Technological Literacy, Translation and the Future

I have a confession to make: in middle school, I used to be a mathlete.

Now, hold on. If you just spent some time staring wildly between the title of this post and the first sentence. I promise you, this will make sense soon.

My first semester at MIIS is coming gently to a close and so, very soon, will the year 2016. It’s finally December: the best time for ruminating on days gone by, fantasizing about what lies ahead and maybe making some resolutions. We swear we’ll keep them this year, right?

All jokes aside though—this year has brought a lot of changes and given me a lot to think about. And, unsurprisingly, I find myself wondering about how I can be more interdisciplinary. This concept has been my idée fixe for years now, probably even before I went to college. It was at UCLA, however, where things started really falling into place.

It turns out that if you lock some biologists, geneticists, evolutionary psychologists and sociologists in an auditorium together, they can lead some really impressive (and thorough) courses on Sex and Gender. The professors most certainly did not all agree with each other, but the conflicts were productive and, more importantly, they exposed freshmen to the idea that they should experiment outside their field of study and expand their breadth of knowledge.

Now, fast forward to graduate school, where I have the exquisite privilege of attending an institute that lets me get my Translation and Interpretation degree while also clinging desperately to a specialization in Localization Management, the more technological and business-focused side of the field. As a sort of last hurrah in our Introduction to Computer Assisted Translation course, our professor asked us to take a moment and reflect on what we see as the future of technology for professional translation. And it turns out, I have a lot to say.

But First, A Couple of Anecdotes

In Intro to CAT, we discussed that old adage that Machine Translation will be taking away the jobs of human translators in the next five years. The thing is, we’ve been saying that for decades now. In reality, whenever Machine Translation is involved, we either have to sacrifice (a) the quality of the translation, (b) complete autonomy through the use of human pre- or post-editing, or (c) the breadth of translatable texts by limiting our sources to certain text types. The only away to sacrificing none of those factors would be through the use of a true artificial intelligence, and in that case, we’ll probably have other problems on our hands. Besides, if real intelligences can’t even agree on a best translation, why would an artificial intelligence be able to?

This tale of Modern Translation as a struggle between man and machine, as silly as it would sound, does hold some purchase in the minds of translators.

When it comes to how it manifests in students, well, I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the argument: “I didn’t go into the Humanities to do math/technology/science.” The harsh reality is that it’s very difficult to survive as a freelancer (or well-rounded translator or interpreter in general, to be honest) if you don’t get a grip on those fields. At the very least, you’re in charge of your own finances! These fields, especially when it comes to computer science, are excellent ways to develop your problem-solving skills in ways that may actually be applicable in your life: within translation and without.

Moreover, the machines-are-our-downfall hysteria has purchase in the field at large. Luckily, it’s less evident with people who have their degrees from MIIS, but I’ve seen a pattern with professional translators who are dead certain that technology is to blame for devaluing their work and forcing them to lower their rates. They see Machine Translation as the devilish force undermining their place in the market.

I would strongly disagree with that notion. Yes, technology is changing the field of translation, but if you think you are in competition with machine translators, then you’ve already lost the game. You’ve just illustrated how poorly you think of your ability to translate the meaning behind a text, rather than just the words.

Our world, in its current hyper-digitalized form, produces a lot of media, so much so, that it becomes a wall of white noise. Some of this noise may prove to be worth translating. I don’t mean it has to be translated well: that is a beyond-Sisyphean task. What I mean is if we’re at the stage where bots are tasked with creating new material, then we’re also at the stage where machine translation of massive amounts of fuzzy material makes sense.

These technological innovations are the logical result of a world where there is so much information available that humans are not capable with keeping up with all of it. (Keep in mind that computers are not capable of drawing conclusions from it. We’re all limited here.)

Machine translation can help narrow down the content of mass amounts of data, allowing a human to pick and choose what they translate. This allows us to keep up with the rapid-fire pace of the world and to address dangers when they come up, instead of too late. In contexts where precision and clarity are key, machine translation and the use of a controlled language can help companies efficiently release technical manuals in hundreds of languages. This makes the operators of heavy machinery and our world safer. Translation memories and term bases save time and effort in the translation of highly ritualized texts, improving quality and probably preserving a good number of translator brain cells.

Humans are not the losers when it comes to integration of technology into translation. It’s important for translators to realize that they are wranglers of this technology. Our goal as language professionals is to make the most of the capabilities translation technologies provide us with.

The world we live is in ever-changing at a dizzying pace and we must become flexible enough to operate within it or risk getting lost in the current.

So What’s That About Your Mathlete Past, Then?

For someone who grew up in the Silicon Valley and then turned so strongly away from the Path of “Hard” Sciences, I really do love science, statistics, and technology so very, very much. I don’t think of these fields as an exclusive club, because, truth of the matter is that technology has become so ubiquitous that technological-literacy is a vital skill.

This is something I feel translators need to realize. Technology is not a threat to Translation and Interpretation; it is a gift. It’s helping us expand our boundaries and do what was once impossible.

Technology isn’t going to change the future on its own. It’s humans, just like you and me, that are going to make the future, using technology. The first step to making sure that you don’t get lost in the tide is realizing that now, more than ever before, the power to harness technology is right at our fingertips. All we have to do is meet technology halfway.