Is it really a human or is AI responding

[Susan612]

Has anyone ever gotten a reply from a case manager that makes you feel it is in fact AI responding? 

[Emiel1]

@Susan612 

[Inna22]

@Susan612 no, because any barely functional AI would speak grammatically correct English that makes some sense and non of the answers I have received were ever legible or made sense in English

[Lorna170]

@Inna22  You are assuming that the AI was programmed by someone who spoke grammatically correct English.  Haha.

P.S.  I just came back from a trip to Panama -- the beautiful museum that I visited had both English and Spanish text for the displays.  The English text had horrendous grammatical errors... 

[Sarah977]

@Lorna170  There is a restaurant in my town that had their menu both on a large sandwich board out front and the printed menu, which had translated "empanadas" to "turnovaries". 

[Elaine701]

Yes, well, consider that Spanish is the world's second most spoken native language (by a fairly small margin) , it's not any surprise that "quality" English translations might not be considered to be singularly important. 

If you needed to provide Spanish language, would you use Google translate, or hire a native speaker? Would it matter if the Spanish translation were "perfect"? 

[Sarah977]

@Elaine701  I would only use Google translate to get a general idea of what something said in a foreign language. 

If I was posting something publicly for a business, I would ask or hire someone fluent in both languages to do a proper translation. Although some of those wonky translations are indeed entertaining.

I love an Middle Eastern spice called zatar. I spotted a jar of it in the "gourmet" foods section of my local supermarket, an odd product to find in Mexico. Reading the label, which was in Spanish and English, I found that it was produced by a Mexican company, and that they had substituted some of the traditional ingredients of zatar that aren't available in Mexico for something with a similar flavor. One was the substitution of hybiscus flowers for the normal sumac berries. 

Hybiscus is "Jamaica" in Spanish and they had translated it in English to "charity ball". 

That was so bizarre that I looked it up to see how they could possibly have made that error. Well, indeed, apparently in some Spanish-speaking countries, a charity ball is called a jamaica (not in Mexico, though, at least I've never heard such a thing). But that was just one of the translations, just as "book " or other words in English could have several completely different meanings. 

The spice company just picked the wrong meaning for their translation. Way wrong and funny.

[Elaine701]

@Sarah977 

Agreed, google translate isn't an ideal option, but if you're a native Spanish speakers with limited English skills, google translate would be the easiest and least expensive option. And I've no doubt that's what most people do. 

The same is true with native English speaking hosts. Need Spanish (or any language) translation? Google it. Not perfect, but it's easy and free. Job done. 

Having said that, I'm pretty fluent in German, but I had a native German speaker rewrite all of our German translations, by sending him the English version and the Google translated version, which I edited using my not-native German. He found the usual grammatical errors and a few misplaced words, which were technically accurate, but not necessarily the words or phrasing a native speaker would use. Yet basically readable and accurate.

However, I'd prefer that it was fully nuanced to read properly to a native speaker. It inspires confidence, even if most German speakers are quite fluent in English. 

The point is this: Airbnb or most any large scale automated enterprise isn't going to staff or outsource hundreds of native speaking translators for conversions of millions of descriptions, nor for support communications. Just use Google. Much cheaper.