this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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388
We messed up with the Windows 12 article. What we got wrong and how it happened (www.pcworld.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Brkdncr@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Earlier this week, PCWorld published a roundup of Windows 12 rumors translated from PCWelt that does not meet our editorial standards. We’re deeply embarrassed by it, and I personally apologize that the article was published. It should not have been, but we’re keeping the article live (with an editor’s note at the top) so it remains in the public record.

Windows Central published a response detailing its errors. Thanks for keeping us accountable, guys — genuinely. In the same spirit of accountability, I want to explain how this happened, and what we’re doing to ensure a mistake like this never occurs again.

Let’s start by discussing how PCWorld handles translated articles, and then I’ll dive into the issues with the article itself.

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[–] MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com 84 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I thought this was a very well written, transparent article that took accountability as seriously as it should. I am still not sure why people are using AI for translation when translation software already existed. People mention that AI is more context aware, but I feel like when you saw those friction points in old translation software it prompted you to look further into the context, whereas AI will just make an executive decision and people feel like it must be right because it's AI. I guess it's possible old language software, or even a translator, would have done the same thing, but I still think people would have less inherent trust in the old software alone. I do want to point out that this AI issue was just a small part of the problem and they addressed plenty of other issues and how they plan to remedy those.

[–] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

There is a difference in translating, and interpreting. And interpreting can be difficult even for the best as you need a deep cultural understanding of both parties. Just machine translating articles is an obvious recipe for disaster.

In my experience. Since they mentioned they translate article from the Swedish branch as well. As a Swede. Translation software has never been particularly good at translating Swedish. There is just too much nuance and contextual words for a software to provide reliable translations.

We have lots of words, that have multiple meanings, often very, very different from eachother, based entirely on context.

Any Swede will know what "får får får?" Means. This is a real sentence. Translation software does not understand it one bit, unless it's been hardcoded in.

Edit: another funny one. "en bar man bar en bar man i en bar" you have 4 "bar" but they mean 3 different things.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 57 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This wasn’t even an AI issue nor even a translation issue. They published an article that lacked sources, and still wasn’t good enough once sources were added.

[–] MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yea, I mentioned in my comment that there was a confluence of issues, but the article does point out that the AI translation made the statement more definitive.

Edit to add:

As part of our post-mortem on this article’s evolution, PCWelt’s executive editor pointed out that the translation makes the article sound more definitive than its native German. He says that in the context of the article, the German word “soll” signals a rumored expectation, but the English translation used “will” instead of something more akin to “is rumored to.”

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

i'd translate sollen as should personally but my german is very poor

[–] Kissaki@feddit.org 5 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

It depends on contract. Your interpretation matches use as "should". But there's also use as "claims x" or "is claimed or said to be" which the quote refers to.

Ich soll - I should or I am asked to. Es soll [sein] - it is supposed to be or it supposedly is.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Translation is what the transformer architecture was designed for. It is the state of the art, and translation software has been using ML for a long long time.

This feels like an appropriate use of AI, but failure of editing.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 17 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Not with general purpose LLMs. They start off ok, but become much more interested in continuing the text they've already translated, rather than looking back to what it is they're meant to translate. So they drift off course as the translation gets longer.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 7 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

General purpose LLMs' failure to do a task like translation must be very funny for their investors. Even the more translation-gocused ones seem to have issues.

[DeepL] translation is said to be generated using a supercomputer that reaches 5.1 petaflops and is operated in Iceland with hydropower.

In general, [convolutional neural network]s are slightly more suitable for long coherent word sequences, but they have so far not been used by the competition because of their weaknesses compared to recurrent neural networks.

The weaknesses of DeepL are compensated for by supplemental techniques, some of which are publicly known.

(ETA I need to edit my comments to federate them?)

[–] WesternInfidels@feddit.online 1 points 1 hour ago

That's very odd. The translations built in to Firefox run on the local device - like a phone, even a dumpy old phone - and they're pretty okay.

[–] artyom@piefed.social 9 points 1 day ago

I am still not sure why people are using AI for translation when translation software already existed.

Pre-existing software was also never terribly accurate.