Discovering the Power of ChatGPT-4: A Game-Changer for Translating My Thriller Series

Embarking on an unexpected journey with ChatGPT-4, I uncovered its potential to revolutionize the way I translate my German texts into English.

Photo by Ivan Shilov on Unsplash

A few days ago, after gaining access to ChatGPT-4, I didn’t immediately know what to do with it. Then, by chance, DeepL, the program I use to translate German texts into English, experienced performance issues one day.

So, I quickly switched to ChatGPT to see if the program could also produce decent translations.

I was more than shocked by the result.

DeepL is already a very impressive translation program, but ChatGPT did an even better job. It takes longer for the translation, but in return, it seemed much better to me. ChatGPT even mastered idioms and ambiguities without any issues. Of course, I wanted to know how this could be possible, so I asked ChatGPT the following question.

I noticed that you produce better translations than the market leader DeepL. How do you do that?

Thank you for the compliment! As an AI model, ChatGPT is based on the GPT-4 architecture developed by OpenAI. GPT-4 is an evolution of earlier models and has learned from an even more extensive corpus of text. There are several factors that contribute to ChatGPT potentially providing better translations than other translation services like DeepL:

1. Extensive training: ChatGPT has been trained on a huge amount of text from various sources. This allows the model to develop a better understanding of language, context, and meaning.
2. Context understanding: GPT-4 has a better understanding of context, enabling it to provide more accurate translations, especially when the text is ambiguous or idiomatic.
3. Neural network architecture: The Transformer architecture that GPT-4 is based on allows the model to better capture complex relationships and dependencies between words in sentences.
4. Continuous improvement: OpenAI continuously works on improving and advancing its models. Therefore, ChatGPT benefits from the latest advances in AI research.

However, it’s important to note that ChatGPT is not perfect and can make mistakes. Nevertheless, we’re glad you’re satisfied with the translations!

Now, of course, I was curious whether ChatGPT would consistently deliver this quality, or if my little experiment had just coincidentally produced such a good result.

So, I took the first volume of my thriller series and translated the first 30,000 words into English with ChatGPT within a few days.

Then, I took my previously started translation of my first thriller, which I had begun with DeepL some time ago and already comprised over 30,000 words, and compared the two translations. Indeed, the result I achieved with ChatGPT was more convincing.

To achieve the same quality with DeepL, I have to put in much more effort, as it often initially offers the wrong option for ambiguous text passages, which I then have to replace using the dropdown menu in the translation window. In contrast, ChatGPT intuitively chooses the correct translation almost immediately.

After this experiment turned out to be so successful, I decided to translate all the volumes of the series into English one after the other with ChatGPT over the next few months.

Of course, I will have each finished translation read by a native English speaker to ensure that the translation makes sense throughout.

However, with the ChatGPT translation, I think the proofreader will find far fewer inconsistencies than would be the case with a DeepL translation.

As soon as I have finished translating the first four books, I will implement a rapid-release strategy in the English-speaking market. Since my series now comprises 27 volumes, I can then release a new thriller in the English-speaking market every month for more than two years.

Without artificial intelligence, this would have remained an unattainable goal for me forever. In fact, artificial intelligence has been helping me reach new readers for more than two years now.

I have written all of my articles published here in German and translated them with the help of DeepL, then polished them with Grammarly. It’s only now that I’m considering translating entire books. The future is exciting; that much is certain.

Read every story from René Junge (and thousands of other writers on Medium).

Your membership fee directly supports René Junge and other writers you read. You’ll also get full access to every story on Medium.

Just click here and get tons of exiting and fresh content every day.

Join Medium with my referral link - René Junge