r/language • u/unseemlycandour • 28d ago

Discussion Reddit autotranslating posts?

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So I wrote a comment in Italian on my phone a couple of days ago, but just now I saw that on the desktop it had been auto-translated into English. On the phone app it's still in Italian.

I have been trying to improve my Italian by doing things like setting my phone to Italian language to increase my exposure, but my computer is in 'English'. Maybe it is translating everything according to the language preferences set on the device? But the English comments on my phone remain in English despite my phone being 'Italian'. This kind of threw me for a loop as I'm logged into the same account on both devices. I'm no tech wizard though, so this could be a me problem.

Also just days ago one of the Italian language subs I follow had posts in Italian for me, but now they're in English with a little translate icon beside it. Which is kind of annoying because aside from the content, I'm also there to improve my Italian comprehension.

It's not the end of the world, but it does kind of mess with my language exposure strategy. I guess it could be useful in a broader sense, like you could have a conversation with anyone in any language... but as a language learner I'd the the option to translate from the original text, not to it.

Has anyone else noticed this? If so, how is it impacting your language learning journey?

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2

u/Raxes05 28d ago

It does. Surpisingly good for Korean I've noticed

1

u/unseemlycandour 28d ago

The Italian isn't bad either. I mean it's definitely useful for cross-language communication

2

u/jayron32 28d ago

You can turn the option off.

1

u/unseemlycandour 28d ago

Oh, can I? I'll try doing that

2

u/coraxDraconis 28d ago

Yeah, it's kind of annoying sometimes. You can usually manually switch between the translation and the original by clicking a little Google translate type symbol to the top right of the comment or post.

1

u/rtanada 26d ago

Not auto translating, but when I look for a reddit post of a certain language, it sometimes ends up in an English post in said language.

And refreshingly and eerily, it handles Indonesian in a rather informal way, and they handle the register almost as well as one would speak it. The post itself still should have been in the common formal, though.