The source article is in Chinese. Click the picture to be directed.

We have summarized a very interesting article that highlights the most recent AI development as well as its future. Most of the information and comments are from this link which we translated. AI will become very powerful in every aspect, so the question for humans is how to apply it best in our world.

The next wave of AI: Studying the human brain 

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was won by Hopfield and Hinton. They used physics knowledge and tools to respectively invent the well-known artificial neural network, The Hopfield network and the Boltzmann machine, laying an important foundation for machine learning technology and promoting the development of AI.

Artificial neural networks are technologies that imitate the operation of the human brain. Hinton said that if we can understand how the brain adjusts the strength of connections between neurons, we can create amazing AI systems like GPT-4. AI will definitely be better than humans. It will be more intelligent, have a wealth of knowledge, but require far fewer neural connections than humans.

Hassabis, who jointly won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Baker and is the founder of Google DeepMind, believes that the next stage of research can use AI models to analyze the human brain to promote progress in the field of neuroscience. “I think this is a complete cycle. Neuroscience kind of inspired modern AI, and then AI will come back to help us understand what’s special about the brain.”

Can AI knowledge surpass that of humans?

When asked whether or not AI will be able to surpass the knowledge of humans, Hinton said that he believes we’ve already been surpassed. He added that though AI still has the problem of fabricating facts, also known as hallucinating, it doesn’t change the fact that it still has a greater range of knowledge than any human being.

When asked for his comment, Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine, Ruvkun, said that he believes human capabilities have been overestimated, and humans are just as liable to create false information like AI does. This is especially true with the rise of social media, which has only made the situation more serious. He concluded his thoughts by saying that it’s necessary for AI to reach the level of human beings, but it’s not a level that’s too difficult to reach.

Hassabis was also in agreement, and said that AI capabilities will advance rapidly in all aspects. Consequently, it is very important to think about how humans will design the AI systems and how they are applied in the real world.

What is a Hopfield Network?

A Hopfield network is a type of recurrent artificial neural network, often considered a “content-addressable memory,” which is designed to store patterns and can retrieve a complete pattern even when given a partial or noisy input, essentially acting like an associative memory system by minimizing an “energy function” to reach stable states; named after its inventor, John Hopfield.

Structure:

A single layer of neurons where each neuron is connected to every other neuron in the network, with symmetric connections (meaning the weight from neuron A to B is the same as the weight from B to A).

Function:

By adjusting the connection weights, the network can store patterns, and when presented with a partial or noisy version of a stored pattern, it will iteratively update its state to converge towards the closest stored pattern.

Energy Minimization:

The network operates by minimizing an “energy function,” where each state change reduces the energy, eventually leading to a stable state representing a stored pattern.

Applications:

Image restoration, pattern recognition, optimization problems, and understanding associative memory in the brain.

We hope this has been an interesting read. Now, what’s next? We look forward to seeing you in the next blog!

The debate over the effectiveness of artificial intelligence (AI) vs. human capabilities is more relevant than ever. While it’s easy to fall into the trap of viewing them as rivals, the real question is how the two can work together to be more effective. A recent conversation inside Monterey Language Service highlighted this future trend, revealing the crucial role that human expertise plays in AI development.

Humans can make AI better

In copy editing, AI can analyze text for grammatical errors, and even adjust tone and style based on the context. However, as Gary pointed out, AI may handle at best 80-90% of the editing process, but the last step often requires a human touch: flexible, context-aware, and capable of grasping nuances that AI might overlook.

Mei-Ling, on the other hand, argued that the focus should be not on the limitations of AI copy editing but on celebrating its rapid development and the role humans can play in enhancing AI capabilities.

The Path Forward: Enhancing AI with Human Expertise

Mei-Ling emphasized the idea that humans can make AI even better by providing it with high-quality training data. This is an important insight: the future of AI doesn’t lie solely in its inherent capabilities but in its integration with humans.

While refining AI’s editing capabilities, we need to provide it with a variety of professional materials to cut its teeth on. There are several ways that humans can do this, and it all begins with giving AI high quality writing to train on.

But what specific steps should be taken to move forward? There are many things we can do including, but not limited to the following:

• Clearly sharing context information with AI concerning the relevant conversation or the audience
• Exposing AI to detailed examples of human conversation, including informal language, idioms, and regional dialects
• Training AI to recognize and respond to emotional cues
• Sharing cultural nuances and social norms
• Guiding AI to better understand references and humor
• To model turn-taking and back-and-forth dialogue to AI
• Helping AI understand the tone, rhythm and flow of human conversation
• Feeding high quality content to AI
• Providing feedback on how the AI’s responses come across

By combining these approaches, professional linguists can play a vital role in shaping AI. More than ever, we as human translators and interpreters have a lot of work to do, particularly in connection with individual creativity and uniqueness.

Our Previous Blogs about AI

Monterey Language Services has constantly kept an eye on AI development. Our blog series since August of 2023 has been aimed at showing how the synergy of human creativity can elevate AI performance.

Check out our previous blogs about AI:

Professional Copyediting after Content Creation: Staying ahead of the AI curve

Blue and White Porcelain: The Joy of Translation from Behind the Scenes

A Love Letter to Chinese Culture — Blue and White Porcelain Lyrics

Advice to Future Interpreters

Interpreters and Music: Translation Accuracy

Interpreters and Voices: On Human Aura

Interpreters and Voices: On Human Recording

AI Performing Music: On Human Individuality

Diversity and Richness: Interpreters and Music

Thoughts about AI: Interpreters and Music

AI and Translation

These blogs discuss AI’s capabilities, how we have worked with it and what our expectations are.

“AI is able to follow patterns to come up with solutions that others may have thought of and implemented before, but without managing to achieve such originality on their own. Is it possible for AI to progress towards greater individuality and uniqueness?” ( AI Performing Music: On Human Individuality)

“AI is capable, but then can AI interpret our tones, our feelings, our energy, our life, our passion, our emotions, and our sense of mission that professional interpreters have shared?” ( Thoughts about AI: Interpreters and Music)

 Conclusion

Rather than debating whether humans or AI did better in copy editing, the blog is intended to celebrate the collaborative efforts that can make AI development and human creativity progress together. Ultimately, it’s essential to value partnership over competition. The future of copy editing will depend on our ability to combine human expertise with artificial intelligence to create something truly remarkable.

When it comes to professional copyediting, the conventional wisdom is that professional translators and editors generally perform better than AI. However, we may find striking similarities between an AI’s output and the professionally edited version.

Recently, we experienced an intriguing situation: after copyediting and publishing a text on our website, we later asked an AI to edit the same raw text. Please see one example below.

Raw version: The video is aimed to relax people, not speed them up,

Professionally edited version: The video is aimed to relax rather than energize,

AI edited version: The video is intended to relax viewers, not energize them,

How does AI ‘write’?

Large language models (LLMs) have been trained on a massive collection of text from books, articles, websites, and other published materials. Over time, our blog could be among those texts included in the training materials.

Generative AI “writes” or “edits” texts by using statistically common phrasing and word combinations that frequently appear together.

However, as more AI writing is created and published on the web, more and more of the training data will be AI generated text.

This may result in degrading performance over time, as more low quality LLM-generated content enters the pool. In writing, this could look like an overrepresentation of certain phrasings that sound awkward to the human reader, “hallucinations,” and other distortions.

A professional, human editor can easily identify these issues. If you use AI as a writing aid, a professional editor can add value by introducing a human element that will make your content stand out.

Our experts can help you stay ahead of the curve. Below are some examples of our professional copyediting. Feel free to contact us for full copyediting services in all languages.

Examples of Professional Copy Editing

Conciseness

Raw version: Layla thought the English translation is poetic, so she read the English lyrics as a poem. She has a gentle and clear voice. Her tone is soothing, and the poem is relaxing. Shreya immediately suggested these all work perfectly for ASMR.
Human Edited version: Layla thought the English translation was poetic, so she performed a reading in her clear and gentle voice. Her soothing tone inspired Shreya to suggest creating an ASMR version.

• These sentences were reworked from 41 words to 29 words.
• Redundancies were removed and similar ideas were combined for a more fluid reading experience.
• The tense was also made consistent throughout the passage.
• Word choice and phrasing were adapted to a more formal register.

Word Choice

Raw version: The video is aimed to relax people, not speed them up, so instead, we slowed the animation down, reducing its speed to half its normal speed, and like magic, all of a sudden, everything became seamlessly in harmony.
Edited version: The video is aimed to relax rather than energize, so we decided to slow the animation down, reducing the speed by half. The effect was immediate and magical. The animation was seamlessly integrated into the rest of the video.

• “Speed [people] up” sounds a little unnatural and might have unwanted connotations. “Energize” is more appropriate in this context.
• “All of a sudden” was replaced with “immediate” to describe the change more clearly.
• “Seamlessly in harmony” was revised to “seamlessly integrated” to fix the grammar of the sentence.
• The long, run-on sentence was broken up into multiple sentences. Varying sentence lengths makes for a better reading experience, and a shorter sentence between longer ones helps add emphasis.

Style

Raw Version: Some words such as the “jiangnan” area were not possible to include. It is a word that can evoke so much imagery to a Chinese listener, but there was not anything appropriate that fit and could evoke the same imagery to an English speaker.
Edited Version: On the other hand, we omitted the reference to the Jiangnan region altogether. As Jiangnan’s literal meaning is “south of the river,” we gave up geographic specificity but kept its romantic associations by using the word “enchanted” in the same line.

• The copyedited version explains the meaning of Jiangnan and elaborates on the trade-offs in the translation. Instead of stating that nothing could evoke the same imagery as the Chinese words to the English language audience, the copyedited version clarifies that translation strove to preserve its romantic associations at the expense of geographic specificity.

Conclusion

Copyediting is especially important in today’s digital landscape, where AI-generated writing is becoming more common. Over time, if the training data pool becomes more saturated with AI-created content, there is concern that the current performance state of AI will be negatively affected.

Therefore, it is essential for the AI industry to utilize human experts to improve on AI generated text. We as language professionals can stay ahead with our unique and creative perspectives.

A professional copyeditor can polish your content to present your ideas in their best form. Having your work edited by a natural language expert will keep it sounding fresh.

Professional copyediting may be even more valuable if performed by an editor who can provide a fresh perspective. Consider hiring an editor outside of your team!

It may be easy to overlook the importance of having your content professionally copyedited prior to publication. Below are some reminders for today’s fast-paced digital world.

• Copyediting tightens up the message of your content and improves readability.
• Expert advice can help your work attain its maximum potential.
• A creative human touch can take your content beyond AI’s limitations.

Flipbook Link: https://heyzine.com/flip-book/295aedfedf.html

How did the idea come up?

One of the participating interpreters Sasha commented: The thought of coming up with such a book is already an achievement.

That’s right, the idea to give advice to future interpreters didn’t occur to us until after having completed a series we did that compared professional interpreters to AI.

Starting from Interpreters and Music to Interpreters and Voices (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO-QGEbwcTr2MdhbLPPGszMw8Rdc5J9aI), the 12 videos we’ve made in 6 months led us to a certain question:

• How are we going to pass the torch on to the future interpreters in the era of AI?”
• We began thinking about if it was possible for us to share advice to encourage the future of our industry.

Who did we reach out to?

This subject is bigger than our company (Monterey Language Services), so we reached out across the globe to various colleagues in the field to ask them what kind of advice they would give to future generations.

Judging by the number of quality, in-depth, and complete responses we received, it seems that our idea to seek out advice from colleagues was a step in the right direction.

Navigating the complex undertaking

Martha graciously shared the medal she was awarded for writing the bilingual publication. It was very inspirational and taught us that we can learn to open our mind beyond interpretation assignments! It awakened our awareness of our role and responsibilityto disseminate the value of our heritage to other language speakers.

As a result, we decided to pursue putting a face to their quotes and deliver even more layers of information to the project, and that thought has really elevated the project and made everything more intriguing!

Captions and pictures

We are totally in awe to receive amazing one-line captions, such as:

• Bing’s regarding “the wealth of information disguised as language”
• Lenne’s regarding eye contact on the job. Lenne brought it to our attention that there are many different theories as to how long to maintain eye contact and where to look while talking to someone vs. What an eye-opening piece of feedback from Lenne!
• When we received Elizabeth’s picture with lots of beautiful divine light on her face, we were blown away. She explained that her husband took that picture as she was preparing for prayer ministry at a Christian retreat.
• Elizabeth gave us 3 options for captioning. We picked one, but her other two are equally powerful:
• A peaceful heart helps our minds connect the right words. Don’t be overwhelmed; rely on help from above.
• The key to quick recall of obscure terminology is the peaceful alertness of a watchman.

Our director of translation, Mei-Ling, cannot agree more with Elizabeth that feeling peaceful is the way to cope with uncertainty or obscure situations that we often face at work. It’s at those times that we should take some time, get some space, clear our minds, and seek inspiration. Once we find our inner peace, we will know what to do and understand that things will work out.

• Virginia’s holiday picture from her family is an invaluable contribution because, not only is it the only picture in the book with more than just one person, but it also shows how important it is to have a support system behind every one of us, let it be your family, friends, colleagues, or a professional team.

Collaborating with others and not fighting alone are very moving pieces of advice, and can really help one to progress. The flipbook is testimony to that. After all, so many passionate professionals in the industry came out in full force to support, not only this project, but the future of our industry as well.

• Pictures of Ruth, Layla, Jose, and Mei-Ling show that doing extra-curricular activities actually sharpen your mind and thoughts and make us a stronger and better interpreters!
• The pictures from Rania, Elizabeth (Love What You Do), Lisa, Paulo, and Maria show core elements, skills, and practical tactics required of interpreters.

Last, but not least, we also would like to give thanks to Rania’s contribution. Thanks to her summary of all the major advice, everything fell right into place, which we couldn’t appreciate more. We are proud to echo what Bing says–  “the flipbook is well designed and exceptionally inspiring,” what Elizabeth says – “I am sure it will be a blessing to newcomers and seasoned professionals alike.”

Conclusion: AI vs. Humans

Finally, the conclusion of the flipbook is on pages 14, 15, and 16.

• On page 14, Helena and Sasha identify the elephant in the room –
• Then on page 15, Vanessa challenges AI saying – “if you interpret/translate like a machine, a machine could take your job, but if you bring your humanity into the work, you can really stand out.”
• On page 16, Jose further concludes that –
  “In our fast-paced digital world, the intrinsic human qualities of empathy and warmth remain indispensable in interpretation.”
• “So, continue honing your skills and nurturing those invaluable soft skills – they are your most powerful tools in this profession!”

We were amazed to see that the interpreters provided different perspectives on AI and Humans, and echoed each other so well! The participating interpreters’ conclusion coincides with what Monterey Language Services is convinced of after making 12 videos to compare the performances of professional interpreters to AI.

Wonderful insight and advice

The messages from all these accomplished interpreters with their fingers on the pulse of the industry, with their heartfelt words and their pictures – it’s all really come together to make something special that we’re excited to share with whomever needs to hear it, especially during this time of uncertainty.

We love the awesome quote from Bing “the wealth of information disguised as language”. There’s so much information coded in language, and it’s up to us as interpreters to decode it for others to understand, which is something that machines still fail to master.

We clearly see a bright future for those interested in becoming translators or interpreters! So keep calm and keep going!

“Keep calm and keep going” is a powerful reminder for everyone. Don’t get too much into your head or scramble for a fix, or rush to make progress. Just stay calm, do what you have to do, and carry on. With time, everything will turn out well, naturally. Thanks to Lenne for providing the perfect ending for such a complex undertaking that, as Martha put it, will benefit everyone in the world of languages.

We often present clients with guidance on how to work with interpreters, and frequently get asked about AI. This is because many people are waiting for the day that they can simply go online and use AI to seamlessly translate between two different languages, but we would like to say it out loud here: THAT DAY HAS YET TO COME.

Please also check out this flip-book we’ve made https://heyzine.com/flip-book/20de67a12a.html

Please also check out our playlist for Chinese localization case studies: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO-QGEbwcTr14xqfiR38Mp-EhHAmclsUY

We localized the Interpreters and Music video into traditional Chinese as an example to compare translation accuracy between humans versus AI and to identify some classic AI issues.

One of the biggest weaknesses of AI is that it often struggles with names. For instance, the name “Laura” was translated into both “蘿拉” and “勞拉.” When we saw this inconsistency in names, we looked at each other with amusement because this happens all the time. Some may say AI spelling names incorrectly isn’t a big deal since it’s an easy fix. However, for those people, we’d like to share a real-life example.

In a lease contract we worked on, Paragraph 1 said that the landlord shall be known as ‘A’ and the tenant as ‘B’. Paragraph 2 called the landlord ‘C’ and the tenant ‘D’. This was a document with 30,000 words that a client asked us to quote for reviewing the translation, which had probably been done by an AI. Just in terms of reviewing names, how much effort would it take to find out if there were places that call the landlord “E” and the tenant “F” and so on? Not to mention all the work it would take to find other mistakes that humans typically need several rounds of review to detect.

Our analysis also uncovered that AI defaults to using the pronoun “你,” referring to males and offering no female form “妳.”

AI have translated love song titles like “Suddenly Missing You” and “Stuck on You” into traditional Chinese, using the male form. The male singers may not prefer using the male form of “you” in their love song titles. Otherwise, a native speaker in traditional Chinese would feel kind of strange, reading it.

We inserted line breaks on messages that appear in the video. With line breaks, AI seemed to lose the context of the lines.

Line breaks are important. We are often requested to insert line breaks in Asian language marketing materials. Take Japanese line breaks as an example. There are some basic rules for line breaks or how to break words up, but at the same time, there are a lot of exceptions, which humans can easily catch if they understand Japanese, but not AI. In other words, humans break things apart (debriefing) and put them together in a creative way, which AI is just not capable of.

It turns out that AI struggles to translate any segment accurately and, at times, produces unnatural and contextually absurd translations. As shown in the screenshot below, even with a relatively short source text, the quality of AI translation was unbelievably subpar.

AI translated “interpretation” as “explanation” due to a lack of context.
AI translated “Performance” to machine’s performance rather than that of the interpreter’s.
AI mistakenly translated the meaning of “like” as “to be fond of” instead of “similar to.”
AI word-for-word translation for “big heart” doesn’t make sense to a Chinese audience.

It’s clear to us that AI is not able to handle messages that are broken down by line breaks. This then leads us to a question: How well could AI handle entire messages without line breaks?

We conducted a retest by removing all the line breaks on messages. In this attempt, the text was formatted in a more machine-friendly way to enhance AI’s understanding. But even so, post-editing remained an essential step, with 80% of the segments requiring significant human intervention. Without this crucial step, AI translations either come across as rigid and less relatable to our audience, or contain mistranslations. Below are some examples.

Example 1:
The AI translation appears rather stiff because the word “sync” was translated literally. The audience might wonder what it means to “sync” one language to another. Human translators are able to further explain the context of sync, that is, interpreters “listen to one language and convey it in another language.”

Example 2:
AI translated “more emotionally acute” as “more impatient,” which not only deviates from the intended meaning of the source, but also negates the impact of the word “music”. During post-editing, we replaced it with “more emotionally sensitive,” which is more contextually accurate.

Example 3:
AI did word-for-word translation again. It doesn’t sound like what a normal person would say in Chinese. As a dynamic language, Chinese favors verbs over nouns and usually keeps sentences short. Therefore, in post-editing, we restructured the sentence to make it fit a typical Chinese writing style, and flow more naturally.

Example 4:
AI’s translation of “concentration” lacked clarity. Without referring to the source, it was hard to grasp the intended meaning. So, we opted for a more precise choice of words.

Example 5:
AI does a literal translation, full of ambiguity and rigidity, which doesn’t make clear sense to a Chinese audience.

Translation is supposed to flow naturally to engage the audience. It is the more immersive and relatable experiences that make humans feel comfortable. These are exactly the areas where we as interpreters and translators can contribute to.

There may be a lot of gloom and doom from some in the community who think that their jobs are at risk, however, the reality is that we’re training AI to speak our language, but they aren’t able to fully understand it like we can. They can process it, try and find the corresponding pattern in their database, and come to a conclusion that they think is right, but they won’t always be. That’s where interpreters and translators will always have the edge over AI. Human creativity and our ability to understand what’s important, and the culture embedded in it, enables us to make sure that we are conveying the intended message.

We tried one of the latest AI platforms to translate one of our office videos into Mandarin.

While we were impressed by the seamless process and the voice cloning feature that enhanced voice modulation, we couldn’t help but notice pronunciation and translation errors in the generated video. Given that Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, tones can become a source of misunderstanding if not pronounced correctly. The chosen video introduces the rental service of our conference room, making “conference” a high-frequency word. However, throughout the video, AI consistently pronounces the Chinese word for “conference,” as “memory,” with tones differing from the former. Also, “state-of-the-art” in Chinese is pronounced the same way that “cash” is. This could undoubtedly complicate the message we aim to convey if left alone.

The translation issues we caught are mostly recurring problems caused by machine translation as discussed above. Take the first sentence as an example. AI translated “Looking for a conference room to have a meeting over video or in person?” as “Can you look for a conference room via video or in person meeting?” AI’s rendition deviates from the original meaning, which is likely caused by line breaks, leading to confusion and miscommunication. Such discrepancies underscore the importance of post-editing and human intervention to refine machine-generated translations.

Our conclusion becomes clear.

In this age of AI becoming more prevalent, humans just need to work smarter to beat out AI. As individuals in an evolving world, it’s important to accept technological advancements, but also understand that AI lacks creativity, individuality, improvisation capability, and the understanding of human cultures. That’s how humans can break through and go beyond AI’s limitations.

Video link: https://youtu.be/dATBteNQ-zY?si=bgPDXw-3FblyfnaW

Picking up where we left off on our previous behind the scenes diversity blog, we are certain that there is one thing that AI has yet to really accomplish. AI’s inability to generate something unique in music and in interpretation is something interesting to explore.

We have started to show the video, Interpreter and Music, to our closer circle of colleagues and friends in order to gather feedback. One colleague sent us a video from Kuban Music on YouTube about AI singing a Chinese song. Our initial reaction was of surprise at how impressive it is that an AI was able to sing like that. Our director of translation Mei-Ling thinks it’s so cool that she started to learn the song from the AI. But the more we listen to it, the more we begin to realize that there’s something lacking in its composition and performance. After repeated listening, Mei-Ling, who is not even close to be called a singer, feels the urge to record herself to challenge the AI singer. She said it was a therapeutic experience, because she feels that she has something unique that the AI is lacking — heart and liveliness. There is something special from hearing a human singing that an AI voice couldn’t produce. For comparison, please see both the AI and the human samples below. We are sure if we were to invite 100 humans to sing, they will come out all differently with their own individual uniqueness, while AI variations will most likely be limited.

Everyone knows that AI is a result of big data, “aggregating” from others to generate its materials. It’s trained in a way to mimic humans. Notice that’s humans, plural. This is because it’s not trained to mimic individual people, but a general populace. It essentially crowdsources behavior from the resources it’s trained on, and becomes not just one person, but many. Though the programmers may have the AI come up with clever phrases, such as AI shedding tears, to make it sound like its own person, it isn’t nearly as unique and diverse as humans. It’s inherently impossible for that to happen because of the origin of the AI’s nature.

On the contrary to that, with our interpreter and music video, individuality is one thing that we really wanted to express. 15 individual contributions from around the world bring in incredibly vast diversity and inclusion, yet no interpreters were instructed on what exactly to be contributed. Every piece comes out of interpreter’s individuality with each interpreter’s own language, culture, thoughts, feelings, circumstances and education that leads to how they act. In this sense, everyone is as unique as a fingerprint—there really is nobody like each one of them in the world.

For music, it’s always about expressing oneself with human emotions and energy, and AI may be struggling to do that because it doesn’t have a sense of self. The ability to have your emotions flow out is something that AI is not able to replicate, at least not in present times. AI is always searching for the “right” answer, but there isn’t one with creative media like music or abstract concepts like human energy.

AI is unable to think outside of the box and improvise like humans can. They’re trained to think on pre-existing thoughts and opinions. Anything outside of that scope is not something that they are able to even perceive. That’s why, for example, AI will never truly be able to replicate jazz. Jazz is a collaborative performance where innovation and creativity are key elements. At any given minute, the tempo and melody can change to something entirely different, and it’s up to the musicians to keep up and complement each other so that it doesn’t sound like complete chaos. AI is very exciting technology, but there’s nothing quite as thrilling as watching jazz musicians collaborate or excellent interpreters work.

More often than not, interpretation is similar to Jazz where interpreters often need to improvise and come up with creative solutions to their on-the-spot translation. AI is able to follow patterns to come up with solutions that others have thought of and have done before, but they’re not able to come up with these types of originality their own. AI singing or interpreting at the current stage may serve as a gist of ideas, a prototype, or a machine for learning a song. Still, it will be important for humans to intervene, and add the kind of individuality or human touch that will help it sparkle and make it shine and standout as a piece of unique individual work.

In the future, the methodology used to create AI may change. Is it possible that AI will get closer to having more individuality and uniqueness? We’d love to hear our colleague’s thoughts on the topic because everyone brings their own unique perspective. There are multiple answers to this question and we’re happy to start the discussion and see where it leads us since this is such an important topic in this day and age!

AI singing sample: (Listen Here)

Human singing sample: (Listen Here)

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl0vHQPHXA8

Though the industry has been working to have AI better replicate emotion, the current AI is still very monotonous and one-note in terms of its ability to express emotion. As our Chinese colleague Yingjie, who has been involved in natural language AI, commented: It is too early to talk about AI mimicking human emotions.

Exactly because diversity and richness have been the areas where humans outperform AI, this behind the scenes post will be unavoidable lengthier than our usual blogs. In other words, we would like to take the time to discuss diversity and richness and focus on the human side of stories rather than music genres or instruments.

When Mei-Ling casually recorded herself during a relaxing weekend, her intention was for this to serve as a demo for interpreters to participate in and show that the contributions can be just as light and candid as hers. She didn’t expect the video to be so diversified at the global level.

An ASL interpreter Kendra gave us the initial idea to include interpreters whose native language is ASL and interpreters of color. Originally, she was thinking to represent our local bay area communities. But then it was only natural that it evolved to include greater representation of the world communities. Besides interpreters from all over the United States including Hawaii, we have participation from China, Congo-Brazzaville, Egypt, and Israel.

We are so honored to have received contributions from all types: freshly recorded contributions from Davy, Fadhma, Oscar, and Mei-Ling just for this project; good times contributions from Qianxi, Sameh, Flower, and Nia; nostalgic contributions from Christy and Soheir; formal and elegant performances from Laura and Ayumi. Last but certainly not least, Jody contributed an easy-to-understand ASL presentation, and Sharon for giving us such a powerful contribution that we, as members of the global community, can all relate to. What a wonderful group of interpreters!

As you may have noticed, we have kept the audience very busy all the way: They have to watch clips, hear music, read storylines, listen to words from interpreters as well as from voices in the background, think about messages delivered, and all of these are meant to be done simultaneously. This is because we want to create an opportunity for the audience to experience what an interpreter has to go through when interpreting. After all, interpretation does require a bit of talent!

It’s natural to think that interpreters and music are all about performances. However, our perception changed after we received Fadhma’s contribution. We realized that it helped balance what we have been doing, which is listening. It cannot be understated the diversity that Fadhma brought to the project and how she expanded our horizons.

We are also so proud that we have the younger generation’s participation. Oscar’s son, Santiago, sings, plays the piano and the ukelele. Interestingly, he has occasionally interpreted spontaneously for family and relatives, and he is good according to Oscar. In Santiago, we see the hope of our profession and believe the interpretation profession will continue to prevail over AI for many years to come. In addition to Oscar and his son’s duet, we were blown away to watch the contribution from Davy with 3 sons during their family time. Davy’s 3 sons are so adorable, moving along with the music rhythm so naturally that I see the future of our beautiful world in the children of music lovers like Davy. What a beautiful family from Congo-Brazzaville!

Sharon has a huge heart to write such lyrics in her original song Safe Harbor: “No matter what your faith might be, the color of your skin, who you love or who you flee, I will take you in.”  These words cover the full span for world peace and harmony. We are glad to have Sharon whose lyrics have added breadth and depth to this video project!

Flower was celebrating her major birthday and decided the theme to be “Around the World.” We are so appreciative of the richness that has flown out of her clips. The presentation of Mexican, Spanish, American, and Chinese elements in the song, dance, and outfits is both culturally and visually global. What a music and cultural feast to share with us!

Sameh is an Egyptian residing in Egypt and was giving training in Kenya at the African Translators Association. In his singing, we hear “mighty place to be”, so we inserted a scenery background of Kenya, which adds the exotic feel that interpreters experience when they travel to places for assignments. Sameh did professional singing during his last 2 years at college, and he does a lot of styles, ranging from country music to jazz, that explain why he sang so freely and we really enjoy it and admire him!

We cannot thank Nia enough for selecting such a great song for the world community. It perfectly concluded the video project that we have explained in our Part 1 Behind the Scenes blog post. We’d like to thank Qianxi for thinking of us while having a good time during a karaoke party on a small island in south-eastern China. We thank Jody for providing such a wonderful piece for everyone to understand, a clip of her ASL interpretation performance of the star spangled banner. We also want to express our heartfelt thanks to the nostalgia and wonderful past that Christy and Soheir’s contributions did, bringing us back in time and allowing us to relive the past. We would also be remiss if we didn’t give a fond shoutout to Laura and Ayumi’s performances, which represented some of the finest and most expressive types of music, played at the highest level. All of these interpreters have brought the video to a broader, and higher level, ultimately adding much more enjoyment to the audience. Thank you so much!

Every individual contribution represents how the human brain works. We didn’t dictate what each individual would do in their contribution. It was completely up to them and their free choice. And yet, all of the individual contributions have aggregated as a whole to give us a very good sense of our mission and what we are capable of as professional interpreters. As Oscar put it, how uplifting and positive for us all as interpreters!

And then, we wondered what would happen if this topic was taken by an AI without any intervention—what would an AI party resemble without human intervention? Would it be as diversified and rich, or as enjoyable and heartfelt, or as uplifting and positive for us all as interpreters, as if it’d been done solely by humans and their individuality?

Video Link: https://youtu.be/yl0vHQPHXA8

After watching the video, don’t you go thinking that we only sing and dance as interpreters! One of the interpreters featured in the video, Fadhma, was so inspirational with her words, and prompted us to write the behind the scenes story.

Interpretation is such an abstract concept, so we were trying to figure out how we could explain it. Ultimately, we realized that we could demonstrate it using something relatable and timeless like music. It’s something that everyone is familiar with and likes. This is why we link interpreters to music and we are proud to say that through the collaboration of our fellow interpreters around the world, we have vividly drawn various analogies between our interpretation profession and music.

That’s right! The role of interpreters is as important as music to all of us! In the video, we pose a question: Imagine what the world would be like without interpreters? And then the voice on the background answers to it exactly “on all those faces, what do they say?” We are amazed by how our colleague Hina has wonderfully found that line of monologue from one of Nia’s contributions. That basic answer provides the core foundation for our mission as interpreters.

We then asked a Chat AI: Answer simply on what the world would be like without interpreters? The answer was: Without interpreters, the world would face significant communication barriers and misunderstandings. Interactions between people speaking different languages would become extremely challenging, hindering international cooperation, business transactions, and cultural exchange. Traveling and understanding different cultures would also become more difficult, resulting in a more isolated and divided world.

The Chat AI’s reply is decent, but it is insufficient as it only gives an answer about the consequences. How do you go straight to the core like a professional interpreter in answering the question and allowing us to use the answer in a fast yet must catch all video? This is one aspect in the production that professional interpreters can distinguish ourselves from AI!

We cannot stress enough the significance of interpreters weaving diversity and unity through communities. Again, the video background voice champions and answers right to the heart – “Yeah…ah! The colors of the rainbow, so pretty… in the sky.” The hues of the rainbow so unbelievably fit into the messages we would like to deliver, and we felt like they are a godsend.

This video has certainly re-ignited our sense of mission and the mission must go on even further in spite of AI technophobia. AI is capable, but then can AI interpret our tones, our feelings, our energy, our life, our passion, our emotions, and our sense of mission that professional interpreters have shared? Seeing this video, we are reminded once again that interpreters who are full of life with a good sense of mission will continue to prevail over AI! We are thrilled and honored to connect with all the amazing interpreters in the world! At this point of conclusion, the messages of the video become clear that these are real life, real energy, real interpreters, and real interpretation that AI can not replace, at least not in our lifetime! Being surrounded by the predominant AI waves today, this video serves as a therapeutic piece to relax the minds of human interpreters, so let’s go sing and dance!

How does AI apply to the language industry? AI has always been a constant question mark in the back of our minds especially regarding automatic translations. Now that AI can do so much, is it time for translators to become worried?

Today, translators use machine translation programs such as Trados or MemoQ to give them a baseline to work from, so called post-editing machine translation (PEMT). PEMT can greatly improve translation times especially for longer translations. For translators, it has been recognized as a valid strategy and working method. However as we all know, the translations that machine translation programs produce aren’t perfect. They are often more than not flawed. But what happens if you begin using AI such as Chat GPT which is designed to produce fluent and natural sounding language? Would a translator have a more powerful tool? Or would you have a competitor?

Translators will find that the answer is the same as it always has, ever since machine translation was introduced into the world. A machine will most certainly not remove the need for a translator. Language is always so fluid, full of nuance and possibilities that it’s almost impossible for a machine to pick up on every last detail. On the flip side though, translators may find a new ally with AI as it can cut their work time, allowing them to work on more projects. For example, translators can enter questions into Chat GPT, maybe have it check for fluency or suggest different ways of phrasing things, or even come up with new ideas.

If you’re an interpreter, you probably have even less to worry about. Though AIs such as Google Assistant are popular for quick and easy phrases, it still runs into the same problems as it is pulling from Google Translate. Interpretation especially is a field where accuracy and nuance is important and a lot of that is easily lost with AI translations.

Overall, in the language field, whether the advancement of AI would replace the role of human translators and interpreters is nothing to be concerned about, at least not in our life time. If anything, we should be excited about it. As the technology advances, translators and interpreters may find a powerful ally that will help them advance their work efficiently.

What makes an expert translator? Generally, it’s someone with a wealth of experience in a particular field, which they can bring to translation of materials in that field. The expert translator is able to understand difficult or obscure concepts, and then convey these concepts in another language clearly and accurately while using proper terminology and discourse.

Subjects that typically require expert translators include IT, Law, Medicine, and Business Management, to name only a few. When launching a translation project in one of these fields, we start by putting together an expert team – but no mixing expertises. For example, we will assign legal projects to translators who used to be lawyers, but not IT projects. As another example, we recently translated a large tech company’s presentation into Turkish. Since the subject matter was highly technical, we limited our selection process to translators very familiar with the IT field, and also had an industry expert to go over the translation. This is because we take quality assurance very seriously, and we want to be absolutely sure that the translations we produce are completely accurate. We also take a similar approach when we work with a large volume of medical documents. We put together a team of translators who are experienced at translating such documents, and some translators even have actual medical training.

Expert translators can really shine when it comes to cutting-edge technologies that are quickly becoming the trends of the future, like artificial intelligence (AI), block chain technology, and more. These topics are constantly developing, and expert translators have to keep their knowledge and understanding up-to-date. Imagine being able to understand and express these complex, ever-evolving ideas in not one but two (or more) languages! That is the skill level of some expert translators. In fact, since some of these technologies are so new, there are no equivalent words or phrases in languages other than the one it was developed in. This means that expert translators can sometimes even be the ones to create appropriate terminology in their native language. Working on cutting edge technology provides an exciting opportunity for expert translators, who give tech companies the ability to expand and grow internationally.

For us, working with expert translators is such a dynamic and positive process! It’s a breath of fresh air which always gives us a lot of energy and momentum to keep going and provide the best possible translation and interpretation services to our clients!