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ThePhoneBook t1_j0uqven wrote

You realise that all that's happening is your clients are aware of the limits of the translation and are accommodating to it, yes? Machine translation has got a bit better over two decades, but humans have got much better over two decades at realising they're reading machine translations and either making sure the input is basic or correcting mentally for deficiencies in the output. I'm at the point where I expect shit translations but I ask myself, "Why did the computer say it like this?" and meanwhile am depressed that the average article has the reading age of a 12 year old to accommodate for all this automated processing. Compare a reputable newspaper's writing style in the 1980s to today, or even look at the enjoyable turn of phrase of publications like the New Yorker and contrast with modern clickbait style.

This is like the trope about French people preferring to speak in English than tolerating your terrible French. They've taken the opposite attitude to Silicon Valley America, which expects everyone to race down to the lowest common denominator of man and machine - they don't want to have to dumb themselves down to your level of French.

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checker280 t1_j0utyju wrote

Not really. I never used it for chats over coffee. I simply needed to ask simple questions like “where is your tv?”, “where do you use the internet?”, and “where is the electrical outlet?”

Just being able to get to that level of easy communication without (this was the Verizon way) calling up an 800 number, passing my cell to the customer, customer has a lively chat with the operator about why I’m here and what needs to be done, with me standing by stupidly while the operator over promises what I can do (of course he’s going to hide all the wires and feed your cat!!), and then ends the call, which inevitably leads to “can you point me toward an electrical outlet?” and puzzled looks.

Can you describe that sentence without props with hand gestures?

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