Ask ChatGPT – September 25, 2023

My Conversations with ChatGPT
Machine Translation (MT) and translations generated by AI have brought about a paradigm shift in the translation industry. The output of MT will continue to improve, especially when associated with clients’ translation memories and human editing. Language Service Providers are adapting and are including MT in their processes, when MT is applicable. While linguists will continue to be essential in the process, their role will shift from that of translators to validators of content generated by MT. At Excel Translations, we wanted to know what AI thinks about all of this and decided to have an open conversation on the matter with ChatGPT. I will regularly publish a question and ChatGPT’s response, uncensored.

QUESTION 60:

Can machine translation handle all three styles of the Japanese writing system?

Chat GPT’s Response:

Machine translation systems, as of my last knowledge update in September 2021, can handle all three styles of the Japanese writing system to varying degrees. These three styles are:

1. Kanji (漢字): Kanji are Chinese characters used in Japanese writing. They represent words or concepts and are logographic in nature. Machine translation systems can generally handle Kanji quite well because they have a one-to-one correspondence with similar Chinese characters, which are also used in some machine translation systems.
2. Hiragana (ひらがな): Hiragana is a syllabary used in Japanese primarily for native Japanese words and grammatical elements. Machine translation systems can handle Hiragana well because it is a phonetic script, and each character represents a specific sound.
3. Katakana (カタカナ): Katakana is another Japanese syllabary, primarily used for loanwords, foreign names, and onomatopoeia. Machine translation systems can also handle Katakana well because, like Hiragana, it is a phonetic script with a one-to-one correspondence between characters and sounds.

However, there can still be challenges in machine translation for Japanese due to context, nuance, and grammar. Japanese is a highly context-dependent language, and the meaning of words and sentences can change significantly based on the context. Machine translation systems may not always capture this context accurately. Additionally, Japanese often relies on omitted subjects and particles, which can be challenging for machine translation systems to interpret correctly.

Since my knowledge is based on information available up to September 2021, I recommend checking the latest developments in machine translation technology for Japanese to see if there have been any significant improvements in handling these aspects of the language. Machine translation technology is constantly evolving, so there may have been advancements since then.