The ghosts in the Machine translation

Despite popular belief, the majority of Europeans do not have access to learning foreign languages, and being bi- or multilingual is still a privilege for most. 

With English becoming the most recent lingua franca, cutting back on the EU’s multilingualism and hasty technologisation pose a double threat for professional translators. Automated translation and voice detection promise to break language barriers, but skeptics are beginning to worry. 

Though many warn of the effects of automation,  the use of AI in publishing is already altering the way we work. In a lot of cases, workers no longer need to start a process from scratch and can instead rely on automation for certain tasks. For translators, this means saving time on taking a trip to the library and allowing AI tools to provide alternative translations or detect errors within them. Yet, it also runs the risk of being outsourced, as many companies are pouring their resources into technologisation, locally hiring professionals requires extra steps that most employers are not willing to take. 

The European Commission has significantly increased its spending on translation technology in the past couple of years, consequently lowering recruitment levels. ‘‘Post-editing’ is the jargon EU translators use for revising machine-translated texts, which has become a crucial part of the job. Much of the profession has been outsourced to a gig economy promising faster and more efficient methods, but leading to exploitation. 

Albeit effective with simple and direct text, machine translation still has a lot to improve in accessibility, bias detection, and cultural understanding. Being able to read between the lines and decipher subtle meanings remain a valuable human skill. Due to this, the need for human translators is still in high demand – and with the profession adapting, this symbiosis is sure to further evolve. 

Translation is an essential part of Voxeurop's editorial offer and one of its trademarks. No wonder our editor-in-chief Gian-Paolo Accardo was among Réka Kinga Papp's guests in this Standard Time conversation episode, along with Display Europe platform's managing director and founding president of the Cultural Broadcasting Archive, Alexander Baratsits, and Frances Pinter, an Open Access (OA) advocate and the first woman to establish her own publishing company in the UK. She is the founder of Knowledge Unlatched, the Open Climate Campaign, and the Supporting Ukrainian Publishing Resilience and Recovery Organization (SUPRR).

In partnership with Display Europe, cofunded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.