this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
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Why are online translators crap at capturing nuance? (feddit.online)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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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[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 2 points 1 day ago

These tools are as good as the information fed to them, so I'd presume they weren't fed nuanced situations. Now why would that be, I have some theories, either the people building the machine didn't think/remember/find such materials to feed it, or these materials are hard to come by.

Reminds me how, also in Japanese, most dictionaries online I found, and even some people I asked about, couldn't tell the difference between 今日 and 本日. What helped me was having enabled the Japanese-French dictionary setting in a multi-language dictionary I checked despite barely understanding French.