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Ask HN: How do you handle small translations?

2 points by gethly ↗ HN
In case you are running a multilingual website, how are you handling occasional need to translate few sentences into multiple languages?

I have invested a chunk of my time and money to support 9(as of now) languages for the web UI, but as times goes on and new features and changes are being made, I sometimes have a need to add new text here or there. Usually nothing long, 2,3,4.. sentences. A word here and there.

It makes no sense to bother individual translators with such a miniscule job. Agencies are insanely expensive(from my experience 4x of a price of an individual translator) and so I have resorted to basic google translate, which is unfortunately stuck in 2010 and does not produce good results.

I have not found any "fiver" alternative for this situation, so I am wondering if people are doing anything differently?

5 comments

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solardev
Use chatgpt or deepl. They're much better than Google Translate, especially if you specify the context.
isntThatSth
Machine-created translations are bad. They've become better over time, but they're still bad. If you've ever tried having your native language butchered in the way that machine-created translations butcher my native language on the daily, you'd understand why. I suspect a lot of the push for machine translations comes from monolingual developers in Silicon Valley.
solardev
Machine translations aren't all made equal though. The LLM ones, especially ChatGPT, are many times better than older systems. They are better writers and translators (of major common languages) than most humans I know... by far.
isntThatSth
> It makes no sense to bother individual translators with such a miniscule job

You're not bothering them if you're paying for the job. On your part, all you need to do is to set up a web-based interface that makes it easy and fast for them to log in and add the translations.

1659447091
TL;DR There are services that specialize in translating small phrases / paragraphs. Search tattoo translator services (but vet properly, there are fake ones too)

I found a few services while looking for a proper translator to turn a small phrase into Old Latin. I can't remember the services now (it was long ago) but there are professional translators, historians and college professors who moonlight on these sites doing small translations for a small fee. Some offer bulk translations of small phrases. One of the translators I got was a professor in classical text/literature/language (can't remember exactly) and another was some professor of ancient/classical history. The translations came back similar but worded a bit different because there was no way to do a 1 to 1 translation and they provided options for sightly different variants.