you’re right, there are translators and translators

that’s why there are expressions such as “traduttore, traditore” (“translator, traitor” in Italian). to translate is to betray the language in a way

I studied translation in college, and sometimes I’ll do translation work as a freelancer. In my opinion it’s really hard for a machine to get the intricacies of translation. it’s not just “convert” from one language to another, there are linguistic devices people use to make writing more “interesting”.

I’ll give two examples

I read this book called Blue Belle in both English (original language) and Portuguese (translation). there’s this bit on the original where the protagonist Belle says

If I were a flower I’d be a bluebell

in Portuguese they just translated the name of the flower into “campanula”. the word trick was completely lost.

another case is that joke “why is 6 afraid of 7? because 7 8 9”. it’s untranslatable into Portuguese, for instance. there’s no way to translate the sound of “seven eight/ate nine”…

a human translator will try to find a way to at least explain it to the reader, sometimes via a footnote, but a machine won’t be able to do it

I’m using safari with adguard and vinegar, not logged in. works pretty well, especially being able to choose “audio only” and listening in background

I personally loved The Saga od Tanys the Evil. it’s an isekai where the protagonist is reincarnated in the equivalent of Germany during the first world war but with mages. very interesting