[Question] Should the default prompt be translatable?

[cary-rowen]

Hi @cartertemm ,

I was wondering what your opinion is on making the default prompt a translatable string.

Currently, the default prompt is hardcoded in English, which means descriptions are always returned in English unless the user writes their own prompt. Making it translatable would allow localizers to set a default prompt in their own language (e.g., "请用中文详细描述这张图片。"), which would provide a much better out-of-the-box experience for non-English users.

What do you think?

Thanks!

[cary-rowen]

cc @cartertemm

Is it possible to consider this proposal?
The most asked about it is how to get AI to answer in Chinese.

If the prompt can be localized, most models may answer in the language of the prompt.

[cartertemm]

I am not opposed to this, I've seen the question come up in multiple places as well. My typical response is to tell people to modify their prompt locally, but that's not obvious nor is it particularly user friendly, so this is a good conversation to have.

There are a few technical limitations that make the implementation somewhat challenging:

Currently, I'm setting a model specific prompt. The idea here was that model providers offer different capabilities and prompting techniques, so we would want to take advantage of them to offer the best possible experience without the user having to make any changes. In practice, the default prompts are largely the same so for better or worse this hasn't been used.

Then there's the slight problem of prompts being automatically written to the user's config when they exit the settings dialog. Most users probably have the same one written throughout every model they have ever used in AIContentDescriber.conf (a small oversight on my part). We'd have to go through and blank this out if it's default. Not the end of the world, just potentially annoying.

• Would it be too much to ask for localized translations of every prompt? This might get redundant, but I see no other way without scrapping the feature entirely.
• Or, since it's largely the same one, we can just translate the fallback prompt for now. When (if) model specific prompts become available they would be localized like every other string.

I'm leaning toward option #2 here, it seems like the best way to implement this with minimal friction.

Thoughts?

[cary-rowen]

I'm leaning toward option #2 here, it seems like the best way to implement this with minimal friction.
That sounds like a good idea.

• Would it be too much to ask for localized translations of every prompt? This might get redundant, but I see no other way without scrapping the feature entirely.

However, I think that the translator can choose whether to translate the built-in prompt, which gives some freedom. At the same time, LLM makes it easier to translate these prompts.

I don't have a particular preference. Please choose the option you think is better.