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Depressed plastic robot

Caveats of machine translation

Translation tools (often referred to as CAT tools for ‘computer aided translation’) are a great means of streamlining some of the elements of a translation process, such as checking terminology or retrieving existing translations (so-called Translation Memories). Modern versions of these tools allow for a web-based, collaborative translation, giving collaborators such possibilities as revising and/or commenting proposed translations, evaluating existing translations or adding machine translation (henceforth MT) support. Modern MT systems are based on artificial neural networks, which have boosted quality considerably since roughly the mid-2010s.

CAT tools, with or without added machine translation support, have been studied from various angles. While they in general increase efficiency and often ease the task of translation as translators do not have to start from scratch, there are some caveats to be kept in mind when working with them. Here are some of the more important ones.

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Theoretical background to translation

This is the first of two blog posts with general notes on how to approach the task of translating science, touching upon the most prevalent basic notions and advice relevant to the task. The two main points presented in this and the upcoming post are (a) an introduction into a present-day functionalist view of translation which provides for a wide range of purpose-driven strategic translation options and (b) key caveats when making use of digital support tools for translation including machine translation. These general notes are meant for people who read academic texts at a postgraduate level and have experience with scholarly publishing, but may have little to no experience in translation. As technological tools are nowadays omnipresent in translation processes, they have been comprised here under basic background to translation.

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Vasconcelos public library in Mexico City

Übersetzte Artikel sind Forschungsleistungen

Artikel ini juga tersedia dalam bahasa Indonesia. (Dieser Artikel ist auch in indonesischer Sprache verfügbar.) This article is also available in English. (Dieser Artikel ist auch in einer englischen Fassung verfügbar.) Cet article est aussi disponible en français. (Dieser Artikel ist auch in einer französischen Fassung verfügbar.)

Die Übersetzung wissenschaftlicher Arbeiten kann einen wichtigen Beitrag für wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaften leisten. Beispielsweise hatte Albert Einstein einige Artikel ins Englische übersetzt, damit angloamerikanische Kolleg*innen zum neuesten Stand der Wissenschaft beitragen konnten. Die moderne Tendenz, wissenschaftliche Arbeiten, die nicht in englischer Sprache verfasst sind, zu ignorieren, führt zu schlechteren Studien und doppelter Arbeit. Die Übersetzung kann dazu beitragen, sprachliche Barrieren zu überwinden, und ist daher ein wichtiges Mittel, um die Zugänglichkeit und die Teilhabe zu verbessern und der Zersplitterung der Literatur in sprachliche Inseln entgegenzuwirken.

Das Übersetzen öffnet die Wissenschaft auch für die Gesellschaft, für die sieben Milliarden Menschen, die kein Englisch sprechen, und für viele weitere, die Englisch nicht als Muttersprache haben. Darunter sind viele Menschen, die direkt zur Wissenschaft beitragen, indem sie Daten sammeln, Menschen, die auf Probleme hinweisen, die erforscht werden müssen, oder Menschen, die die Früchte der Wissenschaft nutzen (Lehrer/Ausbilder, Architekten, Ingenieure, Ärzte, Aktivisten, politische Entscheidungsträger, Journalisten usw.) und dadurch den gesellschaftlichen Nutzen der Wissenschaft gewähren.

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Vasconcelos public library in Mexico City

Translated articles are research output

This article is also available in Indonesian. Artikel ini juga tersedia dalam bahasa Indonesia.

This article is also available in French. Cet article est aussi disponible en français.

Translating scholarly works can contribute enormously to a scientific community. Famously, Albert Einstein translated articles into English so that Anglo-Americans could contribute to state-of-the-art science. The modern tendency to ignore scholarship that is not in English leads to lower quality studies and double work. Translation can help overcome linguistic barriers, and is thus an important means to increase accessibility and participation as well as to counteract fragmentation of the literature into linguistic islands.

Translation also opens science to society, to the seven billion people who do not speak English and many more who do not use it as their first language. Among them are many people who contribute directly to science by collecting data, people who point to problems that need research, or people who need to use the fruits of science (teachers/trainers, architects, engineers, doctors, activists, policy makers, journalists, etc.) and amplify the societal benefit of science.

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AI and seamless translation of research in Official African Languages

In case you might not yet have had a chance to read this previous blog post by my colleague please do so, it accurately addresses the well-known dilemma faced in the current scholarly publishing landscape in science.

About 2000 languages are spoken in Africa, and these traditional and indigenous dialects are also a medium of choice in knowledge dissemination for many scientists on and off the continent.

As pointed out in the earlier mentioned blog post, many African scientists are proficient in the English language and regularly publish their scholarly communications in Anglophone. In 2018 alone AfricArXiv preprint repository scholarly African collection had 25 submissions in English.

It is however not lost on such scholars, myself included, that whereas we are multilingual, we face unilingual constraints in expressing our mostly written publications as well as sometimes in our spoken word presentations.

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Hello from Indonesia

There is a language bias in the current global scientific landscape that leaves non-English speakers at a disadvantage and prevents them from actively participating in the scientific process both as scientists and citizens. Science’s language bias extends beyond words printed in elite English-only journals.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00031/full

Hello all.

It’s Dasapta from Indonesia. Thank you Victor for inviting me to joining The Translate Science Initiative. Although scientists are coming from every corner of the earth, living perfectly using their own native/mother tongue, but it’s English which has been used as the lingua franca of science.

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