Translation of the manual into different languages using neural networks
Is it possible to automatically translate documentation into different languages using neural networks? Are there services with APIs for automating the process? Neural networks like ChatGPT translate text better than Google Translate. In most cases, the translation doesn't even need editing. This will allow for always having up-to-date documentation in all current languages. It would be possible to translate the Python API and all the documentation for older versions of Blender.
3 Comments
You as a user can throw any documentation page into any form of translator.
I would argue doing that on the documentation provider side would still need to quality check the output at all times.
Each user will work on the translation. Users will translate one page of text at a time, or even less. This requires much more effort than automatically translating the entire documentation at once using an API.
The translation doesn't need to be thoroughly reviewed. You can check some pages, but not all of them. However, it's important to add a warning that the translation was done automatically and may contain errors. Additionally, there's no need to delete the current translation of the documentation. Both translations—the official one and the automatically generated one—should be available.
Tbh i doubt that anyone will do the extra effort of maintaining the official translation than.
From my own experience, yes gpt, gemini or any other llm/nlp model are quite good at translating, hoewver they can make severe mistakes by a) misinterpreting words and thus delivering completely different conent in different languages if no intervention happens and b) may or may not halluzinate and make things up (i.e. to explain "better"). Thus i believe having the official english documentation and community mainatined translations are superior.