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Comment by ryanlitalien | Hacker News Reader

I speak native English and barebones high school Spanish. I recently visited Costa Rica and almost every time there was a language barrier issue (unknown word or phrase), the local folks opened ChatGPT, said what they were trying to say in Spanish and then had ChatGPT convert it to English. It was everywhere.

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A cool use case; you can tell ChatGPT voice to act as a translator. When they speak Spanish, translate it to English. When you speak English, translate it to Spanish.

Works pretty good.

> said what they were trying to say in Spanish and then had ChatGPT convert it to English. It was everywhere.

i'm just so surprised they'd use chatgpt to do this, when it's quite as easily (and perhaps faster) to use google translate.

I've had better experience with LLMs translating than any bespoke translation tool, oddly enough. LLMs seemingly have a very good handle on regional varieties. As an example, I've never found a good translator for Lebanese/Syrian Arabic dialects, but ChatGPT was able to easily translate for me, even getting right some lesser used rural accent quirks which I didn't even know how to translate (similar to something like "y'all" in english).

To be fair, I wasn't using it in the way the parent comment described, for me I said: "this person speaking Lebanese/Syrian Arabic said something that sounded like [try my best to replicate the sentence]. What did they most likely mean?" and got a pretty much spot-on answer.

I wonder if this ability translates to other languages, but I wouldn't be able to tell. My Arabic is "good enough" to tell that the translations I got were good, but I'd be interested to here from someone who knows more if, for example fuzhounese translation is any good.

> i'm just so surprised they'd use chatgpt to do this, when it's quite as easily (and perhaps faster) to use google translate.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762

When OpenAI starts requiring a payment, or showing an ad before it starts translating, will they continue? Or will they use the Google Translate app, which can do this locally? (Or for that matter Gemini or Grok or whatever?)

“When Netflix starts showing ads who on earth will still use it?”

Everyone, it turns out. Same with Google. Same with YouTube. Same with Instagram, and the rest of the web.

Once people become dependent on ChatGPT (as they already are) watching a 30 second ad in the middle of a session will become second nature.

Netflix has a moat in the form of IP licensing restrictions.

Google and Youtube are preinstalled everywhere. Instagrams like 10 minutes old and has a major competitor in TikTok that they had to have eliminated/captured by the US government.

People wouldnt stay with Netflix if there was a cheap, legal alternative with the same content library.

Netflix has exclusive content. Spanish to English translation is not

> showing an ad before it starts translating, will they continue

Yes. What evidence do we have that mass consumers decamp because of ads?

That’s a fair point. But in most markets you don’t have a half dozen competitors jumping down your throat trying to give you the same service ad-free. Netflix can introduce ads without major quitting because you can’t watch their content elsewhere.

Google Translate has been doing this forever and people in countries like Turkiye have been using it for a while. The usecase you're talking about is not exactly an LLM use case tbh.

And yet people are using it for that, even if it's not rational. I use ChatGPT for some things that would be easier and better to do with other tools out of habit.

It's incredible that google translate had this moat for a decade (maybe more) including live translation but people prefer to use chatgpt now

Google translate is nowhere close to as good as AI translate.

Google Translate uses Gemini now. You can switch between advanced (AI) and classic modes.

I've checked now, I don't see any selector anywhere in the app or settings. It all looks the usual way and the quality of translation hasn't changed.

Perhaps you are not in the country where this has been rolled out? https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/g...

Seems so, it's only in U.S., Mexico, and India for now.

I have done that at my home. My wife calls maids. They are there. I need to go to restroom. Ask my wife. She is struggling to communicate. It took me 3 seconds to realize ChatGPT could help. And it did.

Nice that ChatGPT does that, its also true that Google Translate and other APPs have had this functionality for a decade or more. I was getting live German translated on my phone in 2015 with no problems.

I have been using google lens heavily to scan posters/flyers/information displays in other languages and get it translated to english in like 2-3 seconds. So freakin helpful.

Google translate was not very good, it didn't get context. Deepl was better

Yes, there have been translation apps for along time, but the LLMs are much better. If the phrases can have dual meanings the LLMs will often explain so you end up with a better understanding of what was said/needs to be said. The LLMs can pull more context from the web, so if you're dealing with more complex topics that may have acronyms they are much better at getting to a correct translation.

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