Machine Translation: The End of the Human Translator?
Machine versus human translator - will new technology mean the end of the human translator?
Translating from one language to another is fraught with difficulty 鈥 capturing exact words can be hard enough let alone more subtle meanings like metaphor, pathos, or culturally specific references and phrases. But machine translation is even more complex, although it is developing at a very rapid pace and both text and voice can now be translated very quickly. Bridget Kendall and guests explore whether machine translation means an end to human translators and what impact it might have on our desire and ability to learn and immerse ourselves in other languages.
(Photo: Scholar reading Walatta Petros manuscript at monastery. Credit: Wendy L.Belcher)
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The challenge for machine speech translation
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Vikram Dendi
Vikram Dendi is the
Strategy Director for Microsoft Research and acts as the Technical &
Strategy Advisor to the Head of Microsoft Research, based in Washington State,
USA.
Vikram has been at Microsoft Research for five years. Prior
responsibilities included helping transform research technologies like machine
translation. He was responsible for shaping the product direction and business
strategy for Microsoft鈥檚 translation platform, which is used by most major
Microsoft products, including Bing, Office and Windows, as well as many partner
products such as Facebook, eBay and Twitter.
Vikram's research
interests include Computer Human Interaction, Social Computing, Intelligent
Interfaces and Software Agents.
Wendy Belcher
Wendy Belcher is Associate Professor of medieval, early
modern and modern African literature at Princeton University in the USA.
Prof.
Belcher has been studying African literature for over two decades and is
working, through research and translation, to bring attention to early African
literature, particularly that written in African languages. With Dr Michael
Kleiner she translated from the original G蓹藖蓹z (classical Ethiopic) what is
possibly the first biography of an African woman: The Life and Struggles of Our
Mother Walatta Petros.
Wendy鈥檚 research interests emerge from her experiences
growing up in East and West Africa, where she became fascinated with the richness
of Ghanaian and Ethiopian intellectual traditions.
Daniel Hahn
Daniel Hahn is a British writer, editor and translator.
His
translations from Portuguese, Spanish and French include fiction from Europe,
Africa and the Americas, and non-fiction by writers ranging from Portuguese
Nobel laureate Jos茅 Saramago to Brazilian footballer Pel茅. He has served as
chair of the Translators Association and national programme director of the
British Centre for Literary Translation, and is currently chair of the Society
of Authors. He serves on the board of trustees of a number of organisations
working with literature, literacy and free expression, including English PEN,
Pop Up and Modern Poetry in Translation. Daniel is interested in how the job of
translator is changing to encompass a more ambassadorial and advocacy role.
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