ChatGPT and Language Education

Context-sensitive translation

Having noticed that ChatGPT is able to reference content that appeared much earlier in a conversation, I wondered whether it would be able to do the same thing when translating between languages. Dedicated translation engines like Google Translate, DeepL, and Bing Microsoft Translator seem to translate mainly sentence-by-sentence. This can cause confusing output when, for example, the gender or number of a person is mentioned only at the beginning of a Japanese text and the English output uses pronouns throughout that need to be marked for gender and number.

I ran the same Japanese paragraph through the above translation engines and ChatGPT. As shown below, only ChatGPT managed to indicate the gender and number consistently and correctly. (Boldface added for emphasis.)

In this test, at least, ChatGPT was superior to the dedicated machine translation services.

Original Japanese: シンガー・ソングライターの大黒摩季さんは、今年5月27日にデビュー30周年を迎えました。およそ1年かけて全国47都道府県を回るライブツアーを続けつつ、12月14日に30周年記念アルバム「BACK BEATs #30th Anniversary -SPARKLE-」を発表。1990年代からたくさんのヒット曲を世に送り出し、歌い続けてきた大黒さんが、30周年の節目に思うことを聞きました。インタビュー前編は、新アルバムやオーケストラとの共演について語ります。 (source)

ChatGPT: Singer-songwriter Makki Ohguro celebrated her 30th debut anniversary on May 27 of this year. While continuing a nationwide tour that visited all 47 prefectures in Japan over the course of about a year, she released the 30th anniversary commemorative album "BACK BEATs #30th Anniversary -SPARKLE-" on December 14. Ohguro, who has been releasing many hit songs since the 1990s and has continued to sing, was asked what she thinks about the milestone of her 30th anniversary. In the first part of the interview, she talks about the new album and her collaboration with an orchestra.

Google Translate: Singer-songwriter Maki Ohguro celebrated her 30th anniversary on May 27th. On December 14th, they announced their 30th anniversary album "BACK BEATs #30th Anniversary -SPARKLE-" while continuing their live tour around 47 prefectures in Japan for about a year. We asked Mr. Oguro, who has released many hit songs to the world since the 1990s and continued to sing, what he thinks about the 30th anniversary milestone. The first part of the interview talks about his new album and his collaboration with the orchestra.

DeepL: Singer/songwriter Maki Ohguro celebrated the 30th anniversary of her debut on May 27 this year. She has been singing and releasing many hit songs since the 1990s, and we asked her what she thinks about the 30th anniversary. We asked him about his thoughts on the 30th anniversary. In the first part of the interview, he talks about the new album and performing with an orchestra. [DeepL also omitted one sentence and translated another sentence twice.]

Bing Microsoft Translator: Singer-songwriter Maki Oguro celebrated the 30th anniversary of her debut on May 27 this year. While continuing a live tour that took them to 47 prefectures nationwide for about a year, they released their 30th anniversary album "BACK BEATs #30th Anniversary -SPARKLE-" on December 14. We asked Mr. Daikoku, who has been singing many hit songs since the 1990s, what he thinks on the milestone of his 30th anniversary. In the first part of the interview, he talks about his new album and performing with the orchestra.