[INDOLOGY] Sanskrit in ChatGPT

[Harry Spier]

Minor clarification.  The examples I gave are from Google Translate not
ChaptGPT but clearly what you say makes sense to that also.
 I'm wondering how does an AI application learn how to translate a
language.  Do human beings program in a bunch of translation rules of how
to translate language x to language y  and then these human beings refine
the rules over time.  Or is there a kind of general artificial intelligence
programmed into a computer that is just fed thousands of sentences and
their translations and from that it learns how to translate language x to
language y and with more sentences fed in, it itself refines its
translation ability.? In other words learning language translation almost
like a human being, by practice.

Harry Spier


On Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 5:39 PM Antonia Ruppel <antonia.ruppel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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