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 - 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
Vikram Dendi explains the current limitations of machine speech translation.
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 Microsoftβs 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 GΙΛΙz
(classical Ethiopic) what is possibly the first biography of an African woman:
The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros.
Wendyβs 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 JosΓ© Saramago to Brazilian footballer
PelΓ©. 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.
Broadcast
- Sat 4 Jun 2016 11:00ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4