ChatGPT and Language Education

Back

Text annotation and translation

ChatGPT does a very good job providing vocabulary notes for a reading text in either English or Japanese. The translation, while not perfect, is reasonably accurate.

Me: The following text is the first paragraph of a short story by Louise Erdrich. Please prepare vocabulary notes explaining words and phrases that might be difficult for intermediate learners of English to understand.

At the Tabor Bar, around beer No. 4, the men sometimes got into history farming, trading stories of their antecedents’ exploits and agonies. In the long ago, wheat prices had plunged and most of the bonanza farms had broken up. That was when their great-greats had bought the land. The men talked about old plagues, old equipment, old swaps of ownership, crops, land, and dire weather. John Pavlecky’s great-grandmother, at the age of nine, had survived the blizzard of 1923 by burrowing into a nearby haystack when the school bus didn’t show up. Diz remembered his grandfather telling stories about an Uncle Ivek, who had also endured that blizzard, which was particularly lethal because it happened on a misty and mild April day. Around eight that morning, the bus had been almost full of children and headed toward the school, when out of the northwest a wind of sixty miles per hour had dropped the temperature instantly to minus twenty and filled the air with a blistering-cold curtain of powder. Such a snow could blind your eyes and scour the features off your face. (Source)

ChatGPT: Me: Can you provide vocabulary notes for the same words, but this time in Japanese?

ChatGPT: Me: Please translate the text into Japanese.

ChatGPT:タボール・バーで、お酒が４杯目くらいになると、男たちは時々歴史を農業化して、祖先の苦難や功績の話を交換することになる。遠い昔には、小麦価格が急落し、ほとんどのボナンザ農場が崩壊した。それが彼らの大祖父が土地を買った時期だった。男たちは古い疫病や古い設備、土地や作物、所有権の交換、そして厳しい天候について話した。ジョン・パブレッキーのおじいさんの祖母は1923年の吹雪で9歳の時に隣接する干し草の山に掘り込んで生き延びた。ディズはおじいさんが雪が降った1923年にあるアンクル・イヴェクが吹雪を耐えた話を聞いたことを覚えている。その吹雪は特に致死的であったのは、その日が霧がかかった温暖な4月の日だったからだ。その朝八時頃、バスは子供でいっぱいで学校へ向かっていたところ、北西から瞬時に気温を-20度まで下げる60マイル毎時の風が点滅するほど冷たい粉雪を帯びて空中に弾けた。そのような雪は目を覆い隠し、顔の特徴を洗い流すことができる。

Me: This time, display the text sentence-by-sentence. First show the English sentence, then the vocabulary notes in Japanese for the words in that sentence, and finally the Japanese translation of that sentence. Do this for the entire paragraph.

ChatGPT: At the Tabor Bar, around beer No. 4, the men sometimes got into history farming, trading stories of their antecedents’ exploits and agonies. タボール・バーで、お酒が４杯目くらいになると、男たちは時々歴史を農業化して、祖先の偉業や苦難の話を交換することになる。

In the long ago, wheat prices had plunged and most of the bonanza farms had broken up. 遠い昔には、小麦価格が急落し、ほとんどのボナンザ農場が崩壊した。

That was when their great-greats had bought the land. それが彼らの大祖父が土地を買った時期だった。

The men talked about old plagues, old equipment, old swaps of ownership, crops, land, and dire weather. 男たちは古い疫病や古い設備、所有権や作物、土地の交換、そして厳しい天候について話した。

John Pavlecky’s great-grandmother, at the age of nine, had survived the blizzard of 1923 by burrowing into a nearby haystack when the school bus didn’t show up.