Technology and Language Professionals

In a world where thanks to technology, people who speak different languages are more interconnected, language professionals play a very important role. Last year, in a couple of events in which language professionals participated, one of the recurrent topics was the advance of technology applied to languages. The topic has become relevant because many people think that the work performed by my colleagues could be very soon done by machines.  

More people are using programs found in the internet, called Machine translations, to find the meaning of foreign words, phrases and full texts as well. Perhaps the most popular program is Google translate, More than 100 languages are covered making an impressive language combination. But there are other Machine translations and every time they are more powerful reaching more accuracy in their output. Does it mean that these are the last days when we look for professional translation services?

Today, it is possible to access some apps to learn new languages without a teacher and without going to school. And some of those apps are free. Is this the end of the profession of language teachers?

A video released by Waverly labs about its product “The pilot” went viral. Two people speaking while their own languages are translated to the language of the listener.  It is really breaking down language barriers. Bad news for professional Interpreters? 

Translation, Interpretation and teaching languages are 3 professions related with languages that I have exercised. All of them are now affected by the technology advancement. The magazine Sprachcaffe in French presents some interesting videos about how far has reached technology breaking down language barriers.  

The use of technology for translation is on the rise. There are new tools available that are faster, more accurate, can work in Multiple languages at the same time and very often can be used free of charge. Some companies are now using those tools to convey the information in multiple languages about the products that they advertise. Perhaps one of the examples of the latest on Technology (In my opinion) can be seen in Word lens, a translation application by Quest Visual that can be used by smartphones to scan a message in a foreign language and translate and display it in another language. This is ideal for foreign visitors to a country in order to understand the different signs on streets and roads.  

But machine translations have disadvantages too. The biggest one is the accuracy of the translation to the target language. The mistakes in the translation are mostly due to inconsistencies in the meaning of the full text, owing to the way they work, mostly word by word. Machines are not prepared to work with the context and tend to fail when there are cultural factors involved like proper names, idioms, events that exist in one of the cultures but not in the other. When translating from English to another language where gender considerations are relevant or something like the form of second person (In English we use “you”, but let’s talk about Spanish where we can say “tu”, “usted”, “vos”, “ustedes”, “vosotros”;) corrections and a good revision are always needed. If you need to send a message in a Semitic language like Arabic or Hebrew, where gender is important even for the verbs to be used, if this message is addressed to women, I would suggest that you better ask to a speaker of the language, because almost never you will get an accurate phrase from a Machine translation.

Recently I posted a short message in Persian in my Facebook account. My father saw it and he wanted to know what I wrote. A friend of him recommended the use of a Machine translation. He tried but the results did not help him to figure out what did I write. He told me about it and while he was telling me what he did in order to break my message, I tried by myself with a Machine translation to see what translations I can get into English and Spanish from Persian. But the MT was not able to provide an accurate translation, not even close. Some points I noticed were that in my message, I used a date from the Persian calendar; the MT gave me a date in February, but the date in the target language was far from being accurate. The MT also failed to identify the name of the festivity that I did mention in my message.    

Another disadvantage that not many people mention is related with confidentiality. Professional translators need to sign a confidentiality agreement protecting sensitive information from being revealed, in most cases it is related with sensitive data involved in the translation. Translation tools use resources from the Internet in terms of Memories and checking texts to make corrections. But we do not know if tools are inadvertently sending private information to be stored in a cloud where a language professional has no control. Let’s not talk about Hacking, security breaks, sending notifications by email to the wrong recipient.

Machine translations are not available in all the languages. You can expect to find tools in the most used languages in the world in each area, but sometimes, to work with minority languages mean to work using the old existent tools, maybe an online dictionary at most. You can refer to my article about indigenous languages in Internet . In Faroe Islands, local people frustrated after the lack of interest from major companies who provide tools online to create a proper translation tool for their language, they decided to create their own translation service online with the collaboration of local people. You can read this article from the BBC and you can read their site in case you want to listen to some sample phrases in Faroese. 

  

Despite the disadvantages of those tools, not all the professional translators hate them, but include them in their work. CAT tools and Machine translations are used to improve quality, efficiency and consistency in their translations while translators dedicate more time for proofreading and post machine editing.    

Technology for interpretation it’s also advancing. I mention earlier “the pilot” from Waverly labs. Because they access the same Machine translations on the Internet, its advantages and disadvantages tend to be the same. One thing that they add is voice recognition and filter to minimize the effect of external noises. But they cannot work if there is not Internet. In an Israeli magazine I found this video from ili  that is a wearable translator that can also work offline. It supports English, Japanese, Spanish and Mandarin but its use is limited to travels. More Information about this tool can be found in https://iamili.com/

Occasional trips are not the only way to use these portable translators. In an article in the Spanish newspaper “El País” they mention that more than 200 devices fabricated by Travis Translator have been donated to a UN program dedicated to improve access to basic education called Open Learning Exchange and Movement on the Ground, an organization that supports refugees. Now, NGO’s can use those tools in an emergency in case not enough interpreters are available.   

When I wrote about technology used to learn languages, I thought about the use of apps with multiple resources online that will make possible the process of learning a new language without going to a school or interacting with a teacher. But when I was reading some Italian magazines online, I found this article where they talk about a project financed by the EU to create a robot to teach a second language to children. According to this article, a robot with artificial intelligence will help children from the UK, Germany, Netherlands and Turkey to learn a second language. Children who speak German or Dutch will be taught English while those who speak Turkish will be taught German or Dutch. Read more about this project. 

But this idea was not used first in Europe. In articles from 2010 that I found, it is written about the use of robots in South Korea to teach English in a classroom. In this link it can be read about the experiences in that time in classrooms from that country. Similar experiences exist in Japan. Today new advances allow not only more autonomy to Robots teachers but special programs will allow the robot to learn which strategies are more enjoyable for students and whether they are bored or tired. You can see some videos about this. 

There are plans to use robots to teach languages to kids and to teach refugees. Some researchers suggest that the use of robots can be beneficial to children and vulnerable people, who tend to be less shy when they interact with machines. Robots have other advantages like the use of other technologies and methods to support the learning process, they do not get paid, they do not get tired and they do not lose patience.  Robots can be a valid alternative when we face a shortage of professional teachers. But they are not going to substitute teachers, and they are not going to take the place of a language teacher. Robots cannot replicate the human qualities needed for this job. It is expected that robots will provide support to classrooms and will have more relevance in basic language courses. But for those who will study a language at a more advanced level, they will require to have more contact with teachers and experts.

Language learning apps have brought an innovative way to learn languages. They can be easily accessed from laptops and mobile phones, students can learn at their own pace, and they can take their lessons at any time. It is possible to track progress and use different technologies for learning. Some of them allow you to chat with native speakers of the language you are learning. You can see alist of apps and how do they work.

But apps are not perfect. They can be very good to learn a language in terms of grammar and to read and compose short phrases. But the opportunities to develop speaking skills are not many. Although they are including videos to help improving the listening skills, they cannot provide more opportunities to improve. In other hand, those apps are very impersonal. Most apps require an internet connection to work properly.

In my opinion, the advance of technology will have an impact on the work done by the language professionals. However they are not meant to substitute humans but to help them to improve their works. Apps and robots cannot adapt to the complex situations that surround modern languages and communications in general. I do not think that computers will become experts translating poems, literature or the full range of idioms, but I do think that they will provide innovative solutions that will help those who perform this work. In other hand, new technologies only deal with very few languages, usually the most used in the different markets. My friends, who work with minority languages, will still have to use those old methods...

But exist other opportunities where technology can help.  Let’s give an example: there are very efficient programs that automatically check the spelling and grammar of any written text helping the translator to save time and to produce a text of very good quality in the target language, while the translator focuses on the final outcome. Personally when I write texts using different languages in the same composition, like Spanish, English and French, I have experienced how those programs can recognize the language that I am using, show me my own inconsistencies and propose corrections (Unfortunately this facility is not available when I use Esperanto).

Another very important difference between machines and language professionals is that machines follow a set of instructions that are included in their source program, while language professionals follow something very important in this profession and is a code of ethics. Because of those ethical standards, language professionals respect their clients, respect their right to privacy and confidentiality, maintain impartiality and decline to undertake assignments for which they are not qualified.   

It is said that language professionals will not become obsolete, but they will embrace new technologies to improve their work. I say that Language professionals who embrace technology and have a strong work ethics, their names will not be removed from our business directories.