I don’t even care about flirting with women I just want a free app where I can practice speaking my second language with actual people and not some sanitized AI that doesn’t understand context or slang instead of watching cringe youtubers
Like Duolingo/genki or google translate doesn’t really capture おっす. Duolingo probably doesn’t bother with that kind of informal speech. Google just translates it as “hey”, which isn’t wrong, but it’s not really right either. Even deepl just translates it as yo!, which is much closer but still kind of not really it. It’s more like a sup brah kind of thing. Like a really masculine youthful colloquial greeting I guess is the best way to explain it.
some sanitized AI that doesn’t understand context or slang
That doesn’t make sense to me, AI does understand context and slang, that’s what makes it great for language learning, previously with basic language translation like google translate/dictionaries etc wouldn’t understand localised context and slang
I never know what to tell people like you. DeepL is the best one at translating Japanese and it still is mixed
Japanese is a contextual language. It is difficult for machines to translate because it is not a language where a word simply means this or that.
Take a very short sentence:
がくせいです - gakusei desu
Gakusei is “student”
A literal translation of this would be “am student” or “is student”
But if I say this to you you will infer things based on context and です/desu takes on a different role. If I am clearly referring to myself then gakusei desu in this context becomes “I’m a student” (though to be fair I would probably have said it with a first person pronoun and particle like わたしはわ (watashi wa)
But if I’m referring to another singular person in the room this would be inferred through context, eg “he’s a student.” But this is where it starts getting confusing, the copula (desu) doesn’t differentiate singular or plural, so context is also used to derive plural forms, eg “they are students”.
This copula also applies to other situations outside of he/she like “it” eg コンビニです, konbini desu, konbini being “convenience store”, “its a convenience store”
This is a very very basic idea of why. It gets more complex obviously once you move past these extremely basic examples but honestly someone more knowledgeable at Japanese should explain at that point, I’m self taught and mediocre (thus my use of 0 kanji, I’m pretty sure at a minimum there’s kanji for gakusei and watashi but I suuuuck at kanji. I at least know meat. 肉肉肉 although that’s mostly thanks to anime and the local Asian grocer lmao).
I think AI can probably do it eventually but it will need to be able to do much better job of understanding what the source material is actually talking about and that’s the challenge to overcome. And that’s why it will probably never be able to really accurately translate a paragraph copy pasted into it
As to the sanitation that’s a separate issue about corporate control of AI. If they don’t want their translation services to sound “vulgar” that’s their prerogative I suppose but it also means they sound less human and realistic because people are gross and ugly when they speak. Vernacular is ugly and lexicon adapts quickly in ways that people don’t always love. But to be clear I don’t mean it’s just about slurs and bad words, I mean it’s about slang in general. Words that are generally inoffensive but not considered proper. English equivalents would be what we consider zoomer speak, hella sus yeah bruh type shit (I’m not good at this part)
ChatGPT (and presumably the there chat LLMs) is way way better at this than DeepL or Google Translate, because you can give it context before. Like “A is a x and B is a Y, when A says z, what does that mean”
Just have your second language be English. I’m practicing it right now. Has to be the easiest language to learn for the sheer amount of English content there is.
I don’t even care about flirting with women I just want a free app where I can practice speaking my second language with actual people and not some sanitized AI that doesn’t understand context or slang instead of watching cringe youtubers
Like Duolingo/genki or google translate doesn’t really capture おっす. Duolingo probably doesn’t bother with that kind of informal speech. Google just translates it as “hey”, which isn’t wrong, but it’s not really right either. Even deepl just translates it as yo!, which is much closer but still kind of not really it. It’s more like a sup brah kind of thing. Like a really masculine youthful colloquial greeting I guess is the best way to explain it.
But not discord, fuck discord
That doesn’t make sense to me, AI does understand context and slang, that’s what makes it great for language learning, previously with basic language translation like google translate/dictionaries etc wouldn’t understand localised context and slang
I never know what to tell people like you. DeepL is the best one at translating Japanese and it still is mixed
Japanese is a contextual language. It is difficult for machines to translate because it is not a language where a word simply means this or that.
Take a very short sentence:
がくせいです - gakusei desu
Gakusei is “student”
A literal translation of this would be “am student” or “is student”
But if I say this to you you will infer things based on context and です/desu takes on a different role. If I am clearly referring to myself then gakusei desu in this context becomes “I’m a student” (though to be fair I would probably have said it with a first person pronoun and particle like わたしはわ (watashi wa)
But if I’m referring to another singular person in the room this would be inferred through context, eg “he’s a student.” But this is where it starts getting confusing, the copula (desu) doesn’t differentiate singular or plural, so context is also used to derive plural forms, eg “they are students”.
This copula also applies to other situations outside of he/she like “it” eg コンビニです, konbini desu, konbini being “convenience store”, “its a convenience store”
This is a very very basic idea of why. It gets more complex obviously once you move past these extremely basic examples but honestly someone more knowledgeable at Japanese should explain at that point, I’m self taught and mediocre (thus my use of 0 kanji, I’m pretty sure at a minimum there’s kanji for gakusei and watashi but I suuuuck at kanji. I at least know meat. 肉肉肉 although that’s mostly thanks to anime and the local Asian grocer lmao).
I think AI can probably do it eventually but it will need to be able to do much better job of understanding what the source material is actually talking about and that’s the challenge to overcome. And that’s why it will probably never be able to really accurately translate a paragraph copy pasted into it
As to the sanitation that’s a separate issue about corporate control of AI. If they don’t want their translation services to sound “vulgar” that’s their prerogative I suppose but it also means they sound less human and realistic because people are gross and ugly when they speak. Vernacular is ugly and lexicon adapts quickly in ways that people don’t always love. But to be clear I don’t mean it’s just about slurs and bad words, I mean it’s about slang in general. Words that are generally inoffensive but not considered proper. English equivalents would be what we consider zoomer speak, hella sus yeah bruh type shit (I’m not good at this part)
ChatGPT (and presumably the there chat LLMs) is way way better at this than DeepL or Google Translate, because you can give it context before. Like “A is a x and B is a Y, when A says z, what does that mean”
Sorry I thought you meant local context like:
https://chat.mistral.ai/chat/44fa329b-99db-4cb6-969c-4134ee3459a7
So when you ask it to translate something in context with local slang it will use it rather than the actual definition of the word
Sup brah I’m trying to learn this shit you got a blog or something
Have you tried hellotalk?
That’s immediately the app I thought OP was using
Oh shit this is great, thanks
Just have your second language be English. I’m practicing it right now. Has to be the easiest language to learn for the sheer amount of English content there is.
Good point, OP should try being born with foreign parents
You have to make sure to dunk on people who natively speak English for being too dumb to learn their language too though
renshuu is pretty decent for that