upvote

points

by TazeTSchnitzel4 hours ago |
comments
upvoteby motionlessveloc32 minutes ago|
next
[-]
I agree, and if anything the problem is even worse. You mentioned characters with 6 readings, here's one with more than 30:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%94%9F

And while you can usually figure out which reading applies based on what follows, there are still many cases where you can't. A standalone 今日 can be any of "konnichi", "kyou" or "konjitsu" depending on context and intent.

reply
upvoteby michaelmior3 hours ago|
prev|
next
[-]
> unless you can somehow stuff an entire LLM in there.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time ;)

https://fuglede.github.io/llama.ttf/

reply
upvoteby wodenokoto1 hours ago|
prev|
next
[-]
> There's no way a font can do a good job at it unless you can somehow stuff an entire LLM in there.

I’d say you can do a pretty good job with conditional random fields.

reply
upvoteby Armecera4 hours ago|
prev|
next
[-]
Yeah, I already see a few mistakes just looking at this page. But I guess still useful?
reply
upvoteby cloudbonsai15 minutes ago|
parent|
[-]
Yeah. I experimented with a random Japanese news article. Scanning it with my eyeballs, I found:

    Correct .. 80 chars
    Missing .. 12 chars
    Wrong ....  8 chars
So I guess the accuracy is roughly 80%. Maybe useful, but not super reliable.
reply
upvoteby silvertab3 hours ago|
prev|
[-]
> but it's also a terrible idea that nobody should actually use, because Japanese kanji readings are famously ambiguous and context-dependent

Seems a bit drastic. Don't use it as the main font in a japanese textbook, sure, but use it with the disclaimer that it's not perfect and will get some readings wrong? Why not, still pretty useful. Should people also not use Google Translate? (also, you can stuff an entire llm in a font, it's been done).

reply
upvoteby Sophira2 hours ago|
parent|
next
[-]
The point of furigana is to be exact - it's a pronunciation guide, and its purpose is to distinguish or to teach. If it's wrong, then nothing makes sense.

If I asked you 'are you a sewer (pronounced "soo-er")?', would that make sense? Maybe if you looked at it hard enough and thought about it, but in the meantime, I would probably get some very strange looks for asking.

reply
upvoteby astrobe_44 minutes ago|
parent|
[-]
It's funny to see LLMs being mentioned, because this is yet another case where "good enough" is, after all, not good enough once you know how "good enough" should be.
reply
upvoteby wk_end2 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
You're underestimating how wrong this is going to be on average. This is going to be nonsense like half the time. It's not comparable to Google Translate, it's more comparable to Babel Fish circa 1997.
reply