Ask HN: If you translate with LLMs, GT or DeepL–what features are missing?
2 orencoda 1 6/26/2025, 2:50:19 AM
What is still the single biggest headache when you translate with GPT, DeepL or Google?
If you use DeepL – what would you need to finally pay for GPT translation?
Which features are still missing in current classical or LLM based translators.
How do you prefer pricing: SaaS, per-token, seats, or a flat plan?
Context: I’m exploring a side-project and don’t want to build the wrong thing. Not looking for promotion—just war-stories and must-have features (LLM model selection? scanned-PDF OCR? bilingual output? segment-level edits? glossary? missing format support?).
They also get the tone all wrong. If you tell them what the tone should be like, they nail it. Often better than official human translations. Especially say, religious text. Some parts are meant to be heavy and grim, some are humor/sarcasm. But religious text often has that monotone thee/thou tone, especially in English. Which I feel is based out of a culture that places it distant, as something to be quoted instead of a proper story.
I think it often misses out poetic bits. The order of language in German, like "here comes me" has a stronger and more poetic feel than the English "here I come". Haikus are supposed to bring a wabi-sabi feel of imperfection and impermanence, but in English they rarely carry over.
Always prefer token pricing. None of the other forms of pricing really make sense to me; I guess they're just easiest for the VCs.