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Post-editing of machine translations is the second-most sought-after skill among language service providers
UOC researchers propose a new method for assessing AI tools to improve the work of translators
Machine translation systems are widely used in the translation industry, although the end results are always reviewed by people (foto: Adobe)
Juan F. Samaniego
ChatGPT and its ability to hold conversations and produce written content have been the focus of a lot of attention in the last year in the field of technology and artificial intelligence. However, AI has been around for some time, helping us in all sorts of everyday tasks, from navigation systems to social network algorithms, not to mention machine translation. Ever since neural machine translation (NMT) systems began to be used on a widespread basis a few years ago, AI has seen exponential growth in its uptake in the translation industry. This has led to new challenges in the relationship between human and machine translators.
Today, the post-editing of machine translations is the second-most sought-after skill among language service providers and is the task with the greatest growth potential, according to the European Language Industry Survey. Translators edit unprocessed machine translations, correcting texts produced by artificial intelligence. This brings with it many advantages for human translators, but also significant problems if the quality of the machine translation is poor. This is why the ability to objectively assess the quality of machine translation tools is essential for the sector.
Non-English speakers can face big communication challenges in medical settings: being unable to convey personal information, understand medical jargon and follow treatment instructions. These challenges can result in misunderstandings, or worse, in misdiagnoses. Phoenix hospitals work at preventing problems like this by providing interpretation and translation services in many different languages.
About 2 million Arizonans speak a language other than English, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, although it is not clear how many would be considered non-English speakers. Over 1.3 million speak Spanish; more than 130,000 speak another Indo-European language; 150,000 speak an Asian or Pacific Island language; and 160,000 speak other languages.
Phoenix hospitals, including the Mayo Clinic, Valleywise Health, Abrazo Health and Banner Health, have established services for interpretation that can cover dozens of different languages. When a hospital’s language department is unable to directly provide interpretation and translation services, third-party providers will step in.
Two medical professionals shared their experiences on how language services change health care accessibility for many underserved people who could fall through the cracks.
Movies have long been a cherished entertainment pastime in global audiences, captivating audiences across language barriers. Amidst this culture, the art of Vjing emerged, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in cinematic wonders, regardless of linguistic differences.
On a recent episode of Home of Our Stars, Flavia Tumusiime delves into the world of Vjing with Kaija Ukasha, renowned as VJ Shaolin Khan Lee. Reflecting on his cinematic upbringing, Ukasha recalls how translated movies shaped his early film experiences.
His journey began in the video halls (bibanda) of Kawempe, where amidst a family obsessed with football, he found comfort in the magic of cinema.
In his early days, Ukasha honed his skills by immersing himself in his surroundings at home, laying the groundwork for his future career.
“The appeal of translations captivated me, and together with a like-minded brother, we delved into the world of Vjing,” he recounts. Making connections at a local video hall proved pivotal, as generous acquaintances shared their equipment, paving the way for Ukasha’s learning journey.
Detailing the essence of Vjing, Ukasha stresses its reliance on talent beyond mere translation.
“Vjing transcends language; it tests the breadth of your knowledge. You might excel in medicine but be clueless about law. However, with Vjing, you must possess a wide-ranging understanding of general knowledge,” he elucidates. “Beyond translation, you must offer insights and interpret the situations of the films you work with.”
As Vjing transitions from traditional video halls to multiple TV platforms, Ukasha sheds light on the origins of movie translations. “The practice of translating movies precedes the arrival of Western films in Africa,” he explains.
There are many translations of the Bible ranging from the most literal translations to quite paraphrased versions. There is a necessity for them all.
When going to church on Sundays, it is extremely common for the pastor to read a Bible verse in one specific translation — such as the New International Version or The Message — then use a different Bible translation, such as King James Version or American Standard Version for a different verse. This can lead to some confusion for the congregation because there are so many different versions of the same book. This is a common issue that scholars have dealt with for many years. The differences boil down to whether the translation of the Bible is a literal word-for-word translation or a paraphrased thought-for-thought translation.
Why Isn’t There Just One Translation of the Bible?
Brandon Farris is a content creator who has a YouTube series in which he searches for a random recipe online and uses Google Translate to translate it into a different language. Then he takes that new translation and brings it back to English. He continues this process five or six times and then tries to follow the new recipe, which, as you may suspect, results in a complete mess of a dish. One time, he ended up sautéing water.
Although this is a silly explanation, it illustrates the point perfectly: Translating from one language to another is a VERY difficult process and can result in contextual errors.
Acting Minister of Culture Nayden Todorov expressed concerns regarding certain streamingplatforms operating in Bulgaria without providing Bulgarian translations, stating, “We have problems with some of the content streamingplatforms that work in Bulgaria, but without Bulgarian translation.” He conveyed this to journalists during his attendance at the Education, Youth, Culture, and Sports Council in Brussels.
Discussions within the EU are ongoing regarding the proliferation of these platforms. Suggestions have been made to amend European regulations, potentially requiring a portion of the revenue generated to be allocated towards the production of European content. Some ministers have emphasized the importance of including local content tailored to the regions where these platforms are active.
An English-language translation featured on 17 giant hoardings promoting an Amsterdam referendum is so off-message that city officials have decided to have them remade.
The referendum on the council’s plans to determine what parts of the city should be considered key green infrastructure will take place on June 6, on the same day as the European elections.
The hoardings are there to drum up support for the vote, but, according to Anke Bakker, of the local branch of pro-animal party PvdD, the English-language text is both misleading and biased.
The Canadian Bureau of Public Services and Procurement (PSPC) is the government agency that oversees the Translation Bureau, which is in turn in charge of supplying linguistic services to Parliament and federal departments. In April 2024, PSPC published a statement announcing the approval and implementation of additional health protection measures for interpreters.
As the use of remote meetings for official government business increased in the 2010s, interpreters began experiencing and reporting issues related to working conditions in these scenarios, all exacerbated during pandemic-related virtual interpreting. At that time, the Translation Bureau provided what it deemed were “firm recommendations” on interpreter protection during virtual Parliament sessions, but no measures were actually implemented until much later.
Classicist Emily Wilson illuminated the intricacies of translation in her lecture “Re-translating Homer: Why and How” held Thursday. The event delved into the challenges and significance of reinterpreting ancient texts for modern audiences.
The lecture was divided into four main topics: defining translation, explaining Wilson’s background and priorities in translation, demonstrating a case study and answering the question of why Homer is still relevant today. Julia Marvin, the chair of the department of the program of liberal studies, introduced the talk.
“The past is a foreign country,” Marvin said. “They do things differently there, and the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
‘Shōgun’is a refreshing reminder that in a time where the power of the ‘one-inch tall barrier’ still seems distastefully under contention, sometimes you need to revive the literal Tokugawa Shōgunate to bridge the cumbersome gap between worlds
In its grand finale, FX’s captivating rendition of James Clavell’s historical epic Shōgun gracefully bows out with a rendezvous with mortality.
“Please split your belly open by sunset,” and “Have a good death” echo some of what we hear with the casualness of a tea sip. Yet, to truly grasp the weight of seppuku’s socio-historical significance, honour the richness of its source material, and deftly navigate the intricacies of translation, the series stands alone in its unparalleled achievement. Shōgun employs a three-pronged approach, replete with cross-cultural exchanges, verbal fencing, and the delicate dance of understanding in an era poised on the precipice of profound change.
In early January 2024, when many in the language industry were likely pondering how to eventually incorporate AI into their offerings or processes, OpenAI announced its GPT Store. Back then, a few translation GPTs could be found, including one built by Phrase called “Phrase Expert.”
By the time OpenAI launched the store to the general public, there were already more than three million GPTs done by pre-release testers. After the kind of hype seen in late 2022 with ChatGPT and all the drama surrounding the company’s CEO and Board in 2023, the store launch was also a popular subject in the news and on social media.
Then, the announcement of the company’s text-to-video generator, Sora, arrived in February 2024, lest people get OpenAI out of their minds for too long.
In March 2024, we asked readers if they had ever used Custom GPTs since the store was launched, and over two-thirds of respondents (64.6%) said No. Over a combined quarter of readers said they tested GPTs a bit after launch (14.6%) or from time to time (12.5%), and a very small percentage said they have been using them daily (8.3%).
Dr Hilary Brown will be leading a project over 2024-25 which will explore what feminist translation means in practice in the twenty-first century.
Dr Brown has been awarded an AHRC Networking grant, together with her co-investigator Dr Olga Castro (University of Warwick/Barcelona), and will be establishing a “Feminist Translation Network” which will bring together researchers, practitioners and educators to discuss feminist approaches to contemporary literary translation in English. The Network will ask questions such as: What is feminist translation (e.g. how does it differ – or not – from translations by women/of women or from queer translation/gender-inclusive translation)? Is feminist translation a matter of identity or a matter of practice? What are the goals of feminist translation and whom is it for?
The Network will address these themes at a series of free public events held over 2024-25, beginning with a translation ‘slam’ and roundtable discussion at the Birmingham Literature Festival in October 2024.
The Network’s activities will be overseen by a steering group which includes former DoML staff member Dr Gaby Saldanha.
In a March 21, 2024 paper, Fan Zhou and Vincent Vandeghinste from KU Leuven demonstrated that language models can predict the most suitable translation techniques for translation and post-editing tasks.
The researchers highlighted a set of persistent issues that remain in MT such as word-for-word translation, false friends, ambiguity, information omission or addition, and cultural insensitivity, leading to low-quality translations that may lack clarity and accuracy. These issues arise from the system using incorrect translation techniques, something a translator wouldn’t do. “The human-generated translation process relies on diverse translation techniques, which proves essential to ensuring both linguistic adequacy and fluency,” they emphasized.
Additionally, they highlighted that “utilizing translation techniques is crucial for addressing translation problems, improving translation quality, and ensuring contextually appropriate translations.”
Zhou and Vandeghinste suggested that automatically identifying translation techniques before can effectively guide and improve the machine translation (MT) process. Additionally, these techniques can serve as prompts for large language models (LLMs) to generate high-quality translations.
International holidays are set to return so we asked experts to test some of the top translation apps
SPRING HAS SPRUNG, and the summer is fast closing in, and – more importantly – international travel is returning in the coming months. This means the opportunity to immerse yourself in different locations, languages and cultures, and we’re here to assist you with that endeavour.
While learning some local lingo before you go, or picking some up along the way broadens the mind, a language translator app can be a great tool for helping you along the way – whether it’s assisting in a jam or lending a hand with learning the language.
Language translation apps are ten a penny these days, with many being free alongside some premium options. In some cases, you may not even have to download a new app, with Google and Apple getting in on the game with their own versions. Microsoft has its free offering, and lesser-knowns like SayHi and iTranslate are also making their case. We’ve tested them all to find the best one to take with you as you satisfy your 2021 wanderlust.
This year’s zodiac symbol has been retranslated from ‘dragon’ to ‘Loong’
After mainland Chinese official media outlets started calling 2024 “the Year of Loong” instead of the Year of the Dragon, the word “loong” and its homophones have become a popular meme among Hongkongers on social media, representing the government’s shift toward nationalistic policies and language.
The Year of “Loong”
This year, major Chinese state-affiliated media outlets have abandoned the term “dragon” and adopted the word “loong”, an uncommonly used transliteration of the Chinese word 龍 (dragon in English), to refer to the 2024 Chinese Zodiac. The alteration was later explained in numerous media commentaries, including the Chinese state-sponsored China Daily.
These commentaries argued that in Chinese culture, the image of the mythological animal is very positive and divine, while its Western counterpart is a negative “monster”. They also contended that the mistranslation of the Chinese word into “dragon” is a cultural distortion and misinterpretation.
On April 20, we celebrate the United Nations Chinese Language Day, a day chosen to honor Cangjie, the legendary inventor of the Chinese script. In light of this, I propose that the term hanzi be officially adopted as the translation for the symbols of the Chinese script.
For far too long, we’ve relied on the term “Chinese character” as the English equivalent of hanzi. However, given the evolving nature of language, it is imperative to reevaluate this lexical equivalence and adopt a more nuanced perspective. Particularly during the celebration of Chinese Language Day, let’s spread the use of the Pinyin-transliterated term, hanzi.
The Chinese script stands as one of the oldest writing systems in the world. It is an invaluable cultural treasure for the Chinese people, a symbol of national identity, and a bridge that connects people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. But its influence doesn’t stop there. The Chinese script has had a profound impact on the languages of Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and Vietnam.
Translation has consistently been a central focus at London Book Fairs. Translators’ and scouts’ perspectives shape publishing decisions for translations. Nonetheless, their impact on the UK publishing market is limited to 3-6% of the market, which mostly belongs to anglophone writers. Over the last two years, Japanese manga made it clear: the foreign literature segment is poised for growth.
In 2023, the UK witnessed a surge in popularity for manga and cozy novels, with Japanese writers leading the market for translated titles. Seventeen of the top 30 translated authors in Britain hailed from Japan, contributing to nine out of the 20 bestsellers being originally written in Japanese. Kentaro Miura, the manga creator who tragically passed away in 2021 at the age of 54, led the pack of translators. An overwhelming 95% of manga sales came from titles originally published in Japan. Among the top 10 authors in translation who generated over £1 million in sales last year, seven were Japanese, with five of them being manga creators. The only non-Japanese names in the top 10 were Thomas Erikson (3rd) and Andrzej Sapkowski (10th).
The top 20 lists featured familiar names such as Elena Ferrante, Jo Nesbo, Paulo Coelho, and Haruki Murakami. Additionally, new faces emerged in the charts, including Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov.
While AI tools have been used by some translators to support their work, three-quarters of those surveyed believe the emerging technology will negatively impact their future income
More than a third of translators have lost work due to generative AI, a survey by the Society of Authors (SoA) has found. More than four in 10 translators said that their income has decreased because of generative AI, while more than three-quarters believe the emerging technology will negatively affect their future income.
The SoA, the UK’s largest trade union for writers, illustrators and translators, ran the survey in January. It found that 37% of translators had used generative AI to support their work, and 8% used it because they were asked by their publisher or commissioning organisation.
Thomas Bunstead, whose translations from Spanish include The Book of All Loves by Agustín Fernández Mallo, said it is important to draw a distinction between literary translators and “commercial” translators. “Though a third of translators have responded to the SoA survey saying they think they’ve lost work to AI already, literary translation remains in the hands of humans,” he said. “The work that has presumably been handed over to AI will be the kind of uncomplicated bread-and-butter stuff which doesn’t require so much nuance,” such as instruction manuals.
Imagine your mother has cancer. You just heard about a promising new experimental treatment and want to enroll her in the study. However, your mother immigrated to the U.S. as an adult and speaks limited English. When you reach out to the research team, they tell you she is ineligible because they are recruiting only English speakers.
Unfortunately, this is an all too likely outcome of a scenario like this, because non-English speakers are frequently excluded from clinical trials and research studies in the U.S.
Latin American literature scholar Suzanne Jill Levine receives PEN America award for translation
When you read Latin American literature in English, there’s a good chance you’re reading a translation by Suzanne Jill Levine, who has been plying her craft since the early 1970s. Her versions of books by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Julio Cortazar and Manuel Puig (to name but a few) have enriched the lives of English-speaking readers, and her work has had an impact comparable to that of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s Proust or Constance Garnett’s Dostoevsky — not only literary but cultural. Levine has had the vision and bravado to become a protagonist in the story of Latin American literature in English translation, and to change it in the process, not only publishing a biography and translations, but also creating a mashup of autobiography and scholarship that’s totally original.
“My book ‘The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction’ (Graywolf Press, 1991, Dalkey Archive, 2009) by tracing the process of translating, explicitly shows readers how translation is a creative act and defines what a translator is, and why a translator needs to be linguist, literary critic and poet or novelist all in one,” said Levine, UC Santa Barbara distinguished professor emerita of Latin American literature. “Basically, our concepts of authorship and originality are inadequate to grasp what a translator does.”
Islamabad : Former Federal Secretary and a well-known man of letters, Muhammad Saleem Sethi has come up with a genuinely-crafted literary landmark, the Urdu translation and illustration of the famous Persian poet Fariduddin Attar’s long poem ‘Musibat Nama.’
The book gives a deep insight into the Sufis’ school of ‘Ishq’ which is commonly known as ‘Mysticism.’ It takes the readers to the less-trodden paths of human sufferings and man’s resilience in the face of ordeals. An undertone of curiosity always keeps the flame of spiritualism burning, says a press release.
In the interior parts of old Peshawar city, the Persian ‘kalam’ of Sheikh Saadi and Attar of Nishapur was read out and the family members used to sit silently and listen to the resonating Persian verses of great Iranian poets. It was that rich literary background that made Saleem Sethi undertake the gigantic task of translating Attar.
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