grammar.

I also dont want to see permies turn into an AI junk bin - as it happened to all social media platforms. But I want to post more, share more. A lot of stuff happened in the last 4 years and more to come...

What you guys think?

I have heard that AI doesn't understand gardening and makes a lot of wrong assumptions.

If you want to learn about gardening then get your fingers dirty.

I don't know if AI can really translate stuff.

S says, " At the end I need to edit AI's version too, because it is usually full with junk.

I feel you are right here.  Maybe some books on gardening would help.

S. says, "But I want to post more, share more.

I believe in sharing real life experiences, not AI junk...

It's very like my situation living in Portugal.  I don't speak the language especially well as I've only been here about 8 years.  

If I want to write a post for a Portuguese-speaking forum it's much easier for me to write it in English.

What I do is to write in English and then use google translate or other online translator to translate it, but then I read through it in Portuguese and see if I think it looks like it makes sense.  If I'm in doubt over the translation, then I translate it back to English to see if it looks right.  I wouldn't use "AI" to edit something as it's too prone to add stuff I don't want.

Here's an anecdote about translation.  I used to play a multi-player online game where you spent about 6 weeks building up to a final phase.  In the final phase, in order to succeed, your team had to work very well as a team and follow instructions exactly.  We constantly had a problem where one player failed to do this.  Well, it turned out that he was from Egypt and spoke almost no English, his native tongue was Arabic.  After a quite a bit of playing with google translate back and forth form English to Arabic I managed to explain the issue and give him some basic help with how the "endgame" worked.  The trick of copying what the translator put out (I, obviously, can't read Arabic) and re-translating that to see if it made any sense was definitely useful!

Translators of all types can fail hilariously.

Someone near us lost their dog. A bitch, to be precise. This was the notice they placed, helped by a translator.

In Portuguese, it's a perfectly normal sort of notice. In UK English, decidedly less so...

Hello! I’ve only posted a couple of times, but from lurking and reading for a few months it seems that people here are from all over the planet and wouldn’t be interested in judging your writing We’d rather hear your own, non-AI-processed words.

I think using AI to translate from a language that you know well, to a language that you're less fluent with is a perfectly reasonable use of the tool. My wife is writing a book where a lot of her source material is in French or Polish. She found that using two different engines to translate into English and then comparing the two results was a useful tool for helping to pick up on nuance in the original. Of course, an extra step is an extra burden.

So I am a professional translator. I've learned a few languages living outside my own country (at this point I've spent more time outside than in places where my first language is spoken), and I hear you about it being more comfortable to write in one versus another.
I agree with Burra that any translator can screw things up real good!! Robot or not! I've seen things that I swear Google Translate would blush, done by humans.
As a person who pays my bills with translation***, I often tell my clients that these tools are great for jobs that need to be only 'good enough'. if you want perfect, or confidential, then they might not be a good deal. But if you're fine with 'good enough', then great!
I would suggest avoiding AI, because it is saving all you put into it and you can assume it's for nefarious purposes. But there are sites like Glosbe, Linguee or even Google Translate that are using machine translation rather than AI agents (I'm not sure if you're using an app on your phone or what, these are sites). But if you want to use a tool to feel like you fit in better here, I think you should.
Likewise, if you want to just speak on your own, I would welcome that too.
But I understand how you feel and that feeling of dread when you just want to communicate and not worry that you just said something foolish.


*** we have been dealing with "the robots are coming for our jobs" since at least 2017, when neural network language models came out, it might have been a few years earlier. The last few years have been turbulent, to be sure, but I don't think there's much point in getting all hysterical and telling people they must avoid AI etc. Some AI tools (for testing protein folding, for identifying molecules, for scheduling) are fabulous! But I'm not a fan of giving anyone my clients' information, and so I don't let AI near my work.

I want to add here (putting on my moderator hat):

s. ayalp wrote:
I also dont want to see permies turn into an AI junk bin - as it happened to all social media platforms. But I want to post more, share more. A lot of stuff happened in the last 4 years and more to come...

S. Ayalp,
I think it's so AWESOME that you care enough about Permies to be concerned about this.
Permies is people, and you're one of those people that makes it what it is.
We definitely will not be letting things get junky around here!
And I hope to see more posts from you in future, however you make them. xox

The unfortunate thing about AI right now is that it is effectively a parrot for whatever it has scraped online. It is often wrong. It is not thinking, it is copying/meshing all of that potentially bad information together and pretending it is confident in it's answer. I have heard AI described as something like "the most confident 8 year old answering your questions." We all have met those precocious 8 year olds who confidently give you wrong answers. AI company practices have also often been unethical about how they gather and use data for their models (scraping copyrighted material, etc.).

AI would be extremely valuable for assistant-type tasks (like translation) but you have to have enough expertise to be able to correct it when it is wrong, which isn't fair for people trying to learn a new language.

I personally would avoid AI and try using translation-specific apps that have been around for awhile. One I have been using for many years before this age of AI is Google Translate.

It may be worth searching online for "translation turkish to english" and avoiding the AI results (for now).

We have had some looooooong staff meetings about this.  

First, let me be clear that I'm going to be vague

https://permies.com/t/260395/clear-vague

The short version is:  if it is good, then good!   if it is shit, then it goes.

On that note, I present that over-confident 8-year-old creating a trailer for star wars if it was created by wes anderson



"wow"

Steph Walker wrote:It may be worth searching online for "translation turkish to english" and avoiding the AI results (for now).

I've been referring to this translation site for many years, as I've had penpals in other countries and English hasn't been their first language. The nice thing about this translation site is that it has a few different options, including Google Translate, that you can cycle through and find the appropriate translation... Or at least a "happy medium" that helps your point come across.

Drop-down menus help you choose the original language and the target translation language. The programming can also auto-detect the source language, in some cases.

https://translation2.paralink.com/

Good luck to you...!

I encourage folks to give AI a good try it least once. Use it to clean up an old photo or something, just so you can see what it can do. After all, it is wise to "Know Your Enemy".

I teach Spanish. Ultimately, you have to do the mental work. BTW, I like the Speak app.