The inefficacy of AI writing

 

It is an accepted vision that AI will soon entirely eliminate human writing. We old-timers will brag about how we wrote something by hand, just as some of our grandparents proudly declared that they walked through 5 miles (or kilometers, as applicable) to get to school instead of getting in the toasty car equipped with snow tires as they do now. Progress by definition, irresistibly moves forward, it is claimed. However, I would argue that AI writing may supplement homo sapiens muses but will not eliminate them, but not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with AI writing. The actual reason is that AI writing is simply not effective in many, if not most, situations involving learning, explaining and persuading.

Proper AI output requires directed prompting and editing. The initial output generally contains several stylistic errors in terms of the desired result. The inputting party must refine the prompts until the AI app produces a truly acceptable text. The a priori condition here is that the person framing the prompts is capable of identifying the issues. Therein lies the problem. Without learning how to write using the human mind alone, making mistakes and receiving feedback, a person does not develop a proper template for comparison’s perspective to even judge the AI version. Many students, including adults studying law and finance, avoid the challenge of putting their text on a page and immediately turn to AI. They lose their prime opportunity to learn how to write text and, consequently, to edit AI text. They may pay a high professional price for their shortcut.

The other aspect of AI text output involves factual errors. There is no shortage of reports in the media of AI actually inventing law cases and medical studies as it overstrives to meet the demands of the inputting party. This situation is humorous if the human party catches the error before submission or publication but can have unfortunate consequences if not. While laziness and ignorance sometimes play a part, a more pernicious factor is the illusion that AI is infallible. No AI engine makes such a claim but it is so easy to believe everything a computer tells us. Ideally, everybody would check the facts but, in practice, many writers are lazy or ignorant. Therefore, for many professionals, AI does not in fact reduce the effort involved in writing, but merely changes its form.

The main reason that AI will probably not replace human writers is far more universal. Simply put, for many purposes, its output, even guided by trained writers, does not attain the goal. Long before AI erupted on the scene, the average person did not trust language that was too sophisticated or smooth. They called it “highfalutin” or whatever the local word term was and immediately suspected either someone was hiding something or trying to make them feel stupid. As an example, if a car salesman claimed that a given vehicle was “aerodynamically and ergonomically designed to maximize power and fuel usage”, customers would look confused or suspect that the engine was too weak. Neither result would lead to sales. People prefer to hear direct language using everyday words. Ignoring his politics, President Trump may be crude but everybody understands what he is trying to say at any given moment, unlike most politicians. On LinkedIn, many writers complain about “AI-written content” being published. The issue is not the use of AI but the lack of connection to the reader. AI, even with human help, tends to “automate”, which is much less effective than less polished but honest words.

There are clearly exceptions to this tendency. Academic writing loves soufflé writing, i.e., fancy words with hidden, implied or even no meanings. AI is outstanding at producing these texts, far better than most human beings. Other fields use a specific form and lexicon to express their ideas, often rather formalized. These areas include law and business. Many legal claims and financial press notices sound almost identical aside from the relevant names and numbers. AI serves as an “expert system” in producing this coded text whose audience is in the know of the meanings and expects a certain style. In fact, these readers may not appreciate anything less than it.

Still, AI text is not appropriate for those who are learning, researching and persuading. Even with editing, it quite often triggers an intuitive resistance to the message and the suspicion that something is amiss. It will take a period of time before the impact of these AI inadequacies strikes home to the enthusiastic AI users out there, but the issues will not disappear. In summary, realistically, taking a walk is an enjoyable and healthy experience. However, there is nothing wrong with staying dry and comfortable in a car on an unpleasantly hot or rainy day. AI and human writing are not mutually exclusive.

Eulogistic lexicon – The art of translation

 

Many people equate translation with mechanically replacing a word in one language with one with the same meaning in the other language. It is similar to describing painting as brushing color on a surface. While there is a small measure of truth, the analogies ignore the art involved in creating a useful result. As an example, last week I received an interesting project involving the translation of old gravestones from Hebrew to English. To be clear, the longest of them did not contain more than 20 words. However, the act of translation required a clear understanding of the full texture of the words in both languages.

The challenge began from the start with the honorifics. The letter מ [mem], which is a short form of מרת [marat], preceded the names of some of the women. The problem is that English has two different forms of address, Ms. and Mrs. After careful thought, I chose the former term because the reader of my translation is from the modern era and, more importantly, the issue of her marital status should be minimized. I recognize that Mrs. would be also appropriate since it reflects language use during the relevant years, 1912-1946. However, I chose the more modern term. As for the male deceased, the letter ר [resh], a short form for Rabbi, appeared before the name. However, the term Rabbi was used quite often as an honorific, like Mr. Not every Jew was a religious scholar, although some were. My solution was to write “Rabbi” and let the genealogist ascertain who was a real rabbi and who was merely a respectable gentleman. In both cases, it is possible to justify and criticize my choice.

The fun had only begun. First names in Hebrew and English are not always identical. The English spelling of the name appeared in the caption to the photograph I received from the client. However, I still had to choose between the Hebrew version and the “official” English version. For example, on the gravestones of those named Jacob was written יעקב [Yaakov]. On the one hand, the names are similar enough for a non-Hebrew speaker to identify the connection. Furthermore, my task was to translate the Hebrew, which may include the actual form of the name. On the other hand, the audience was the English-speaking family. I saw no need to add complexity to the already logistically and emotionally challenging task of learning about one’s family. I feel confident that Yaakov would not be angry at me for calling him Jacob even if some translators may question my judgment.

Many gravestones carried a few carefully chosen words of praise. The bereaving families noted that many of the deceased were תם [tom]. A quick dictionary search of the term brings up innocent and naive, to name a few. However, these words in English have a negative connotation, implying ignorance or stupidity according to the context. For example, a naïve businessperson or child lacks something important. By contrast, the meaning here is a person that acted with a pure heart. Thus, I choose guileless, a rare but positive word. In the context of Judaism, this is a virtue.

On the subject of virtue, at least one gravestone mentionedחסוד  [hasud] as a trait of the deceased. The two most obvious meaning are demure and pious. The former implies self-defacement in a negative way while the second is a bit vague to my ears, although it would also be appropriate. I choose virtuous as it expresses the idea that the person strove to live his/her life according to the values of the religion.

The last matter I had to consider was how to relate to the abbreviation ז"ל placed after the name of the father to mark his prior death. In some documents, it is possible to write the late, as in “the last John Smith bequeathed his money….” That term does not read well on a gravestone. Neither did RIP as there is a bit of sarcasm there. I instead chose of blessed memory, which is both a literal translation and appropriate.

Thus, translation is the art of choosing the appropriate word or phrase, taking into account all aspects of both the source and target language. This complex matching makes it both interesting and challenging to create a proper translation. If you need an accurate translation and are tempted to use AI or Google, remember your child’s rendition of a dog hanging on the refrigerator.

The educational pendulum – a step too far?

 

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Something is wrong in the kingdom of Denmark, educationally speaking. or so it seems to me. The attitude towards and, consequently, of educational institutions has changed 180 degrees over my life. They have gone from being a provider of God-inspired, figuratively, wisdom to an issuer of career–required, literally speaking, certificates. The teacher, once the kingpin, has become a cog in a complicated system of wheels powered by money. I understand the change and appreciate how much it has improved education but I feel it is time for the pendulum to go in the other direction.

The journey of my generation began with the teacher as God’s assistant (or maybe vice versa). Teachers decided what we needed to learn, which was accepted without question by both students, their parents and administrators. The system created a dogma, often unjustified, that educators somehow knew what we, the students, needed to understand in order to be successful in life. Questioning was taboo, as I discovered as late as 2000 when I did my MBA at a British university. During my college years, in the 1970’s, at some universities, such as UCSC where I studied, it was possible to talk with teachers on a friendly basis and even disagree about interpretation. However, nobody, including the college administration, openly disputed the teacher’s basis for assessment and the right to fail those that did not meet their criteria.

Today, in many if not most institutes of higher education worldwide, students are the customers, i.e., the college needs their tuition to survive. As high school testing standards have deteriorated over the decades, the gap between the assumed and actual knowledge of students beginning their degree programs has widened significantly. This discrepancy, combined with the ever-increasing tuition fees, has created a serious financial dilemma for college administrators: colleges need paying students in order to be able to keep their doors open. At the same time, the academization of professional life has made attaining the appropriate certificates essential for attaining most jobs, e.g., BAs for nurses. Finally, fundamental faith in the system, the belief that the people up there know what they are doing, has dropped to critical levels, also often justifiably. These crises together have created an atmosphere where an unspoken agreement exists in which students, their parents, administrators and even many teachers believe that an institution, when faced with a conflict between a student’s lack of knowledge and need for the certificate, should opt to issue the latter. Colleges and universities have become, to one degree or another, factories for diplomas, not actual knowledge. Interestingly enough, most people recognize and accept this phenomenon.

I, as a “dinosaur” who will retire from institutional college teaching in Israel in three semesters, find it disturbing that too many first-year Israeli engineering students I teach can pass my English course without knowing how to write a proper sentence in English or even in their native tongue, let alone a paragraph, not to mention create an organized argument. For me, effective communication is an essential skill. The world does not care if English is the second or even third language. As I tell my students, if a customer asks whether or not a bridge will bear a given weight, you need to be able to produce a coherent answer. My college, to be fair, is slightly more insistent on keeping testing standards up than many others. However, the unspoken and spoken message is that it is not “good for the college or department” if too many students fail. Teachers, beware.

At the same time, students should be made aware that they will be shortly entering the world of real work without many of the tools they need to be effective and that this lack will impact their own professional lives, not to mention those affected by the results of their work. It is clear that the omniscient and omnipotent status of teachers not so long ago was unjustified and harmful. On the other hand, the perception of a teacher as a clerk functioning as a cog in the system is equally unjustified and harmful. It is time to find a reasonable medium between these two extremes. The pendulum needs to start swinging in the other direction.

Annoyed communication – the art of signal communication

 

Last week, in the middle of a long drive home back to northern Israel, I got annoyed, very annoyed, due to the poor service at a restaurant. I got up from my seat, not once but twice, went to the cashier area and stated in a loud voice such that everybody in the whole restaurant could hear that I still had not received my salad. Some of you may find my behavior exaggerated while others may completely relate to my actions. That difference in opinion reflects the fact that culture dictates the appropriate way to express dissatisfaction, a language that is learned at home and through exposure to society. The complicating factor is that almost all societies are multi-ethnic, making it impossible to assume a common language and creating misunderstandings and failed messages. In my case, I have learned to communicate á la Israel.

If it is human to err, it is even more human to become annoyed with your fellow homo sapiens. The challenge is to express that annoyance without creating the potential for violence. At the minimum level, salespeople in certain cities, formally obliged to remain polite with customers, are experts in rolling their eyes when the potential buyer becomes too demanding, at least in their view. Likewise, the French have the amazing ability to insult you using the most polite and elegant language, becoming completely formal in their address as in “Madame, je regrette que vous ne trouviez pas la couleur que vous désirez. Madame, je suggère que vous essayez à un autre magasin.“, (In English, “Ma’am, I am sorry that you cannot find the color you want. Ma’am, I suggest you try another store.”), of course, in the most correct possible tone. The English, as a rule, tend to prefer understatement: “Waiter, the steak is a bit overcooked.”, meaning it is dead three times over. Americans are more over the top if still civil: “The steak is overcooked! Bring me a properly cooked one”. Alas, with many Israelis as well as other Mediterranean people, this relatively polite approach will not always create sufficient momentum; sometimes a bit of drama is necessary, which some people find acceptable and even amusing. No feelings are hurt. In each of the approaches, the annoyed and the annoyer receive the same message.

People do not learn the code at school, at least not in the classroom, but at home and in their neighborhood. Children carefully observe their parents and neighbors interact, paying attention to the choice of words, tone and physical expression. For example, children watching their mother tell a neighbor not to leave her garbage outside the door of her apartment note the expressions and intonation used to communicate their mother’s annoyance as well as the neighbor’s reaction. Parent-teacher conferences are excellent primers in the fine art of communicating negativity. “Your son needs to control his urge to talk to his friends during class” expresses the same message as “Your son needs to stop talking in class” and even “Your son disturbs the class with his talking”, but each has its nuances. By the time we reach adulthood, we learn how to acceptably express our unhappiness.

The major problem for societies is that almost every country is now multiethnic and, thus, a hodgepodge of communication codes. The United States, Australia, Israel and the UK are immigrant societies with people having quite varying degrees of assimilation and exposure to the native culture. Even traditionally more homogenous societies, such as France and the Scandinavian countries, have become multiethnic. This blending, regardless of the benefits it brings, creates situations where misunderstandings occur, i.e., one party perceives the behavior as rude or even threatening when there was no such intention. Neither person fully understands the other person’s code, which leads to conflict. Fortunately for the world, it is possible to learn the code at any age and consciously choose a successful strategy when expressing unhappiness or grasp what the annoyed party meant by making allowance for the other way. Live and learn.

As for the restaurant scene, I did receive my salad, albeit a rather poor one, but did not leave a tip. The manager came by and mumbled a few words of apology but did not offer to drop the charge for the dish. Ultimately, we understood each other but did not overreact, a positive situation as far as society is concerned. So, rude is as rude is perceived. That interpretation is a learned art.

Spelling rationales – the challenge of writing English, Hebrew and French

 

Learning how to speak a language is intuitive. With a little bit of effort, courage and humility, it is possible to learn how to speak a language without formally studying it. Every child, regardless of intelligence, learns how to speak to one degree or another of skill. By contrast, writing a language is a great challenge for many people. I personally can attest to my complete insecurity regarding the correct spelling of words in English, Hebrew and French. Yet, I admit that the apparent randomness of a spelling system can reflect historical realities or grammar rules, whose challenges can be overcome with modern computer systems.

Let us begin with the most common language of communication (not necessarily first language), English. Both native and non-native speakers have a litany of complaints about inconsistent connections between letters and sounds. A few examples will suffice: through vs tough; know, low vs women; receive vs weigh; and time vs action. For the uninitiated, there is a higher chance to succeed in blackjack than in English spelling. Some people blame Samuel Johnson in 1755 or maybe Robert Cawdrey before him in 1604 for writing the first dictionaries and creating this chaos. Alas, they are not guilty. Distance creates diversity of pronunciation, even today, and, thus, a lack of predictability. In many parts of the world, listeners immediately can tell where a person grew up just by hearing certain sounds or words. In parts of pre-literacy England and to a certain extent today, people did pronounce those words exactly as they were written, especially the guttural sounds, kn and gh. In fact, in one older English manuscript,  the modern word girl is written ghurl, something that an Arabic speaker or a Scot would have no problem saying. Thus, English spelling is really phonetic but only for some people at some time in history. The rest of us have to memorize it somehow.

Time and distance have also affected Hebrew. In theory, every letter in an alphabet represents a different sound. In ancient Hebrew, each letter was pronounced in a manner distinct from each other. However, in modern Hebrew, many, if not most, Israelis do not generally pronounce the following letters in clearly distinct ways: alef א and ayin ע, an a sound; kuf ק and kof כּ, a k sound; sin שׂ and samech ס, an s sound; tof ת and tet ט, a t sound; het ח  and kof כ, a ch sound. True, eastern (mizhahi) Jews, especially Yemenites, have to a certain extent retained the historical pronunciation differences but people generally do not annunciate the distinctions between the letters. As a result, as an immigrant that arrived in Israel as an adult and never studied the language at school, I am uncertain. Which is happiness and which is wealth, אושר [osher] or עושר [o’sher]?. Did I confuse every and voice in כל קול [kol kol]? Did I write that I need time עת or a pen אט, both pronounced [et]? Which is form and which is grab, טפוס [tofes] or תופס [tofes]? The actual key is to know the root of the word, which indicates the correct letter to be used. While it does increase the odds of a correct guess, not every Israeli, not to mention immigrants, feels absolute certainty when writing Hebrew.

As for French, it seems to me that framers of the language chose ease of speaking over simplicity of writing, plausibly using Latin rules of grammar as the excuse. To explain, it is possible to represent the long a sound, as in the a in the word late in English, in 13 different ways (forgive me if I missed a few). The following words all end in a long a: donner, donnez, donné, donnée, donnés, données, donnais, donnait, donnaient, donnerai, les, abeilles, et and forêt. For non-French speakers, the meanings are to give, you give, given (n), given (f), given (pl), given (f. pl), you gave, he gave, they gave, I will give, the, bees, and and forest, respectively. That is one impressive haul of uses for one sound. The price for such efficiency is, of course, the difficulty in knowing how to write the correct form. Since the establishment of universal schooling in France in 1882, generations of French children have had to work hard to master the rules of grammar required to know when the correct tense endings, when to add the silent e and s to the past participle and which letters are the end of a specific noun. The results, then and now, are far from perfect. Actually, I find French spelling relatively easy because I understand these rules. I find it convenient that they are based on grammar, not history.

Those of us that doubt our spelling, rightly or wrongly, and double-check all words can feel a little bit relieved. Like some exes said, it is not you; it is the language. Spelling has its own logic, one that is unconcerned about mere mortals, whether they are native or non-native speakers. Fortunately, word processing, applications and AI have made it quite convenient to identify and fix any embarrassing errors. These tools do not eliminate the need to actually know the language as you still must choose the right word when two words with different meanings sound the same but are spelled differently, e.g., too vs two in English, but at least, we don’t have to look idiots when we write. We don’t have to feel like idiots either since, while there is a rationale to spelling rules in fact, it is one that often makes no sense to us.

 Do you need an official document translated? See this article: https://lnkd.in/eDB3hsvn

If you are a translator interested in entering the official translation niche, the ATA and I are offering a three-lecture webinar on the field, with the first one just around the corner, on July 30. See the registration: https://lnkd.in/ePQ5PbYv

Bonjour tristesse or beautifully sad stories

 

A story becomes extraordinary when it creates an impact, intellectual or emotional. The sign of such a tale is when it occupies one’s thoughts for days, weeks or even years. The nature and quality of the form is far less important than its essence. For example, one of the strongest feelings a human being can experience is loneliness. Despite its universal nature, it is a difficult state to render into words and images. Three examples of the successful transmission of deep and sad isolation are the books Grey Souls (Les Ames grises), written by Phillippe Claudel and translated into English from French by Hoyt Rogers, and The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and the Italian movie We all loved each other so much (C'eravamo tanto amati), directed by Ettore Scola. In my experience, each created a haunting feeling that remains in one’s consciousness long after one has forgotten the actual details.

Grey Souls is a story about a small village in France during World War I located within shouting distance of the fighting. The atmosphere is grey not only due to the weather and factory fumes but also from the sadness created by the convoys of wounded soldiers passing through the town and hopelessness of the situation. In this novel, four females of different ages die, each under different circumstances. The novel essentially recounts the impact of these deaths on several individuals, important people in the community, through the eyes of a simple policeman, one of those affected. The writing, at least in translation, is also rather gray, i.e., indirect and amorphous. At the end, the reader learns how and why each of these women died but it is almost irrelevant. The dominant feeling is the loneliness and misery of the men affected by their deaths, a feeling that remains long after the reader finished the book.

Another amazing and sad book is Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, dating from the late 19^th century. The story is different but the sensation at the end is rather similar. The writer was the brother of William James, known as the “father of American psychology”. His sister was Alice James, a famous diarist of the time. Their impact can be seen in this book. In the story, a young American woman, Isabel Archer, goes to Europe to find a husband as was the practice in certain circles at the time. She attracts quite a few men but rejects all those that would want to marry her for love. Instead, she is attracted to a charming social magnet. By the end of the book, the only pleasure the couple has is hosting parties because they are able to not invite certain people. Her life at the end of the book seems so deeply and irrevocably miserable, a feeling reinforced by the contrast with all the hope and joy of the beginning. It feels like an emotional suicide, one not that far from what real people do.

In other media, the Italian movie We all loved each other so much tells the story of three friends who fought together as partisans during World War II. After the war, each of the men builds his life: one works as a hospital orderly; one becomes a poor teacher and intellectual; and one marries the daughter of a rich industrialist. The final scene is haunting in its starkness. The first two friends, laughing and joking, walk by the large villa owned by the third. They see him swimming by himself in a large pool right after his wife and children walked out on him and keep on walking. The sadness of his isolation and loneliness, amplified by the simple happiness of his two former friends, is hard to forget.

None of these works are easy or even necessarily pleasant. However, they are stories that resonate. They evoke strong feelings, which can be both heavy but also enlightening. As such, they are worthy of note. Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse is a story of regret and sadness. These works are so impactful because of the great sadness they evoke but most people have no regret experiencing them. Exceptional art can and maybe should express strong emotion.