Small Languages in the (Machine) Translation World
To mark International Translators’ Day on 30 September, a seminar organised by the University of Tartu and the European Commission focused on the upsides and downsides of machine translation, which is having ever more influence on the work of translators.
Machine translation: is it really an easier route?
Along with machine translation’s more enticing aspects, an informative presentation by Mai Lehtpuu, Quality Officer of the Estonian Language Department of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation, also highlighted several of the problems that arise in regard to editing of machine translations. One concern is that translators’ focus shifts from the content of the original text to that of the automatic translation. As a result, it can happen that the translation no longer corresponds to the original.
Does machine translation reinforce gender stereotypes?
In languages without gender pronouns, perhaps. Elizaveta Yankovskaya, a language technology researcher at the University of Tartu, concluded her presentation with a humorous example of how AI could reinforce gender stereotypes by making predictions based on statistical averages.
Consider a sentence in Estonian that was fed to a machine translation engine, which might be translated as: Anne can’t make it to the cinema in the evening, because they work in construction and are very tired in the evenings. Being trained on thousands of other sentences, the engine predicted that Anne was a he, because most people working in construction are men.
Be careful: if AI doesn’t know, it will try to guess!
Computer-assisted translation has been around for decades. Machine translation is a newer development and one that can’t be ignored. The seminar, which featured experts such as Kristiina Suviste, consultant of the machine translation unit of the European Commission, called for vigilance to keep from succumbing to the pitfalls of machine translation, and emphasised the fact that AI is no substitute for humans in translation work.
Happy International Translation Day!
