I want to share a lengthy and significant AI experiment I conducted. It involves translating my book Glimpse into English.
Some friends from around the world and a few readers of the Glimpse blog, curious, recently asked me also to translate the Glimpse book into English.
Therefore, I'd like to explain, almost step by step, how I did it to shed light on the use of AI and, if possible, share a genuine and extended experience of using AI tools to achieve a final goal.
The Challenge of Translation
Translating a novel is about finding linguistic matches and reinterpreting the text. Hence, it resonates with a broader audience while keeping the intentions, emotions, and writing style intact. This becomes even more difficult when considering cultural specifics, slang, puns, and the deep meanings of every sentence.
Translating a novel requires deep respect for the original, knowledge of the target culture and language, and an intimate understanding of the author's intended purpose.
In this case, I had two and a half out of three. Having written the original novel, I knew it well, had a halfway decent understanding of English and its culture, and... it seemed clear I knew what the author wanted to convey.
My English was the first barrier: I could make myself understood, but translating an entire book was ambitious. After hearing from the first publishers, I realized the translation times and costs would be prohibitively long.
And then the idea: I've been working with generative AIs for a long time, so why not test them in an actual project with a high (at least for one person) scope and complexity?
Choosing the AIs
Highly inspired by Ethan Mollick's story of the centaur and the cyborg and post on how to use AI as a writing tool, I decided to tackle the challenge myself.
The first phase focused on choosing the tools. Many are on the market, each promising different things. Some are focused on shorter, commercial texts, some on translation, and others on editing.
But to start, I needed a tool capable of translating the book, and I thought it would be rapid.
DEEPL PRO
The first step was to purchase the PRO version of DEEPL, an AI-based translation tool I love and have used for my translations for some time. I find it more accurate and sensitive than Google Translate and better than the automatic translations in Office.
Done: I uploaded the Italian version of the book, and voilà in a few minutes, I had the link to download my English Word file. $20, and the fear seemed gone. Too easy!
Indeed, reading the book, I soon realized I would have to start a long editing phase. Perhaps because my writing style is not always compatible with how sentences are structured in English, DEEPL struggled to understand what I meant in the long Italian sentences that permeate the book, sentences that, like the one you're reading, create some logical problems for automatic tools.
What didn't work?
Gender swaps (he/she, him/her) when there were dialogues between male and female characters
Translations of people's names, Italian locations, and recipes into English. For example, San Francisco had become San Francis.
Neologisms or product words I invented in the book completely distorted
Dates and times remained in Italian format
And many other things that, during reading, made me regret, for the first time, the choice.
First Remedy: Microsoft Editor
For those who don't know, in Microsoft Word, there is an excellent editing function that promises to take care of spelling, grammar, conciseness, formal register, inclusiveness of language, and linguistic choices.
"Perfect!" I said to myself. I don't need another tool!
After not even an hour, I had achieved a 100% score, and my book was finally ready. Two minutes later, it was in an email sent to a 'colleague' who works in an American publishing house.
The feedback?
Terrible!
Sentence construction, slang, idioms, still gender reversals, and a thousand other objections were included in a 20-page report that I humbly started to look at one by one and correct by hand. When I reread it, I realized that, even with my poor English, many concepts essential to the book were lost, diluted by the translators' automatic politeness.
Chat GPT
I decided to create an Assistant with Chat GPT-4, feeding it the entire book and asking it, chapter by chapter, for feedback on what it finds not to its or my liking.
By the second chapter, I stopped: Working with an open chat in text revision on Word was much more challenging than I thought. I like to have complete control over my texts and do not accept GPT generating them for me; at that pace, it would have taken months...
I only really liked the help with Italian idiomatic expressions and their English equivalents.
For instance:
How can you translate “fare un buco nell’acqua” into English?
The Italian expression "to make a hole in the water" is used to indicate a failed attempt, when trying to achieve a result that then does not materialize. In English, there are several idiomatic expressions that convey a similar concept. Here are some of the most common: To come to nothing - This expression is used when an attempt or effort does not produce any significant result. To fall flat - Literally "to fall flat," it indicates a situation where something that was hoped to be successful or to produce a certain effect, instead does not. To go down the drain - Literally "to go down the drain," it is used to indicate that time, money, or resources have been wasted without achieving anything in return. [...]
So, I returned to searching the internet, and in the meantime, the deadline for publication was rushing by fast.
After a long selection process, in which Generative AIs immensely helped me, I opted to purchase a subscription to Grammarly.
Grammarly: Friend or Foe?
Grammarly is a highly advanced text editing tool. It is equipped with a Mac plugin to help me revise my English in every text box of every application and an Add-in for Word.
But what happens if you use it in Word and ask it to edit a text of 77,000 words? It refuses to do it because the document is too long.
Armed with patience, I split the document into three parts and started a long first round of corrections, suggestions, and revision proposals for over a thousand errors.
It took me several hours all night, but the result seemed very good.
To confirm, I picked up the immaculate Word editor and found it now with dozens of new errors.
What had happened? Due to some bug, Grammarly left portions of text in the middle of sentences, generating pieces of text that were wrong and incomprehensible. I first suspected that the two tools had different views of English grammar.
Further revision with Editor and then again with Grammarly, which detects 250 errors: I had confirmation that the two correctors do not have the same view on how to write a sentence in English. Both forced me to remove adverbs, nouns, and intensifiers I wanted to keep.
I also bring an additional tool, DEEPL Write, a new AI-based tool that proposes several variants for a given sentence.
And I decide that...
...the third party benefits.
DEEPL Write allowed me to explore different revision options, further refine the text, and ensure that every sentence conveyed precisely what I intended.
Although imperfect, these tools were a vital bridge between my vision and its realization in English.
After a few hours of making the two correctors argue, asking them to forget the forces I still wanted to keep, checking sentences with DEEPL, and asking GPT-4 for some 'cultural' revisions, I arrived at the fateful 100% or zero notifications from Grammarly.
After a week's break and a Grammarly update with a new AI-based sentence reworking feature, I realized I still had a few hours to go.
But finally, I'm there! The book is now ready.
So What?...
The decision to translate Glimpse using AI was not taken lightly. It was a challenge that tested my linguistic skills and ability to adapt and reinterpret my work for an international audience. And with it, my credibility.
Here are the highlights of this journey:
AI as a decidedly non-autonomous tool: The GenAIs I worked with were mighty. However, the true essence of translation and subsequent editing requires human sensitivity, a deep understanding of the language, and the ability to convey emotions and meanings beyond words. It also requires hundreds of autonomous decisions that only humans can make for now to give meaning to our work.
The translation journey: Translating Glimpse was an enlightening journey. It tested my convictions and taught me a lot about English. This process confirmed that, despite the difficulties, AI allowed me to do things that enriched me and that I could never have faced just a few months ago.
Time and Dedication: The translation was not a quick process. It requires time, patience, and dedication. Doing it all together without contextual editing was perhaps a mistake. Would I do it again? Probably not, unless I use it to improve my English. Translate into an unknown language? Not due to the high risk of misunderstandings and the low quality of a superficial translation.
Linguistic and Cultural Challenges: Translating an entire book with AI was a long and winding road filled with linguistic and cultural challenges. I had to contend with stubborn correctors, tricky slang, and twisted sentences and repeatedly decide who to believe by researching the right way to say things. Let's say I learned firsthand the importance of quality translation activity.
BONUS - The Literary Critic -
I couldn't resist. The most powerful models, such as Chat GPT 4, Claude 3 Opus, and Gemini Advanced, offer context windows of 128/200k tokens.
What does this mean? I can insert my entire book into a single prompt and ask for general considerations on every aspect of the text.
You can't imagine how valuable and exciting an operation of this type can be. It allows unthinkable interactions before, like reviewing the story from the perspective of a single character, reordering events in chronological order, verifying the consistency of a character's behavior or language, and checking for inconsistencies in the narration, style, quotations, or references from one chapter to another. I will continue to do these things.
To give you an example of the power of these extended context windows, I asked my GPT "Easy Prompt Genius" (Here in the free version on HuggingChat) to write me a prompt for a literary critique. I intended to submit it to the three models mentioned above and get three critiques from the most powerful LLMs in the world today! Here's how I created the prompt with Chat GPT 4.
Therefore, below is the summary of the feedback received from each AI model, with a final surprise.
What Claude Thinks
I recommend "Glimpse" to science fiction fans interested in artificial intelligence and its societal implications. Turazzini's novel is a thought-provoking addition to the growing literature exploring the possibilities and perils of AI technology, which may be closer than we think. It will leave readers pondering its dilemmas long after the final page.
What Chat GPT 4 Thinks
In summary, "GLIMPSE" stands as a significant work that skillfully bridges the gap between speculative fiction and philosophical exploration. It invites readers to reflect on the essence of humanity in the age of AI, making it a noteworthy recommendation for those intrigued by the intersections of technology, ethics, and human emotion.
What Gemini Thinks
I tried every way possible, including copy-pasting and sending links to every document type, from TXT to WORD.
❌But Google Gemini Advanced refused to read my entire book.😵
The only possible way is to chunk the text: break it up so that it can be digested piece by piece. This was not the point of the experiment. So, I might have done something wrong, but Google Gemini cannot be my literary critic.
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See you soon!
Massimiliano
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