mozilla / translations

The code, training pipeline, and models that power Firefox Translations
https://mozilla.github.io/translations/
Mozilla Public License 2.0
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Don't translate idioms literally #876

Open zcorpan opened 3 weeks ago

zcorpan commented 3 weeks ago

Try translating https://www.omniglot.com/language/idioms/swedish.htm to Swedish. The English idioms are translated literally.

While that may be useful for this particular page (if one doesn't know English), for content in general when an idiom is used it would be better to use the target language's equivalent idiom instead of literally translating the words.

For example

I wonder what was the straw that broke the camel’s back

to Swedish (as currently translated by Firefox)

Jag undrar vad strået som bröt kamelens rygg

Correct Swedish translation would be

Jag undrar vad var droppen som fick bägaren att rinna över

or more simply

Jag undrar vad som fick bägaren att rinna över

(The above is what I get with ChatGPT 4o.)