Slaitor

Purpose

Slaitor is an AI translation assistant positioned as a translation engine that goes beyond basic translation. It is officially said to combine recent advances in artificial intelligence (GPT) with more standard machine translation technology, with the goal of not only translating but also helping users learn, understand languages, and improve their own translations.

Main capabilities

• Translation: supports unlocking all languages.
• Step-by-step explanations: can explain a translation step by step and in detail, for learning or deepening understanding of the language.
• Checker mode: users can submit their own translation, and Slaitor will find, explain, and correct the errors in it.
• Paraphrases and style calibrator: can adapt translations to multiple contexts and provide multiple translation styles.
• Commercial use: the official terms grant users full ownership rights to the output content, with no time limit and permission for commercial use.

How to use

Official subscription process: first enter your email, then choose a monthly or annual subscription, and you can cancel at any time. Subscription benefits include: 800 credits per month (10,000 credits per year for annual subscriptions), all languages, step-by-step mode, translation paraphrasing, all translation styles, permission for commercial use, dedicated customer support, and priority access to new features/languages/styles. Credit rules (official explanation):

• Credits are used to simplify the assessment of translation costs. Fees are automatically calculated based on text length and the selected options, and are displayed below the text input box.
• Translating 1,000 characters consumes 1 credit; step-by-step translation and checker mode consume 3 credits.
• The minimum consumption per query is 0.1 credits.
• For example, with a subscription, you can translate up to 800,000 characters per month.
• Credits are deducted immediately after pressing "Translate" (or "Check" in checker mode); if translation is stopped midway, credits are not refunded.
• The official statement says that credit packs that can be purchased separately may be offered in the future.

Technical process

Slaitor's process is divided into four steps:

1. Preprocessing: normalize, tokenize, and segment the text, package it into a prompt, and send it to the AI engine, relying on open-source projects such as preprocess, sacremoses, and Pytorch.
2. AI engine processing: currently mainly uses OpenAI's GPT series models, and the official team is also exploring other options, including its own models.
3. Post-processing and delivery: check and format the response, also using multiple open-source projects.
4. Evaluation: continuously monitor performance using internal evaluation datasets and public benchmarks, relying on the automatic evaluation metric COMET and human evaluators.

Use Cases

• Language learners who need to translate and understand the reasons behind the translation.
• Users who want to check and correct their own translations and understand the reasons for errors.
• Users who need to adapt translations to different contexts and styles, or who need to rewrite translations.
• Translation output scenarios where commercial use is permitted.

Limitations and Official Statements

• The official statement explicitly states: Slaitor's translation quality is not superior to other online translation systems. Internal evaluations show that its quality is slightly inferior to mature translation systems, and this may be difficult to notice, especially when translating into English. Its advantage lies in being cheaper and offering features that other online systems do not have.
• Translation speed: The official statement says words are displayed in chunks, with an estimate of up to 1 second per 20 words, and the interactive demo is not entirely realistic.
• Data usage: The official statement says user data will not be used to develop or improve Slaitor or its models; if this changes in the future, existing customers can choose whether to opt in. All interaction data is stored for 30 days and is used only to handle possible complaints; users can contact them to delete data.
• Account deletion: Possible, irreversible, and all data is deleted immediately.
• Refunds: For monthly plans, contact the official within 14 days after the most recent charge; for annual plans, within 1 month, and a refund can be obtained without reason. Refunds will also be based on used credits; contact the official for details.
• Language support: The official statement says they are working to support about 50 languages by the end of 2023.
• Maintenance and upgrades: The official statement says Slaitor will be kept at the latest state of the art, and major upgrades will not incur additional charges.

Background

The official introduction states that the creator, Benjamin, holds a PhD in machine translation and has more than 10 years of experience in machine translation research and development.