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Mike Young
Mike Young

Posted on • Originally published at aimodels.fyi

AI Translation Training Creates Robotic Language, Study Shows Base Models Sound More Natural

This is a Plain English Papers summary of a research paper called AI Translation Training Creates Robotic Language, Study Shows Base Models Sound More Natural. If you like these kinds of analysis, you should join AImodels.fyi or follow us on Twitter.

Overview

  • LLMs trained for translation often produce overly literal translations
  • Study examines the impact of supervised fine-tuning (SFT) on translation quality
  • Base models (without translation training) produce more natural translations
  • Fine-tuning on translation data causes more literal, less natural results
  • Direct translation in LLMs shows signs of "translationese" - unnatural language patterns
  • Researchers propose combining base model fluency with SFT model accuracy

Plain English Explanation

When large language models are specifically trained to translate between languages, something unexpected happens. They start producing translations that are technically correct but sound unnatural - almost like a robot translated them.

This paper explores why this happens. The...

Click here to read the full summary of this paper

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