I live in Japan, and when you read English texts here (it doesn’t really matter if it’s a restaurant menu, a pamphlet at a touristic area, a flyer for local government services…) the same English word will often be written differently within the same document (eg for a recent one I saw: “curbside” was spelled “crubside” and “carbside”).

I always wonder how that happens, because the documents themselves often smell strongly of machine translation - but if they’re machine translated, how would those mistakes get in? My best guess is that there’s a human manually typing out a machine translation output, which kind of boggles the mind.

I think us computer nerds who are used to using computers to do work efficiently have a hard time imagining all the weird ways in which non-computer nerds actually use computers.

Sometimes they are machine translated by someone who doesn't understand Ctrl+C shortcut if it's longer than 10 words, but equally often they're just hand kneaded. Japanese English education is effectively machine translation with human brains as machines - we're not actually taught English at all[0], just memorized technical rulesets that yield predictable garbage. A lot of weird "Engrish" text is likely result of that.

0: That's supposed to be drastically changing, we'll see if it does. English skills is still a resume stuffer in Japan.

It may have been A/B tested, and people do prefer the "INTIMATE SERVICE" version more...

Because A/B testing always has a happy ending.

This is a top tier joke about "INTIMATE SERVICE" and I wanted it to know it was appreciated.

I mean, it's not so easy getting a perfectly knowledgeable English speaker in China. Heck, if you see some of the interviews of the insanely viral Tony from LC Signs, his English outside of his skits is actually very Chinese-flavored. One of my friend's exes who was Chinese and studied at Oxbridge had a very similar strong Chinese twang, and often made grammatical mistakes while writing, even though the British would easily call her fluent.

DeepSeek is a perfectly knowledgeable English speaker in China.

  [me]
  > Translate to palatable startup-style English:
  >> DeepSeek API 不限制用户的访问速率。我们会尽力满足每个请求。但是，请注意，当我们的服务器流量压力较大时，您的请求可能需要一些时间才能收到服务器的响应。在此期间，您的 HTTP 请求将保持连接状态，您可能会持续收到以下格式的内容……

  [LLM]
  > Here's a more palatable, startup-style translation of your message:
  > DeepSeek API has no hard rate limits. We strive to process every request as quickly as possible. However, during peak traffic, responses may take slightly longer. Rest assured, your HTTP connection will remain active, and you may continue to receive real-time updates in the following format…

I asked it to turn it "corpospeak like":

  > At DeepSeek, we prioritize accessibility and scalability—which is why we enforce no strict rate limits on API usage. Our systems are designed to handle all requests with high availability, though during peak operational loads, response times may experience nominal delays. Rest assured, your connection will remain active, and responses will continue streaming in real time with the following structure:

... This is Google Translate from GP -> DeepSeek Web. I don't think DeepSeek is a perfectly knowledgeable English speaker in China. "However, during peak traffic," is basically a word substitution on "但是，当服务器流量压力大时", if my Han Script reading is right. Parts of the corpo version like "response times may experience nominal delays." still shows Chinese accent, assuming that's the part you think must be thoroughly washed off.

What you're asking needs English-first bilingual human person who can be trusted and has tech backgrounds. That's quite a tall order.

I don’t think the person needs to be bilingual. They could just speak English, and start with whatever English attempt at translation had already been made, then take a look at an LLM translation, and then create the final copy based on all of that. They don’t need to speak Mandarin.

I always thought there might be a market for this kind of service. Maybe it would be hard to build trust though. If they don’t trust your language and copy creating abilities, no one will pay for your English skills. And how are they supposed to assess your abilities when the problem they are facing is that they don’t have good command of English in the first place?

One of my guilty pleasures is to read random chinese product pages and try not to laugh.