I find it quite insulting that you seem to think that non-native english speakers are incapable of reading the outputs of LLMs to asses if it still means what they intended to say.
I work in a multilingual healthcare field and my output is often translated into different languages. Forms. Posters. Take-home advice following surgery. We provide all of this in every language where more than about 5% of customers speak that, so English, Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog and Mandarin.
In addition to English, I speak and read one of these other languages fluently and have since I was about 9 years old, but I don't live in the culture and don't understand the conveyed meaning of translated health-related phrases.
Do you think I use an LLM or an editor that does? No–because that would be silly and could convey information incorrectly to the audience who can only speak that language.
If you want to be quite insulted, turn on the news and get a realistic perspective on what is going on in the world. The people hurt by text going through LLMs is going to be those in extreme poverty and minorities subjected to machine generated translations without human review. You're fighting on a site where most of us would likely be on the same side of so many issues. Let's discuss and not make this facebook full of thoughtless responses.
I have spoken a second language fluently since about 9. I produce work that is translated into that language regularly... by a translator.
Being able to read words does not means I understand the meaning they convey to a person who only speaks that language. These are scientific papers we're talking about, conveyed meaning is valuable and completely lost when a non-native speaker publishes machine generated output that the writer could not have written themselves.
Papers are read by all type of people, I don't know why you assume scientific papers which are almost all written in English are read solely by native English speakers.
People have been doing science in broken English, French, German, Arabic, Latin and more for as long there has been science to be made.
You mention being reminded not to assume someone else's reality by our conversation--I would encourage you to also be reminded of the common fallacy where people wildly overestimate their own abilities, especially when it comes to claiming to speak/read/write multiple languages with knowledge akin to a native speaker.
It is unfortunately very common to mislead oneself about abilities when you haven't had to rely on that skillset in a real environment.
I would venture that you don't regularly work with multiple languages in your work outputs, or you would have likely received feedback by now that could help provide understanding about the nuances of language and communication.
Keeping to anecdotals and opinions though, I only speak one foreign language sadly, that being English, but this effect is very familiar to me, and is also frequently demonstrated and echoed by my peers too. Even comes up with language loss, not just language learning. Goes hand-in-hand with reading, writing, listening, and speaking being very different areas of language ability too, the latter two being areas I'm personally weak in. That's already a disparity that a cursory read of your position says shouldn't exist (do correct me if I'm misinterpreting what your stance is though).
And all this is completely ignoring how even the native language output one produces can be just straight up wrong sometimes, and not faithful to intentions. I've been talking about it like there's a finish line too, but there really isn't. This is why things like mechanized math proofs are so useful. They are composed in formal languages rather than natural ones, enabling their evaluation to be automated (they are machine-checkable). No unintended semantics lost or added.
I disagree with the assertion that a person should rely on an LLM as part of their ability to publish in a language they don't understand well enough themselves to complete without involving a word machine.
> Digging into each others' backgrounds is not this.
I spoke from experience and it was then skewered by someone cosplaying the duolingo owl on the internet. You can take it up with them if you have an issue.
> And all this is completely ignoring how even the native language output one produces can be just straight up wrong sometimes, and not faithful to intentions.
How does the inability you point out of even a native speaker to clearly and effectively communicate sometimes not simply make it more obvious that a person less familiar with the language should involve a person who is?
I think that's a perfectly obvious point that the person you were replying to, you, and me, are all on board with and have been throughout. Inviting their or your attention to this was not the purpose of that sentence.
> I spoke from experience
Great.
> and it was then skewered by someone cosplaying the duolingo owl on the internet. You can take it up with them if you have an issue.
But my issue was/is with you. I wanted you to stop engaging in the use of combative and emotionally charged language. I understand that you feel justified in doing so, but nevertheless, I'm asking you to please stop. It dilutes your points, and makes it significantly harder to engage them. I further don't think you guys were disagreeing nearly hard enough to justify it, but that's really not my place to say in the end.
> I disagree with the assertion that a person should rely on an LLM as part of their ability to publish in a language they don't understand well enough themselves to complete without involving a word machine.
Thanks for clarifying - it genuinely looked like you were disagreeing with what I mentioned too.
You seem very intelligent, I truly believe your time and energy would be better spent doing literally anything else than providing me feedback on my commenting etiquette. Please, I implore you to do more with your time that will provide value! You genuinely seem smart.
(See how that felt? That's the effectiveness of telling someone on the internet you want them to behave differently. It's really pointless.)
I mean, I think this was pretty alright? I appreciate the advice too, and even generally agree with it. This was just my extremely poor attempt at deescalation, because I thought it might work out nevertheless.
Based on what I've seen, LLMs can write scientific English just fine. Some struggle with the style, preferring big pretentious words and long vague sentences. Like in some caricature of academic writing. And sometimes they struggle with the nuances of the substance, but so do editors and translators who are not experts in the field.
Scientific communication is often difficult. Sometimes everyone uses slightly different terminology. Sometimes the necessary words just don't exist in any language. Sometimes a non-native speaker struggles with the language (but they are usually aware of it). And sometimes a native speaker fails to communicate (and keeps doing that for a while), because they are not used to international audiences. I don't know how much LLMs can help, but I don't see much harm in using them either.
I don't have academic paper publishing peers with bad language skills, but I do have colleagues with bad language skills, and the misunderstandings and petty catfights they get themselves into over poorly worded sentences, missing linguistic cues, and misinterpretations, is utterly bonkers.
All otherwise perfectly smart capable people, they just happen to have this as a gap in their skillset. And no, they don't notice if transformative details get added in or left out.
Is this a widespread systemic issue within the organization, or do you work somewhere large enough that it is easy to find examples like this due to the number of people involved?
If it is the former, I would not want to work somewhere that people get into petty catfights over editing and have no abiity to write a sentence or understand linguistic cues. I don't remember working anywhere I would describe in the way you do in your second paragraph.
> And no, they don't notice if transformative details get added in or left out.
I guess I don't have to tell you not to select them as the people to review your work output?
Again, all the examples I'm reading make me think it would be beneficial for folks to include competent team members or external support for projects that will be published in a language you don't speak natively.
Can't tell you for sure (would require me to have comprehensive knowledge of the language skills around the company). I do know a few folks with proper language skills, but they're a rarity (and I treasure them greatly). Could definitely be just my neck of the woods in the company being like this.
> If it is the former, I would not want to work somewhere [like that where] (...)
Yeah, it's not great. The way I solved this was by simply not caring and just talking to them in proper English, hammering them until they provide me (and each other) with enough cross-verifiable information that thus definitely cannot be wrong (or will be wrong in a very defendable way), with an additional serving of double-triple checking everything. Some are annoyed by this, others appreciate it. Such is life I suppose.
> I guess I don't have to tell you not to select them as the people to review your work output?
I don't really have a choice. I think you might misunderstand what it is that I deliver though. I work with cloud technologies, so while I do sometimes deliver technical writing, most of my output is configuration changes and code. When I speak of language barrier issues, that's about chat, email, and ticket communications. I think that's plenty bad enough to have these kinds of troubles in though, especially when it's managers who are having difficulties.
When does your employment contract end?
This hesitance to switch is definitely put to the test a lot these days though :)