One feature I leverage of ChatGPT (which I believe gives the best results among the AI assistant tools I tried) is its ability to act as a 'smart dictionary', or at least that's what I like to call it.
When translating highly creative content, like video games or marketing taglines, I sometimes stumble across a wordplay or a term that is not clear at first sight, or that simply requires a second check to confirm my thesis.
Now, I could Google Search that and hope I get relevant results quickly (and deadlines won't help in the equation), or I could throw a small prompt at ChatGPT such as 'meaning of X', where X is the wordplay. The AI will diligently do the breakdown for me, which can make the localization process easier.
I could also ask the AI for creative solutions on how to translate, but I always double-check those to make sure they're meaningful, and most of the time they're not. They require intensive recreation. This is also the reason I'm proud of offering human translation services, with MTPE increasingly being used but not able to sustain the same quality as a professional.
That said, I don't think we should avoid AI altogether. I tend to see ChatGPT, Gemini, and other alternatives as very advanced Google Searches, indeed. I think people demonize AI without first thinking about the compromise they can find to have a more efficient workflow.
I'll give you a quick example with my wordplay. I was translating video game dialogues, and one of the characters kept making puns about feet, shoes, and pretty much any idiom having to do with legs (don't ask me why, but that's it).
One of the puns in question was 'soleful', which is the combination of 'sole' (the under-surface of the foot), and 'soulful' (over-emotional). I used Google Search for a solution, but no meaningful results showed up at first glance. So I prompted 'meaning fo soleful', just that, in ChatGPT to confirm the meaning of what I was about to translate.
When used in this way, AI can be a helpful companion that will boost our accuracy. Cheers!
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