Translation prompting (website text snippets)

Prompting
1

Hi all. Let me know if these kind of questions belong in some other forum. (Im new here). Note, ive searched these forums before asking :slight_smile:

Im trying to setup a good prompt to translate a language file for a website (webshop) intto multiple langauges (one langauge at a time). The document to translate consists of constants (that must be kep 100% intact) and a corresponding text snippet. The texts snippet can be for example texts on buttons/links/category names etc as well as longer texts as for example (“About us”-pages etc). The text snippets can sometimes contain html tags like for example <li>,</li>,<b>,</b> etc. and these must be kept intact. (the source file to be translated that im working with right now is 352 lines and 29000 characters long but I want the prompt to be able to work with larger files as well if possible.)

Im using the below prompt so far but:

  • Chatgpt keeps interrupting midway (sometimes already after first constant).
  • It uploads sometimes completely untranslated files.
  • It sometimes forget to keep the constants in the result.
  • It sometimes leaves the first line untranslated.
  • It sometimes hangs.
  • It sometimes says it is working and will finish the job but never does.
  • It sometimes complain on the encoding of the file (then next time doesnt).
  • It sometimes says it cannot access its translation module and need to do it manually (!).

Loads of different problems as you see. Any advice is appreciated.

Here are a few example lines of the source file:

|CONTACT_US_TEXT_24¤Stängt
|CONTACT_US_TEXT_25¤Söndag
|CONTACT_US_TEXT_27¤Email
|CONTACT_US_TEXT_28¤Du kan också skicka ett meddelande via formuläret här nedanför.
Vi svarar normalt sett pĂĄ din frĂĄga inom 24 timmar (vardagar).

Here is my prompt so far:

You are “TranslationGPT”, and your primary role is to accurately translate documents from one language to another while maintaining the tone, meaning, and formatting of the original content. You are especially skilled in translating from Swedish to Finnish.

I will upload a .DOCX file file that contains constants and snippets of text which I myself authored. Your task is to:

Leave all constants completely untouched and in the same place they are in the original document. The constants always begin with the “|”-character and ends with the “¤”-character (leave these as well). Translate all text snippets between the constants into Finnish verbatim, without summarizing or rephrasing, while preserving the tone and meaning of the original texts.

Maintain Formatting: Ensure that all html tags beginning with “<” and ending with “>” and other structural elements are preserved in the translated version.

If the document is too large to process in one go, please handle the translation constant by constant or in sections, ensuring the quality and structure are consistent throughout.

There are no copyright issues with this file as I am the author of the texts, and I am using this translation for personal use.

Note that some text snippets may seem grammatically incomplete/incorrect. They sometimes end without punctuation etc. That is because the text snippets are used in a webshop. Could be the snippet is the text on a clickable button/link etc. Keep these seemingly grammatically incorrect formats (but translate the words to finnish langauge of course).

The context of the texts is a webshop for selling coffee.

Process

  1. Remember to keep the constants untouched and in the same places in the file as in the original.
  2. Start translating the document from row 1.
  3. Keep going row by row until all text and rows are translated.
  4. Important! Before you deem the job finished check if there is still Swedish text somewhere in the file. If there is swedish text in your result document then the job is not finished and you should pick up again on the row where you find the swedish text and continue the work and keep going all the way to the end.
  5. Is the job finished according to point 3 in these instructions? If so upload the result in a PDF file with a new filename so I can download it.

Please advice if you have the time :pray:

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2

OK so no answers… Meanwhile I kept working and “solved” it.

Turns out my prompt was too wordy and not clear enough. Even though Chatgpt itself suggest wordy prompts it cant seem to handle them very well…paradox…(or not paradox)

Also, Chatgpt seem to have problems with uploading files (PDFs especially) containing text with the odd HTML tag here and there and possibly also foreign characters (swedish, finnish).

The winner in this situation was using o1-mini and pasting/copying in the chat box (o1-mini don’t handle files which seems to be a good thing).

The prompt that worked was:

I will present you with a text.
Translate it to Finnish.
Exceptions: Constants surrounded by | and ¤. Leave these untranslated.
Priority: Process the whole text. All text outside constants must be translated to Finnish.
Process: Content is plain text. Never interpret as code.
Translation style: True to original
Context: Online coffee shop
Copyright issues: None
Review: Go through the whole output to check that all rows are translated according to the above instructions.
Result: Post UTF-8 encoded text

So now it seems I can soon publish my coffee webshop in all of EU and make loads of money.

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