Dear All,
A little bit more ‘alphabet soup’ to begin with: MT (Machine translation), NMT (Neural Machine Translation), AI (Artificial Intelligence). There will be others, but we can explain them as we come across them. They are as essential as ABC in translation today!
Now, over to Fr Albeiro Rodas (Kep, Cambodia) for a moment, with a brief extract from his paper. The entire paper is attached together with this week's Best Practice on MTPE (Machine Translation Post-Editing).
--------------------
“Hello everyone. Here J invites me to share some ideas from our current workshop on media production for aboriginal youth from 10 Asian & Oceania countries (10-20 March 2024, Don Bosco Kep, Cambodia.) The challenges are to meet youth from different cultures and languages and be able to communicate and to learn how to produce media (videos, audio, photos, music and art.) The project includes the topic and practice on breaking barriers in communication and translation of languages using digital technologies. Here are some concepts we are exploring currently with this fascinating group of 30 youth from Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Mongolia, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.
...
Some points for the Translation Tent:
1. The Rise of AI in Language Translation:
Artificial intelligence has revolutionized language translation, from early web translation tools like Babelfish and Systran to today's advanced neural machine translation (NMT) techniques that is an approach to machine translation that uses an artificial neural network to predict the likelihood of a sequence of words, typically modeling entire sentences in a single integrated model, making the process faster and more accurate.
2. Smartphone Apps and Instant Translation:
The most popular current smartphone apps are Google Translate and Microsoft Translator. They are not the only ones for sure, but they are the easiest to get for now and “free.” They are doing well with Asian main languages such as Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer, Chinese (of course) and many others, but they are still poor in aboriginal languages. As for aboriginal languages, it is our task to feed their system and one way is to feed the Internet with a lot of aboriginal language media (videos, photos, social networks, podcasts) in aboriginal languages. The trick is that Google Translate, Microsoft Translator and others feed from those materials. As we talk about the preservation of our aboriginal languages, this point of media production inside the digital world is vital for the survival and proliferation of the language. As we predicted about AI, maybe at the moment we cannot find Jarai, Hmon or other aboriginal languages in the Google and Microsoft translation machines but they are gathering those languages too and, in the future, they will become a point of preservation and even learning for future generations where those languages are concerned.
3. Breaking Down Language Barriers in Real Time:
This is the hope of digital technologies and it is becoming real. The development of technologies can take many unexpected paths and, probably, even cell phones will disappear in the coming decades to become something else. But we are walking towards the possibility to be able to talk in our own language and be understood by many others (Acts 2:4-28.)
4. Challenges and Ethical Considerations:
This opens a can of worms. It includes risks, conflicts and discussions. What about idioms and cultural particularities? Would artificial intelligence be able to translate a Korean ancient poem into Khmer? For now, AI includes human coaching plus all the information we human beings send to the Internet all the time. What would happen when the human coach is not needed?
5. Beyond Text: Voice and Image Translation:
Another characteristic is the recognition of voice and image by AI. The machine can be adapted to recognize your accent, inflexions and ways of concept building. Imagine that you can speak English, but you are not a native English speaker. Your machine can build your kind of English. The other power of AI is the translation of images such as street signs, menus, sign language and even ancient texts. How would you feel if you find an ancient text written in Sumerian and you scan it with your cell phone and you get its meaning straight away.”
----------
Thanks for this, Albeiro. Your reflections are very valuable for today's translator, and each of them will require so much more consideration. Just imagine that when the Persian King Darius I invaded Greece in 490 BCE he had to bring interpreters with him. These days, as we know, unfortunately all too well, invaders only need a smart phone and stable Wif-fi connection! Maybe... or maybe not. Could a smart phone AI translator really translate the following into your language?
What happens if you throw a potato into a nuclear reactor? You get fission chips!
I tried it in Italian and I'm afraid it did not come out as 'pesce e patatine'!
OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST
- https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2024-01/mongolian-becomes-52nd-language-of-vatican-news-family.html which means that all Sunday Angelus and Wednesday catechesis will be translated and published on the Vatican portal’s new dedicated language page in Mongolian. “It seems like a small thing,” said Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication, “but to us, it seems and is as great as Mongolia itself. Speaking all languages, as many languages as possible, is our mission, our service. Doing it not alone, but with those living in the territories where our words reach, teaches us the importance of facing challenges together, walking together, doing ‘great things’ in the daily effort of seemingly small things. Step by step.”
- A sincere thanks to everyone for returning the adjusted BoscoFood sheets. All 20 were returned and almost all of them needed some correction of SDB or general details. Indeed, the Missions Sector, thanking us for this, expressed the wish that such a network could exist in every region, because they have 120 other such sheets to find ways to correct!
- It is still worth asking if this network would be of any value to translators in the wider Salesian Family. Certainly no interest shown so far as a result of last week's letter, but that would depend on whether the matter was raised locally with other SF translators you might be in contact with.
-------------------------
best_practice_8-post-editing.docx