Fostering MT Literacy and Reasserting the Value of Human Translators

Öz

In a rapidly evolving language services landscape where the boundaries between translation, revision, and post-editing are becoming increasingly blurred, this article provides a state-of-the-art review on the intricate relationship between human translators and Neural Machine Translation (NMT). While acknowledging the significant advancements made in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to automatic language processing, we want to emphasize the pressing need to reassert the value of human translators over unconscious algorithms that automatically generate translations. This paper also highlights the synergy between human skills and technology, positioning NMT as a key additional tool in a translator’s toolkit that enhances both speed and efficiency to meet the exponentially growing demand for translation services and to cope with the ever-tightening deadlines. Nevertheless, considering the ambivalent effects of NMT on the quality of the final product, we advocate for the informed and responsible use of machine translation (MT) tools by both professionals and translation students. Furthermore, we believe that beyond fostering MT literacy, translation trainers may play a crucial role in nurturing adaptability in future translators, equipping them with the necessary skills and tools to confidently navigate the latest and emerging technologies—such as interactive and adaptive MT tools or chatbots—in order to secure them a competitive advantage in the translation industry.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• machine translation
• MT literacy
• human translators
• MT tools
• translation students

Kaynakça

1. Alonso, Elisa, and Lucas Nunes Vieira. 2020. “The Impact of Technology on the Changing Role of the Translator in Globalized Translation Workflows.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization, edited by Esperança Bielsa and Dionysios Kapsaskis, 391–405. London: Routledge.
2. Bernardini, Silvia et al. 2020. “Language Service Provision in the 21st Century: Challenges, Opportunities and Educational Perspectives for Translation Studies.” In Bologna Process beyond 2020: Fundamental Values of the EHEA, edited by Sijbolt Noorda, Peter Scott, and Martina Vukasovic, 297–303. Bologne: Bononia University Press.
3. Bowker, Lynne. 2020. “Fit for Purpose Translation.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology, edited by Minako O’Hagan, 453–468. London: Routledge.
4. Bowker, Lynne, and Jairo Buitrago Ciro. 2019. Machine Translation and Global Research: Towards Improved Machine Translation Literacy in the Scholarly Community. Leeds: Emerald.
5. Breyel, Christine, and Thierry Grass. 2021. “Traduction automatique et biotraduction: le mariage forcé.” [Machine translation and biotranslation: An unlikely marriage.] Traduire, no. 244, 94–106. doi:10.4000/traduire.2350.
6. Castilho, Sheila, Stephen Doherty, Federico Gaspari, and Joss Moorkens. 2018. “Approaches to Human and Machine Translation Quality Assessment.” In Translation Quality Assessment. Machine Translation: Technologies and Applications, edited by Joss Moorkens, Sheila Castilho, Federico Gaspari, and Stephen Doherty, 9–38. Cham: Springer.
7. Daems, Joke, and Lieve Macken. 2019. “Interactive Adaptive SMT versus Interactive Adaptive NMT: A User Experience Evaluation.” Machine Translation 33 (1/2): 117–134. doi:10.1007/s10590-019-09230-z.
8. De Clercq, Ophélie, Gert de Sutter, Rudy Loock, Bert Cappelle, and Koen Plevoets. 2021. “Uncovering Machine Translationese Using Corpus Analysis Techniques to Distinguish between Original and Translated French.” Translation Quarterly, no. 101: 21–45. https://hal.science/hal-03406287.

9. Deneufbourg, Guillaume. 2020. “La traduction, un métier en voie de disparition?” [Translator, a disappearing profession?] Speech delivered at Traduction & Qualité 2020: Biotraduction et traduction automatique [Translation & quality 2020: Biotranslation and machine translation] at the University of Lille, Lille, January 31.
10. DePalma, Donald A., and Arle Lommel. 2017. “Augmented Translation Powers up Language Services.” Common Sense Advisory. Accessed January 16, 2019. http://www.commonsenseadvisory.com/default.aspx?Contenttype=ArticleDetAD&tabID=63&Aid=37907&moduleId=390.
11. Dirand, Baptiste, and Caroline Rossi. 2019. “Biotraducteur et traducteur automatique. L’homme outillé et la machine-homme.” [Biotranslation and machine translation: Machine-aided human and the human-machine.] In Des mots aux actes. Traduction et technologie, regards croisés sur de nouvelles pratiques [From words to deeds: Translation and technology, perspectives on new practices], edited by Élisabeth Lavault-Olléon and Maria Zimina, 63–78. Paris: Classiques Garnier.
12. Forcada, Mikel L. 2017. “Making Sense of Neural Machine Translation.” Translation Spaces 6 (2): 291–309. doi:10.1075/ts.6.2.06for.
13. Grass, Thierry. 2022. “L’erreur n’est pas humaine.” [To err is not human.] Traduire, no. 246, 10–23. doi:10.4000/traduire.2763.
14. Hansen, Damien, Emmanuelle Esperança-Rodier, Hervé Blanchon, and Valérie Bada. 2022. “La traduction littéraire automatique: Adapter la machine à la traduction humaine individualisée.” [Literary machine translation: Adapting the machine to individually personalized human translation.] In “Vers une robotique du traduire” [Towards robotic translation], edited by Anne Baillot, Ellen Carter, Thierry Grass, and Pablo Ruiz Fabo. Special Issue, Journal of Data Mining and Digital Humanities. doi:10.46298/jdmdh.9114.
15. Hickey, Sarah. 2023. “The 2023 Nimdzi 100: The Ranking of the Top 100 Largest Language Service Providers.” February 2023. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://www.nimdzi.com/nimdzi 100 top lsp/.
16. Kadiu, Silvia. 2016. “Des zones d’indécidabilité dans la traduction automatique et dans la traduction humaine.” [Manifestations of undecidability in machine and human translation.] Meta 61 (1): 204–220. doi:10.7202/1036990ar.
17. Kenny, Dorothy. 2022. “Human and Machine Translation.” In Machine Translation for Everyone: Empowering Users in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Dorothy Kenny, 23–49. Berlin: Language Science Press.
18. Kenny, Dorothy, and Stephen Doherty. 2014. “Statistical Machine Translation in the Translation Curriculum: Overcoming Obstacles and Empowering Translators.” The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 8 (2): 276–294. doi:10.1080/1750399X.2014.936112.
19. Lavault Olléon, Élisabeth. 2018. “Regard diachronique et prospectif sur un demi-siècle de traductologie pragmatique.” [Diachronic and prospective perspective on half a century of pragmatic translation studies.] ASp, no. 74, 5–26. doi:10.4000/asp.5239.
20. Lommel, Arle. 2020. “Augmented Translation: Are We There Yet?” CSA Research. November 4. https://csa-research.com/Blogs-Events/Blog/augmented-translation-2020.
21. Loock, Rudy. 2018. “Traduction automatique et usage linguistique: une analyse de traductions anglais-français réunies en corpus.” [Machine translation and linguistic usage: An analysis of a corpus consisting of English-French translations.] Meta 63 (3): 786–806. doi:10.7202/1060173ar.
22. Loock, Rudy. 2019. “La plus-value de la biotraduction face à la machine.” [The added value of biotranslation compared to machine translation.] Traduire, no. 241, 54–65. doi:10.4000/traduire.1848.
23. Loock, Rudy. 2020a. Review of Machine Translation and Global Research: Towards Improved Machine Translation Literacy in the Scholarly Community by Lynne Bowker and Jairo Buitrago Ciro. Meta 65 (1): 270–272. doi:10.7202/1073650ar.
24. Loock, Rudy. 2020b. “Introduction.” Paper presented at Traduction & Qualité 2020: Biotraduction et traduction automatique [Translation & quality 2020: Biotranslation and machine translation] at the University of Lille, Lille, January 31.
25. Loock, Rudy. 2020c. “No More Rage Against the Machine: How the Corpus-based Identification of Machine Translationese Can Lead to Student Empowerment.” The Journal of Specialised Translation, no. 34, 150–170. https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02913980.
26. Loock, Rudy. 2020d. “Pour une approche raisonnée de la traduction automatique.” [For a reasoned approach to machine translation.] Paper presented at Mots/Machines #2: Traduction et sentiment: quel sens pour la machine? [Translation and feelings: What does it mean for the machine?], Brest, March 6.
27. Loock, Rudy, and Sophie Léchauguette. 2021. “Machine Translation Literacy and Undergraduate Students in Applied Languages: Report on an Exploratory Study.” Revista Tradumàtica. Tecnologies de la Traducció, no. 19, 204–225. doi:10.5565/rev/tradumatica.281.
28. Martikainen, Hanna. 2022. “Ghosts in the Machine: Can Adaptive MT Help Reclaim a Place for the Human in the Loop?” In “Vers une robotique du traduire” [Towards robotic translation], edited by Anne Baillot, Ellen Carter, Thierry Grass, and Pablo Ruiz Fabo. Special Issue, Journal of Data Mining and Digital Humanities. https://hal.science/hal-03548696.
29. Mion, Enrico A. 2020. “Le concept de traduction augmentée.” [The concept of augmented translation.] April 28. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://fr.eamtranslations.com/post/le-concept-de-traduction-augment%C3%A9e.
30. Moorkens, Joss. 2018. “What to Expect from Neural Machine Translation: A Practical Inclass Translation Evaluation Exercise.” The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 12 (4): 375–387. doi:10.1080/1750399X.2018.1501639.
31. Moorkens, Joss. 2022. “Le traducteur, une espèce en voie de disparition?” [The translator, an endangered species?] Le Courrier de l’UNESCO, no. 2, 24–25. https://courier.unesco.org/fr/articles/le-traducteur-une-espece-en-voie-de-disparition.
32. Moorkens, Joss, Sheila Castilho, Federico Gaspari, and Stephen Doherty. 2018. “Introduction.” In Translation Quality Assessment. Machine Translation: Technologies and Applications, edited by Joss Moorkens, Sheila Castilho, Federico Gaspari, and Stephen Doherty, 1–6. Cham: Springer.
33. O’Brien, Sharon. 2012. “Translation as Human Computer Interaction.” Translation Spaces 1:101–122. doi:10.1075/ts.1.05obr.
34. O’Brien, Sharon. 2022. “How to Deal with Errors in Machine Translation: Postediting.” In Machine Translation for Everyone: Empowering Users in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Dorothy Kenny, 105–120. Berlin: Language Science Press.
35. O’Brien, Sharon, and Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow. 2020. “MT Literacy: A Cognitive View.” Translation, Cognition & Behavior 3 (2): 145–164. doi:10.1075/tcb.00038.obr.
36. Poibeau, Thierry. 2019. Babel 2.0: Où va la traduction automatique? [Babel 2.0: Where is machine translation heading?]. Paris: Odile Jacob.
37. Poibeau, Thierry. 2022. “On ‘Human Parity’ and ‘Super Human Performance’ in Machine Translation Evaluation.” In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, 6018–6023. European Language Resources Association.
38. Rossi, Caroline. 2019. “L’apprenti traducteur et la machine. Des connaissances aux perceptions de la traduction automatique.” [The novice translator and the machine: From knowledge to perceptions of machine translation.] In Des mots aux actes. Traduction et technologie, regards croisés sur de nouvelles pratiques [From words to deeds: Translation and technology, perspectives on new practices], edited by Élisabeth Lavault-Olléon and Maria Zimina, 93–105. Paris: Classiques Garnier.
39. Rossi, Caroline, and Jean-Baptiste Chevrot. 2019. “Uses and Perceptions of Machine Translation at the European Commission.” The Journal of Specialised Translation, no. 31, 177–200. https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01893120.
40. Rouvroy, Antoinette. 2018. “Homo juridicus est-il soluble dans les données?” [Is homo juridicus soluble in the data?] In Law, Norms and Freedom in Cyberspace = Droit, normes et libertés dans le cybermonde: liber amicorum, edited by Yves Poullet, 417–444. Bruxelles: Larcier.
41. Schumacher, Perrine. Forthcoming. “Traduction humaine et post-édition: contrôle qualité en contexte académique.” [Machine translation and post-editing: Quality check in an academic context.] Meta 68 (3).
42. Vieira, Lucas Nunes. 2019. “Post Editing of Machine Translation.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology, edited by Minako O’Hagan, 319–335. London: Routledge.
43. Vieira, Lucas Nunes. 2020. “Automation Anxiety and Translators.” Translation Studies 13 (1): 1–21. doi:10.1080/14781700.2018.1543613.
44. Vieira, Lucas Nunes, Elisa Alonso, and Lyndsay Bywood. 2019. “Introduction: Post Editing in Practice Process, Product and Networks.” The Journal of Specialised Translation, no. 31. http://www.jostrans.org/issue31/issue31_toc.php.