This article is based on this german article of philosopher Martinus Benders
Muitemarie Wast Haar Mooitille Voetjes
Translating a bundle (Ginneninne) from Nedergaelisch into Italian is truly the premier league of translation art.
A creek wanders between the hooves,
the brush underneath the little bridges.
A loosgaan monarch among moss-covered stones,
the croak powerful, the zilg goat an ear.
Muitemarie,
washes her dainty little feet
with dragon spit
and witterbran, with moelijke tinne,
in pebble-bran.
By linking various LLMs together (Deepseek, Chat GPT) and providing detailed commentary on the lines, we eventually arrive at an Italian version.
A loosgaan monarch among moss-covered stones,
(commentary from the poet: loosgaan is based on the Gaelic word for frog. In Dutch, it means ‘letting loose,’ becoming completely unrestrained. Monarch among the stones, frog croaking.)
the croak powerful, the zilg goat an ear.
(commentary from the poet: Kwalk refers to the sound a frog makes, but also to lime and walk. Zilg comes from Gaelic again, an ear goat in the wind is a very strange expression that sounds amusing)
Muitemarie,
washes her dainty little feet
(commentary from the poet: Marivolta might be suitable for Muitemarie? The entire expression ‘Muitemarie washes her dainty little feet’ sounds beautiful in Dutch, combining ‘beautiful’ and ‘little’ in Italian, or in other words, in any case, I would choose something that also has that ’til’ or ‘tel’ sound in it, it has a dove-like connotation.)
with dragon spit and witterbran,
with moelijke tinne, in pebble-bran.
(commentary from the poet: That ‘bran’ refers both to branding and alcohol. The moelijke tinne is made difficult by difficulty, tinne here refers to Tin, a figure from Etruscan mythology. Tin or tinne, another word for canted, an excellent edge on the upper side of a facade.)
**
The LLMs first tried to avoid the difficulty by leaving loosgaan and kwalk untranslated. No, my gentlemen, we are not married like that.
Eventually, this became the Italian version, after about 20 pages full of reasoning and intervention/directing by the poet:
Un slogano principe tra pietre muschiose,
la calqua possente, la zilg capra un orecchio.
Marivolta,
lava i suoi pieditelati
con sputo di drago
e biancobran, con tinna moilica,
nella branghia di ciottoli.
Slogano → Sounds like loosgaan and resembles slogare (to disrupt, to loosen).
Calqua → A playful combination of calce (lime) and an onomatopoeic imitation approaching kwalk.
**
So even with two linked LLMs, it’s still quite a task. But in the past, you might have dismissively labeled it as ‘untranslatable.’ And that would have been the case with a human translator as well: the chance of finding someone with sufficient analytical and poetic abilities is almost negligible.
**
Working with Deepseek is still quite laborious. The full version refuses to take the second turn due to overload. Grok really doesn’t translate anything at all,
I haven’t tried the other LLMs.
The book Ginneninne is available for free download on my Dutch Books Page
**
This frequent intervention resembles directing. You direct multiple translation entities as
a poet. Yet there are people who believe this is ‘no work’ because it’s done by A.I., as if you could ignore all that directing as work and as if work done by a robot suddenly shouldn’t be considered work anymore.
In the new copyright laws for music, for example, the steadfast have claimed that mere prompting isn’t enough to obtain copyright on a piece of music.
I find this an extremely debatable point. Whoever notates notes on a piece of paper
has instant copyright on it. Whoever directs an LLM to the bitter end is left empty-handed.
This is nothing other than institutional economic-motivated discrimination. It grants copyright on a mechanical photo (which you didn’t create yourself, the camera did that) but you don’t get copyright on a photo edited in Photoshop ‘because you didn’t create those filters yourself’. These are rather flawed arguments.