Adventures in machine translation
Sep. 19th, 2026 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ein_myriaDue to my very limited Chinese I've been trying out a paid version of the Open Novel app as a way to read the original Chinese raws.
It doesn't work all that well for Fanqie novels since for chapter 11 onwards they push you to the app (which has an audiobook function). The translation app currently gets you to around 70% of my expectations for a well translated work-- basic enough to figure out what's going on-- they mostly get the gender right, at least (unlike google translate), and if the first results are not that accurate, you hit the boost button to try and get a more accurate generation. As a pretty heavy and quick reader I've almost hit the hobbyist max boosts.
I haven't tried the more advanced features, like asking for a different style or tone to the translation, or delved into the glossary functions.
Supposedly it works well for jjwxc novels, but I haven't tried it yet.
It doesn't work all that well for Fanqie novels since for chapter 11 onwards they push you to the app (which has an audiobook function). The translation app currently gets you to around 70% of my expectations for a well translated work-- basic enough to figure out what's going on-- they mostly get the gender right, at least (unlike google translate), and if the first results are not that accurate, you hit the boost button to try and get a more accurate generation. As a pretty heavy and quick reader I've almost hit the hobbyist max boosts.
I haven't tried the more advanced features, like asking for a different style or tone to the translation, or delved into the glossary functions.
Supposedly it works well for jjwxc novels, but I haven't tried it yet.
