Smoothness of GPT-4 and Claude translations

[Tom Gally]

I just finished translating another speech from Japanese to English. Once again, I first had GPT-4 and Claude translate it and I used those translations as the starting point for my final, polished version. And, once again, this process probably saved me about 30% of my time with no loss (I hope!) of quality. My client/employer, by the way, knows that I use LLMs to assist me in my work.

I can’t share the speech I translated, but I just did a similar comparison with a speech of similar formality and generality by the prime minister. Here are excerpts from those translations:

GPT-4

Since becoming Prime Minister, I have visited many ASEAN countries. Just recently, I visited Malaysia and the Philippines. In every country, I have felt the depth of business ties with Japan and the strong connections between people beyond business.

The foundation of the 'friendship' between Japan and ASEAN is the 'connection' among our business communities. The concept for the 'new 50 years' of Japan-ASEAN is 'co-creation'. ASEAN and Japan will use our respective strengths to create a future together. This is possible because of the trust relationship we have cultivated over a long history.

Claude

Since becoming Prime Minister, I myself have visited many ASEAN countries. Just the other day, in fact, I visited Malaysia and the Philippines. No matter which country I go to, I feel the depth of business ties with Japan, as well as the strength of people-to-people bonds that go beyond business.

Moreover, the foundation of the "friendship" between Japan and ASEAN is the "connections" between both sides' business communities. The concept for the "new 50 years" of Japan-ASEAN relations is "co-creation"—ASEAN and Japan leveraging each other's strengths to create the future together. This is something we can do because of the relationship of trust built up over our long history.

People’s tastes will vary, but once again I feel that Claude’s translation reads more smoothly than GPT-4’s. (A lot of quotation marks need to be deleted from both, of course.)

The full prompt and translations are here:

https://gally.net/temp/20231216gpt5andclaude.html

Addendum: Just before I posted this, I had the newly updated Bard translate the PM speech as well and added that translation to the above page. Note the following comment Bard made at the end:

• I have made some minor changes to improve the flow and clarity of the English translation.
• For example, I have changed "心と心の触れ合う相互信頼関係" to "a mutual trust that comes from the heart" to make it more idiomatic.

Smart aleck.

Tom Gally