[INDOLOGY] Sanskrit in ChatGPT

[Antonia Ruppel]

The use of the past active participle to render the English past active is
to be expected: it’s the standard/most common way to render the past tense
in modern/spoken Sanskrit as taught eg by Samskrta Bharati, and I assume
that that’s the sort of Sanskrit that ChatGPT is trained on. Not applying
external sandhi also is not uncommon in modern Sanskrit, at least as used
by those who aren’t complete masters of the language the way eg Madhav is.

Antonia

On Mon 27 Nov 2023 at 23:29, Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Madhav wrote:
>
>> I hear that students are already beginning to use Google-Translator to do
>> their Sanskrit homework.
>>
>> I just did a little experiment.  Taking a few of the english translations
> in Apte's  "The Student's Guide to Sanskrit Composition" and comparing what
> Google Translator gave as a sanskrit translation of these, and comparing to
> the original sanskrit quotes .  A couple of surprising things stood out.
> Surprising because these are fundamental things nothing subtle.  Google
> translator seems to use sanskrit past active participle to translate
> english simple past.  It doesn't seem to apply visarga sandhi, a completely
> mechanical process.
>
> In these examples, the yellow highlighted sanskrit is the citation from
> Apte, the blue highlighted sanskrit is the google sanskrit translation of
> Apte's english translation given below.
>
>  Rama saw govinda
>
> rāmo govindamapaśyat
>
> rāmaḥ govindaṁ dṛṣṭavān
>
>
> I Salute the parents of the universe, Parvati and Paramesvara.
>
> jagataḥ pitarau vande pārvatīparameśvarau
>
> viśvasya mātāpitarau pārvatīṁ parameśvaraṁ ca namāmi
>
>
> He washed his hands and feet.
>
> hastau pādau cākṣālayat
>
> saḥ hastapādau prakṣālitavān।
>
>
> She shut her eyes
>
> sā locane nyamīlayat |
>
> sā netrāṇi nimīlitavatī
>
>
> So says the revered Shankara
>
> iti śrīśaṁkārācāryāḥ |
>
> tathā vadati pūjyaḥ śaṅkaraḥ।
>
>
> Thou art, therefore, a friend.
>
> tasmāt sakhā tvam asi
>
> tena tvaṁ mitram asi
>
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