this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
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Why are online translators crap at capturing nuance? (feddit.online)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by animemann80@feddit.online to c/languagelearning@sopuli.xyz
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I'm not talking about translations of basic dialog such as "How are you?" or "Nice to meet you." from English to let's say Japanese, Mandarin, French, Spanish & whatever. Rather the topic dwells more on translation apps or LLM's failing to capture the nuance of a conversation since words can connotate different definitions as well as being understood differently when applied.

Take the word 蛇行 (だこう) which is defined as amongst the lines of "meandering" but when compounded with 蛇行運転 for example, the definition leans closer to "erratic driving" but most online translatiors mess this up on saying "driving in a serpentine manner" which sounds stupid. No wonder why Japanese is hard for LLM's to work with.

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[–] isyasad@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

I feel like the fundamental reason is that words have multiple definitions. 蛇 does mean snake, so "driving in a serpentine manner" kinda makes sense, even though it's not the primary definition. I feel like it's kinda the wrong tool for the job. If you want to understand the nuance, you could look at a multilingual dictionary that gives multiple definitions. Jisho.org does define 蛇行運転 as "erratic driving; driving in a zigzag."

Not a great example because that's the only definition it gives, but suppose I want to look up the word 浪人. Impressively, Google translate gives "Ronin (a student who failed the university entrance exam and is studying to retake it)" but a dictionary like Jisho will give me that PLUS the original meaning: "ronin; masterless samurai."