Thank you all for your feedback. It is important that such discussions are being held.
As the instigator of this project I just wish to share my reasons, but I also wish to say that I firmly believe that human translations can never be replaced by a machine. They can merely provide a tool, a supplemental technology, for the human translator.
Machines cannot do translators‘ jobs just as well. Of course it is impressive how much AI can already do and what it will be able to do soon. But, in particular when it comes to language, humans cannot simply be removed from the equation. A good translation is so much more than the pure transfer of semantics. The necessary fine-tuning is not something which can be done by a machine.
That is not to say that the translation industry should simply ignore the potential of neural networks for translation. Instead, machine translation should be seen as an auxiliary technology which can be implemented into modern workflows. After all, there is much more to it than simply “churning” a text through a machine and then using the initial result unchanged.
My reason for initiating this project was that I needed to have translations of Chinese texts that were not previously translated into English for my research into transgender ordination. Without the combination of BuddhaNexus and DeepL I would not have been able to identify and interpret the relevant passages of the corpus that were useful for my research. My interpretations were subsequently checked by an Associate Professor in Buddhist Studies, who made adjustments.
The current model we have for the CBETA texts is just a first step and needs a lot of improvement; much more training is needed. This is our next focus and we hope that in the future we will be able to provide a useful tool that can aid human translators in their work. We would welcome help of scholars in the field to improve the model with their expertise.
For some more background into what machine translations are and what they are not:
I hope this helps to clarify the idea behind the project.
As I am currently conducting a retreat and have further engagements I will not be online much for the next weeks.