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How would you translate these phrases into another language? “There are those who know how to fill a dishwasher, and those who don’t care” and “¡El chat GPT me ha hecho una paella!”

Bursting with translation anticipation, a quirky UN contest has had translators, interpreters, students, and lovers of a good multilingual idiom challenge submitting entries from around the world to the 2023 St. Jerome Translation Contest.

On hiatus for three years, the contest is back and participants from across the world were limbering up for a new bout of linguistic gymnastics. 

AI beware

A panel of expert judges have combed through entries for each language, looking for accuracy in conveying not only the meaning of a frustrating household task, artificial intelligence (AI), and a traditional Spanish dish, but also the nuances of the source text, as well as style, submitted by students to seasoned translators.

The goal as always is to make sure nothing is lost in translation.

“In spite of the rise of Google and AI, which are threatening the very existence of our profession, there is continuing interest in translation,” said one of the judges, a senior text revisor in the Russian section of the UN Office at Vienna.

“We were very pleased with the liveliness of the language of many translations; it seemed like most of the contestants had had the same kind of problem loading dishwashers, and some of them seem to have PTSD when recalling those feats,” he told the audience in Vienna at the official award ceremony on Wednesday.

Source: https://www.un.org/en?_gl=1*fmwd2x*_ga*MjI2NDEzODY5LjE3MTMxODA0MDE.*_ga_S5EKZKSB78*MTcxMzI3NDMwMC4yLjEuMTcxMzI3NDQyMS4yLjAuMA..*_ga_TK9BQL5X7Z*MTcxMzI3NDMwMC4yLjAuMTcxMzI3NDMwMC4wLjAuMA..

Full article: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1141877

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Latin American literature scholar Suzanne Jill Levine receives PEN America award for translation

When you read Latin American literature in English, there’s a good chance you’re reading a translation by Suzanne Jill Levine, who has been plying her craft since the early 1970s. Her versions of books by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Julio Cortazar and Manuel Puig (to name but a few) have enriched the lives of English-speaking readers, and her work has had an impact comparable to that of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s Proust or Constance Garnett’s Dostoevsky — not only literary but cultural. Levine has had the vision and bravado to become a protagonist in the story of Latin American literature in English translation, and to change it in the process, not only publishing a biography and translations, but also creating a mashup of autobiography and scholarship that’s totally original.   

Levine has been named the recipient of the 2024 PEN/Ralph Manheim Award for Translation, which recognizes the translator’s lifetime achievements.

“My book ‘The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction’ (Graywolf Press, 1991, Dalkey Archive, 2009) by tracing the process of translating, explicitly shows readers how translation is a creative act and defines what a translator is, and why a translator needs to be linguist, literary critic and poet or novelist all in one,” said Levine, UC Santa Barbara distinguished professor emerita of Latin American literature. “Basically, our concepts of authorship and originality are inadequate to grasp what a translator does.” 

Source: https://news.ucsb.edu/

Full article: https://news.ucsb.edu/2024/021436/pioneering-translations-artistry

Islamabad : Former Federal Secretary and a well-known man of letters, Muhammad Saleem Sethi has come up with a genuinely-crafted literary landmark, the Urdu translation and illustration of the famous Persian poet Fariduddin Attar’s long poem ‘Musibat Nama.’

The book gives a deep insight into the Sufis’ school of ‘Ishq’ which is commonly known as ‘Mysticism.’ It takes the readers to the less-trodden paths of human sufferings and man’s resilience in the face of ordeals. An undertone of curiosity always keeps the flame of spiritualism burning, says a press release.

In the interior parts of old Peshawar city, the Persian ‘kalam’ of Sheikh Saadi and Attar of Nishapur was read out and the family members used to sit silently and listen to the resonating Persian verses of great Iranian poets. It was that rich literary background that made Saleem Sethi undertake the gigantic task of translating Attar.

Source: https://www.thenews.com.pk/

Full article: https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1178091-literati-welcomes-urdu-translation-of-musibat-nama

The National Library and Archives will host the fourth edition of the International Translation Conference at its headquarters in Abu Dhabi from 17 – 18 April 2024. Held under the theme Pushing New Boundaries: Translation and Building Knowledge Societies, the conference will discuss more than 35 research papers.

His Excellency Abdullah Majed Al Ali, the Director-General of the National Library and Archives, said: “We are pleased to announce the completion of the necessary preparations for the Fourth International Translation Conference, which attracts intellectual elites in the UAE and abroad, as they will be able to acquaint themselves with a variety of new research papers and innovative ideas that represent a significant addition in the field of translation in several languages. The convening of this conference will add to the tangible benefits achieved in the previous three conferences in which many experts from around the world presented research papers, which now become important references for translators and scholars in the field of translation.”

Source: https://www.mediaoffice.abudhabi/en/

Full text: https://www.mediaoffice.abudhabi/en/arts-culture/4th-international-translation-conference-to-take-place-in-abu-dhabi/

Austin, TX – April 9, 2024 – Boostlingo, a leader in language access technology, announces AI Pro – a new AI solution offering real-time captions, transcriptions, translations, and speech features in multiple languages. AI Pro empowers professionals to communicate on conferencing platforms regardless of language or hearing disabilities.

In addition to the AI Pro launch, Boostlingo unveils a new brand identity and website reflecting the company’s expansion of services beyond interpretation technology. The new branding reflects Boostlingo’s commitment to innovation and increased language access.

“Boostlingo’s rebranding was a strategic decision as we are building upon our innovative technology and adding new products that incorporate AI,” shared Morgan Teller, Director of Marketing. “We’re also expanding our technology from just interpretation to being capable of supporting broader language services.”

Source: https://slator.com/

Full article: https://slator.com/boostlingo-introduces-ai-product-and-new-brand-identity/

Abstract

Health equity and accessing Spanish kidney transplant information continues being a substantial challenge facing the Hispanic community. This study evaluated ChatGPT’s capabilities in translating 54 English kidney transplant frequently asked questions (FAQs) into Spanish using two versions of the AI model, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4.0. 

Introduction

The concept of health equity involves providing every individual with a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health¹. Unfortunately, disparities in healthcare access and the distribution of medical information continue to be significant barriers². For the Hispanic community, particularly those who primarily speak Spanish, these barriers are often compounded by linguistic challenges, limiting their access to essential healthcare information.

Source: https://www.nature.com/srep

Full article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-59237-7?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=CONR_PF018_ECOM_GL_PHSS_ALWYS_DEEPLINK&utm_content=textlink&utm_term=PID5835937&CJEVENT=e4c837a2f8b911ee822c00780a82b832

• Bipartisan group supports addressing ‘strategic disadvantage’ and understanding adversaries who pose ‘serious threat to American national security’
• Open Translation Centre tasked with training analysts and linguists comes amid challenges getting accurate information out of China

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers introduced a bill on Thursday that would establish a research centre charged with creating publicly accessible English translations of open-source materials from China.

The initiative, to be known as the Open Translation Centre, would also train analysts and linguists to specialise in China and other countries, a full list of which will be determined later.

“The United States can’t afford to be in a position where our competitors know more about us than we know about them,” said Democratic congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas, the bill’s sponsor.

“For generations, Congress supported open-source translation programmes that helped Americans understand both our allies and our adversaries. As our investment in those programmes [has] declined, countries like China and Russia have accelerated their own – putting us at a strategic disadvantage,” he continued.

Source: https://www.scmp.com/?module=masthead&pgtype=article

Full article: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3258714/us-lawmakers-unveil-bill-set-research-centre-translating-open-source-materials-china

Are you a translator who wants to play with Al and don’t know where to start? Here’s an opportunity to learn the basics of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and so on, for immediate application in your translation projects. 

Ideal for Al newbies, curious hearts or colleagues and students wary of Al systems, this will be a mostly practical workshop; with some theory where it’s needed, but not much. 

This event is created exclusively for Plus and Premium members.

Learn more: https://training.proz.com/breaking-ai 

Google just announced that it’s expanding its recently-launched Circle to Search tool to include language translation, as part of an update to various core services. Circle to Search, as the name suggests, already lets some Android users research stuff by drawing a circle around an object.

The forthcoming language translation component won’t even require a drawn circle. Google says people will just have to long press the home button or the navigation bar and look for the translate icon. It’ll do the rest. The company showed the tech quickly translating an entire menu with one long press. Google Translate can already do this, though in a slightly different way, but this update means users won’t have to pop out of one app and into another just to check on something.

Source: https://www.engadget.com

Read full article: https://www.engadget.com/googles-circle-to-search-feature-will-soon-handle-language-translation-174802558.html

Samsung continues to break down language barriers and innovate communication for more users through Galaxy AI

Samsung Electronics today announced the upcoming expansion of three new languages for Galaxy AI: Arabic, Indonesian and Russian, as well as three new dialects: Australian English, Cantonese and Canadian French. In addition to the 13 languages¹ already available, Samsung empowers even more Galaxy users around the world to harness the power of mobile AI. In addition to these new languages and dialects, Samsung plans to add four more languages later this year, including Romanian, Turkish, Dutch and Swedish, as well as the traditional Chinese and European Portuguese.

“Committed to democratizing mobile AI for all, Galaxy AI’s language expansion this year will allow even more Galaxy users to communicate beyond language barriers on a scale that is completely unique to Samsung,” said TM Roh, President and Head of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to innovate our technology and pioneer premium mobile AI experiences so that even more users are equipped with the right tools to unleash their unlimited potential.”

Source: https://news.samsung.com/

Read full article: https://news.samsung.com/global/galaxy-ai-now-supports-more-languages-with-latest-update

For the first time in history, a single language dominates global scientific communication. But the actual production of knowledge continues to be a multilingual enterprise.

The use of English as the norm poses challenges for scholars from regions where English is not widely spoken. They must decide whether to publish in English for global visibility, or publish in their native language to make their work accessible to local communities. And when they work in English, they end up expending more time and effort writing and revising papers than their native English-speaking peers.

As gatekeepers of scientific knowledge, academic publishers play a key role in helping or hindering the participation of a multilingual scientific community. So how are they doing?

Source: https://theconversation.com/global

Full article: https://theconversation.com/prestigious-journals-make-it-hard-for-scientists-who-dont-speak-english-to-get-published-and-we-all-lose-out-226225

Google Meet has upgraded its service with AI note-taking and translation capabilities — although it requires an extra subscription cost.

Unveiled at this week’s Google Cloud Next, “Take notes for me” is now in public preview and allows users to engage with the conversation rather than having to manual take down notes or minutes.

Meanwhile, “Translate For Me” is coming in June and will automatically detect and translate captions in Meet. This includes support for 69 languages (equal to 4,600 language pairs), assisting users to feel more confident and connected to their colleagues, regardless of language.

“Workspace customers can already turn on translated captions during video calls and select their preferred language, helping Meet users around the world easily communicate,” said Aparna Pappu, Vice President and General Manager at Google Workspace.

Source: https://www.uctoday.com/

Full text: https://www.uctoday.com/collaboration/google-meet-upgraded-with-ai-notes-and-translation-features/

A handy new translations feature is in the works for Mozilla Firefox that should help speed up translating short snippets of text from one language to another.

Firefox 118 introduced a privacy-respecting web page translation feature, and Mozilla devs have continued to improve on it in subsequent releases

But sometimes you don’t need or want to translate an entire web page just a portion of text on the page.

Plus, given that Firefox translations take place locally to preserve privacy the task of translating every bit of a text visible on a web page can be a little on the slow side (on my machine it is, anyway).

Source: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/
Full article: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/04/firefox-translate-selected-text-feature

As San Francisco-based OpenAI just unveiled on Friday its Voice Engine tool, which can replicate people’s voices, in small commodity hub Yiwu, East China’s Zhejiang Province, people adopted a similar domestic artificial intelligence (AI) application to help engage with foreign traders in 36 different languages as early as in October 2023.

Voice Engine, a model for creating custom voices, uses text input and a single 15-second audio sample to generate natural-sounding speech that closely resembles that of the original speaker, said the company in a statement released on Friday.

Source: www.globaltimes.cn

Read full article: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202403/1309855.shtml

Translation algorithms have greatly improved in recent years, but can they work on literature? Human practitioners of the art are not convinced

‘Translators are stage horses of enlightenment,” the poet Alexander Pushkin wrote in the margin of one of his manuscripts. Two centuries later, the political scientist Steven Weber similarly compared translation to transportation: not of people and goods but of ideas and knowledge. Just as the world swapped horses for mechanical means of transport, multilingual communication has accelerated too – and now, with the use of AI tools, translation can happen faster than ever.

But faster doesn’t always mean better – the use of AI comes with various risks. This week the European parliament adopted the Artificial Intelligence Act, the world’s first comprehensive piece of AI legislation. It requires developers to be transparent about the data used to train their models, and to comply with EU copyright law.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Read full article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/15/ai-translation-literature

The Ethical and Quality Concerns Raised by Improper Data Acquisition

In a digital world teeming with data, the art of language learning and its integration into the fabric of Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands as an eclectic fusion of human insight and technical precision. As giants of the AI arena seek to harness the power of linguistic diversity, one mammoth challenge rears its head – the flood of web-scraped, machine-translated data that inundates the datasets of large language models (LLMs).

These data sources can potentially impact the sanctity of language learning, calling education technologists, AI data analysts, and business leaders to rally against the detrimental effects of opaque data origins in our AI future..

Source: https://www.appen.com/blog/

Read full article: https://www.appen.com/blog/web-scraped-and-machine-translated-data-in-ai-language-training

Sunnyvale residents who don’t speak English have a new way to engage and participate in city meetings.

The city is piloting an artificial intelligence-based translation service upon request for public meetings through Wordly. The technology offers live translation in more than 50 languages. Using AI is more cost effective and efficient than human translators, according to city officials.

“We have such diversity from cultures as well as language that trying to make sure we can overcome those barriers … is a great step forward in showing what cities can do to include residents who in the past have been left out,” Mayor Larry Klein told San José Spotlight.

On its website, Wordly advertises its work with a handful of other cities, such as Gilroy. Residents attending a Gilroy government meeting in person can scan a QR code to access Wordly translations in more than 30 languages.

Source: San José Spotlight, www.sanjosespotlight.com
Read full article: https://sanjosespotlight.com/sunnyvale-taps-ai-to-translate-public-meetings/

NHS interpreting service problems contributed to patient deaths

The BBC has found interpreting issues were a contributing factor in at least 80 babies dying or suffering serious brain injuries in England between 2018 and 2022.

See the BBC news link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-66605536.amp

British Museum agrees to pay translator whose work it used without permission