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.

Technology can make remote interpretation as easy as 1-2-3, but at the same time, there can be any number of technical problems that can interfere with an interpretation assignment. Even though problems do happen, it’s our responsibility to minimize them. Having the prudency to keep an eye out for any problems and their solutions is a key skill for interpreters and everyone to have in modern days. In today’s blog, we will be highlighting some common connection issues and what to do in those circumstances.

Interpretation Links

Occasionally, the link you use to log into the meeting may be incorrect. The most common scenario is probably due to a separate meeting being created, causing you to wait in an empty room. If you as an interpreter find yourself in this case, it is best to get in contact with the language service provider you are working with as quickly as possible to ensure that you receive the correct link.

Interpretation Times

The appointment time may be mistakenly written by any party involved in the scheduling, causing the interpreter to be either early or late. To prevent this from happening, it is best to set a reminder that’s sent 24 hours before an interpretation event starts, so all parties including the client and interpreter can double-check on the proper start time and the right link.

Updates

Many of us have experienced this situation. As soon as logging into a conferencing application, you were notified that the application requires an update. This can cause you to be nervous about being late to the meeting. Testing your application at least 30 minutes before logging into the appointment to make sure everything is up to date is a good way to ensure that you aren’t affected by any sudden updates.

Sudden Change of Interpretation Methods

For various reasons, there may be a sudden change in the method for remote interpreting, such as resorting to the telephone or another type of video conferencing service. In such circumstances, make sure to keep your email and phone ready and handy to see if any notification of changes come to you.

Power or Internet Fluctuations

Fluctuations in power or internet can be unavoidable and unpredictable. You may be able to circumvent power outages or battery shortage by planning ahead as much as possible. Charge your phone, laptop, and computer fully. Always think of a backup plan. If occasionally, things just can’t be helped. In these cases, be apologetic and contact your language service provider or the meeting host for contingency.

One way is automating it. Some of the simplest mistakes that translators make involve mixing up numbers, conversions, or names. The easiest way to make sure that you have correctly reflected every instance mentioned in the source in the translation is to use a text compare. Of course, your translation will be flagged as being vastly different from the source, but it will let you know if the numbers, company names, and other words or numbers that have to be the same in the target as they are in the source are the same or not. It also takes virtually no time too. All you have to do is copy and paste then press a button. It shouldn’t take you more than five minutes to go through everything depending on the length of your project.

Another way is to make it hard to make any mistakes from the very start. If you are translating into a new, blank document, instead try translating into the target document itself. You could even enter the strings into a machine translation so that you can see the translation and the source side by side. Doing this makes it much harder for you to make any typing errors when copying whatever needs to be the same in the target as in the source. If the document you have is not easily copied such as a pdf, you can use OCR to help make the text selectable and then copy it into a word document.

The next tip is the simplest and possibly the most obvious solution. Whenever you see something that has to stay the same between the source and target, just copy it from the source to the target. So for example, if you have a number like 1,000,231, then just copy it into the target. If you want to take this a step further, then you should highlight every instance of numbers or text that need to be the same between the two files and then you will be able to quickly identify the places that need to be checked before delivery.

Quality Assurance is a necessary part of the translation process but often not something that is effectively done due to time constraints or other factors. Hopefully with this post, you have learned a few tips about how you can make the process shorter, but without sacrificing any quality. If you are able to submit a translation that avoids minor mistakes can really help your reputation and make you stand out as a translator who can be relied on.

The same is true for technology usage in the translation and interpretation industry. Technology was already quite a buzzword for language professionals. Many people have been singing praises of tech such as neural machine translation, remote interpretation tools, etc. Now it is time to optimize this technology to help us share information as accurately and quickly as possible.

Providing translation and interpretation is absolutely vital during the coronavirus pandemic. In normal circumstances, it has been shown that people who don’t speak English well or at all tend to have worse health outcomes after many types of routine procedures. This effect can be even worse when the situation is critical, like when patients potentially have COVID-19. Since interpreters can’t be in the room to interpret for patients, doctors must rely on phones as an interpretation platform. This still poses some difficulties, like connectivity issues, and trouble hearing due to doctors keeping physically distant from patient. This is better than nothing, but certainly can be improved. Just as doctors have a duty to their patients to provide the best care possible, language professionals and technology developers have a duty to optimize their services to support health care workers in these times.

However, any technology that is used for health care purposes must have legally a certain level of security. This is one reason that certain platforms like Zoom can’t be used for remote medical interpretation: they need end-to-end encryption, among other requirements, to ensure patients’ privacy.  According to this Time article, many hospitals are doing their best to transition to providing remote interpretation, but they don’t have the infrastructure. We hope to see more platforms implement stricter security measures, so that health care workers can have more tools available to them.

Machine translation is another tool that, when used properly, can greatly speed up the sharing of important information and significant news about the coronavirus. It can also help researchers and doctors understand medical studies and reports on the coronavirus that have come out of other countries. This is why SDL, a major provider of language services and technology, is offering health science researchers free access to their proprietary machine translation tool. This tool offers translation of over 120 languages, so researchers will have a wealth of information from different sources available to them. Please see this article for more information!

We have outlined a few ways in which translation and interpretation technology is important, but we have just touched the tip of the iceberg. There are many ways that this technology is being used to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and to help those people who are working on the front lines of this pandemic and those who have gotten sick. We are proud to offer remote interpretation services ourselves. We believe that this technology plays a significant role in keeping people healthy and saving people’s lives, and we are grateful to everyone who develops and uses this technology.

A total of 63 people responded to our question, and these 63 responses amount to a total of 4,708 words. Of these 4,708 words, 192 relate to machine/technology/automation/social media/internet, while only 133 relate to humans/people/individuals^[1]. Two thirds (42) were in favor of technology. No one was against technology or had a completely negative outlook on the effects of technological automation^[2].

Some concerns or reservations with technology and automation had to do with humans losing jobs to machines and losing face-to-face interaction. However, 48 respondents (76%) mentioned humans having a role in the automated workplace. Of these 48 respondents, 7 elaborated that automation may replace jobs involving repetitive tasks, but will free up humans to do more important work: customer follow-ups, creative and critical thinking, and research and innovation. On the other hand, nine respondents did not mention humans/people/individuals in their responses, whereas all respondents mentioned technology or automation in one form or another. Moreover, only 19 respondents (30%) mentioned a need for human-to-human interaction.

Five respondents expressed their concerns with automating translation and interpretation services. Four of these five respondents believed that humans should still have a role in providing these services. For example, people will still need to correct the mistakes made by machine translation. Specialized translations and reviews of culturally-related work will require human intervention due to the complexity of human language, thought, and emotion. The overall sentiment was that translators and interpreters will not be replaced by technology, but by translators and interpreters who utilize technology to the best of its capabilities. One of the five respondents expressed concern that pay rates for human translators may decrease, since speed and ease of review may increase significantly through the use of technology.

Overall, more than three fourths of respondents mentioned humans having a role in automated workplaces, including in the translation and interpretation industry. In general, respondents had a positive outlook on the effects of technological automation^[3].

Monterey Language Services is committed to bridging the world’s languages by providing quality, professional and efficient translation & interpretation services in over 175 languages. Please feel free to request a quote from us.

^[1] These statistics were determined through word searches for human*/people/person/individual, and for machine/technolog*/automat*/social media/internet and related words.

^[2] These statistics were determined by categorizing whether a response was generally in favor of technology, and whether it had a positive or negative outlook on the effects of technological automation.

^[3] All other statistics were derived from statements made in the responses.

Monterey Language Services is offering a full-time project management position, to manage translation and interpretation projects in a large number of languages.

We are looking for a MATURE, ENERGETIC, SELF-MOTIVATED, AND RESPONSIBLE person with the following experience/requirements:

• At least one year of experience handling multilingual projects in the TRANSLATION & INTERPRETATION business
• Has a great sense of responsibility and passion about working as Project Manager
• Able to cooperate with others as well as work independently
• Good English communication skills – both written and verbal
• Experience using SDL Trados or similar as a Project Manager
• Experience using interpreter scheduling software is welcomed
• Likes working with technology and tools

If you are interested, please email your COVER LETTER, Resume and recent salary history to Mei-Ling Chen, Director of Translation, at mei-ling@montereylanguages.com

Monterey Language Services
www.montereylanguages.com

“Machine-assisted human translation vs. human-assisted machine translation” was the topic that won the Monterey Language Services Tech Contest, which took place on Monterey Language Services’ Facebook page and ended today at noon.

Participants were mainly from the Chinese program of the Translation and Interpretation School of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, which is the largest program in the school. Congratulations to Qianxi, the winner, and all who participated! (See his victory speech here.) We felt your energy and it was breathtaking. We hope to see you next time.

The 36 comments touch upon the future for translators, development of language technology and machine translation, CAT tools such as Trados, MemoQ, Wordfast, power of machine translation, human translators versus machine translators, translation software, how machines can improve efficiency and productivity for translators, a real life story with Google Translate, training machines to translate, coding and decoding, translation segmentation, machine language, repetitions in text, subject knowledge and specialization, theory versus reality, and more.

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for a quote.

If you consider yourself to be the most social and opinionated person, check this out. Here are easy steps to win:

• Click on the link below:
Monterey Language Services Tech Marathon
• Start a question about Technology
• Invite as many friends as possible
• Keep your thread alive
(i.e. have your friends join, give feedback, and have fun!)
• The longest thread will win
• Price is $100 in cash

The marathon starts immediately. The deadline is April 18th, Friday, 12 pm PDT. The winner will be announced at 5 pm on Monterey Language Services Facebook.

Everyone can chat about future technology. Are you ready for this challenge?

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for a quote.

As interpreters, we are always interested in the development of interpretation technology, including the possibility of “robot” interpreters. About a year ago, we wrote about the potential of interpretation software and Microsoft’s efforts in that area. Their software is meant to analyze your speech, translate it and synthesize an audio track of your own voice speaking in the target language. (However, the software will first need to study your voice for several hours. Also, it gets around one in eight words wrong.)

So are there robot interpreters in our future? The answer is complicated. Perhaps one day, but not any time soon.

Interpretation software faces many difficulties, in each of its component stages. The first step is speech recognition, an area that has seen great improvement over the last few years. Nowadays, speech recognition figures in our daily lives – when we make a call and are asked to speak to a robot, when we are driving and asked to give commands to the stereo system, etc. Due to its wide range of applications, speech recognition is the most mature of the technologies involved, but even it still has a long way to go before it becomes truly reliable, as we are well aware from our experiences.

Next, the words spoken (and hopefully understood correctly by the system) need to be translated. While machine translation has certainly come a long way, anyone who has tried to use Google or Bing Translate on a foreign language website can testify that what comes out is not always even legible, much less an accurate translation of the source text.

Finally, the software needs to generate a spoken version of its translation through text to speech synthesis. This is possible with today’s technology, but even there many irregularities remain. Intonation, emphasis and other vocal indicators still do not carry over particularly well into artificial voice generators, creating voices that sound, well, robotic.

Beyond these basic limitations of the software, there also remain concerns about the nuances of both translation and interpretation. Questions about homonyms, about words that have multiple meanings depending on context, and of course the issue of cultural differences. There are many situations where even the most sophisticated software will be unable to guess the subtle nuances a speaker intends. A human interpreter does not just translate the words, but also the subtext and hidden meanings within them, judging not only the speaker, but also the audience.

“Reading the audience” to judge their understanding and reception of the translation is a vital skill for an interpreter. It is also one that becomes even more important in smaller, more intimate settings outside of presentations and conference interpretation. In a business meeting, at a doctor’s appointment, even in court, the message needs to be tailored based on the reactions of the listener.

Can you image a robot, as they as now, doing medical interpretation or legal interpretation?

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for a quote.

Will this software eventually replace human translators and interpreters? We think not. And here are our thoughts:

The technique behind this revolutionary translation and interpretation software is called “Deep Neural Networks,” which mimics human brain behavior. It is, however, important to note that this breakthrough took place about only two years ago. On the other hand, the first translator, Saint Jerome, has translated the Bible into Latin in the 4th century. Human translators, as a result, have been around for thousands of years. This long historical foundation is unlikely to be replaced by machines.

As amazing and groundbreaking this technology may seem, errors still exists and much more improvement is required. The software is far from perfect. Researchers pointed out that the 1 in 7 or 8 words would be incorrect. It is not error-free. However, human interpreters are able to handle error right on the spot, hence more efficient.

Technology is a double-edged sword. While science can definitely increase our quality of life, it cannot fully replace human language specialists. Only human translators can identify the subtleties in languages. Only human interpreters can detect errors. Only human linguists are able to master the art of interpretation.

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for more information.

Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network