Towards Responsible Machine Translation

This book is a contribution to the research community towards thinking and reflecting on what Responsible Machine Translation really means. It was conceived as an open dialogue across disciplines, from philosophy to law, with the ultimate goal of providing a wide spectrum of topics to reflect on. It covers aspects related to the development of Machine translation systems, as well as its use in different scenarios, and the societal impact that it may have. This text appeals to students and researchers in linguistics, translation, natural language processing, philosophy, and law as well as professionals working in these fields.

For fifty years, innovations have taken on a new dimension: the Internet, DNA sequencing, genomic manipulations, advances in transhumanism, nanotechnologies ... and much more. These recent innovations are not without addressing new issues whose consequences are as important as irreversible. The innovator, of whom Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are emblematic contemporary figures, appears as a personality as brilliant as he is destructive, who aspires to change the world regardless of the violence that may ensue. With this then, emerges the need to establish responsible innovation, in which the innovator should be accountable for his actions and review his position as a hero. To establish this new ethic, philosophy is a necessary recourse, since it questions, among other things, the self-control of the Stoics, the prudence of Aristotle, respect of Kant, the will power of Nietzsche and the power of Foucault.

Lynne Bowker and Jairo Buitrago Ciro introduce the concept of machine translation literacy, a new kind of literacy for scholars and librarians in the digital age. This book is a must-read for researchers and information professionals eager to maximize the global reach and impact of any form of scholarly work.

The digital era is characterised by technological advances that increase the speed and breadth of knowledge turnover within the economy and society. This book examines the impact of these technological advances on translation and interpreting and how new technologies are changing the very nature of language and communication. Reflecting on the innovations in research, practice and training that are associated with this turbulent landscape, chapters consider what these shifts mean for translators and interpreters. Technological changes interact in increasingly complex and pivotal ways with demographic shifts, caused by war, economic globalisation, changing social structures and patterns of mobility, environmental crises, and other factors. As such, researchers face new and often cross-disciplinary fields of inquiry, practitioners face the need to acquire and adopt novel skills and approaches, and trainers face the need to train students for working in a rapidly changing landscape of communication technology. This book brings together advances and challenges from the different but intertwined perspectives of translation and interpreting to examine how the field is changing in this rapidly evolving environment.

This collection takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of gendered technology, an emerging area of inquiry that draws on a range of fields to explore how technology is designed and used in a way that reinforces or challenges gender norms and inequalities. The volume explores different perspectives on the impact of technology on gender relations through specific cases of translation and interpreting technologies. In particular, the book considers the slow response of legal frameworks in dealing with the rise of language-based technologies, especially machine translation and large language models, and their impacts on individual and collective rights. Part I introduces the study of gendered technologies at this intersection of legal and translation and interpreting research, before moving into case studies of specific technologies. The cases explored in Parts II and III discuss the impact of interpreting and translation technologies on language professionals, language communities, and gender inequalities, while stressing the future needs of gendered technology, particularly machine translation. Taken together, the collection demonstrates the value of a cross-disciplinary approach in better understanding how language technologies can be harnessed to address discrimination and contribute to growing discussions on gender equality and social justice at the intersection of technology and translation. This book will be of interest to scholars in translation and interpreting studies, gender studies, language technologies, and language and the law.

In the dynamic context of English language education, learners bring many differences in identity, motivation, engagement, ability, and more. Addressing Issues of Learner Diversity in English Language Education recognizes that traditional, one-size-fits-all approaches to language education are insufficient in meeting the needs of a varied and global learner population. It grapples with effectively teaching English to individuals with diverse linguistic backgrounds, learning styles, and cultural contexts. The challenges range from learner autonomy and motivation issues to navigating mixed-level classes and integrating technology into language teaching. Drawing on current research trends and cutting-edge methodologies, this book captures the diverse voices of contributors from various ESL/EFL settings, offering context-specific solutions to the myriad challenges faced in language education. The book illuminates the nuanced phenomena within English language education; it showcases innovative theoretical frameworks and up-to-date research findings. By addressing learners as singular individuals and collectives, the publication guides educators in enhancing individual competencies and maximizing the potential of each learner.

This collection surveys the state of the art of computer-assisted literary translation (CALT), making the case for its potential to enhance literary translation research and practice. The volume brings together early career and established scholars from around the world in countering prevailing notions around the challenges of effectively implementing contemporary CALT applications in literary translation practice which has traditionally followed the model of a single translator focused on a single work. The book begins by addressing key questions on the definition of literary translation, examining its sociological dimensions and individual translator perspective. Chapters explore the affordances of technological advancements and availability of new tools in such areas as post-edited machine translation (PEMT) in expanding the boundaries of what we think of when we think of literary translation, looking to examples from developments in co-translation, collaborative translation, crowd-sourced translation and fan translation. As the first book of its kind dedicated to the contribution CALT in its various forms can add to existing and future scholarship, this volume will be of interest to students and scholars in Translation Studies, especially those working in literary translation, machine translation and translation technologies.

The previous conference in this series (AMTA 2002) took up the theme “From Research to Real Users”, and sought to explore why recent research on data-driven machine translation didn’t seem to be moving to the marketplace. As it turned out, the ?rst commercial products of the data-driven research movement were just over the horizon, andintheinterveningtwoyearstheyhavebeguntoappearinthemarketplace. Atthesame time,rule-basedmachinetranslationsystemsareintroducingdata-driventechniquesinto the mix in their products. Machine translation as a software application has a 50-year history. There are an increasing number of exciting deployments of MT, many of which will be exhibited and discussed at the conference. But the scale of commercial use has never approached the estimates of the latent demand. In light of this, we reversed the question from AMTA 2002, to look at the next step in the path to commercial success for MT. We took user needs as our theme, and explored how or whether market requirements are feeding into research programs. The transition of research discoveries to practical use involves te- nicalquestionsthatarenotassexyasthosethathavedriventheresearchcommunityand research funding. Important product issues such as system customizability, computing resource requirements, and usability and ?tness for particular tasks need to engage the creativeenergiesofallpartsofourcommunity,especiallyresearch,aswemovemachine translation from a niche application to a more pervasive language conversion process. Thesetopicswereaddressedattheconferencethroughthepaperscontainedinthesep- ceedings, and even more speci?cally through several invited presentations and panels.