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The award will be the biggest of its kind in Europe and aims to celebrate the work of an overlooked and underpaid profession facing an existential threat from AI
Norway is launching a new translation price that is one of the most highly endowed of its kind in Europe, in an attempt to boost a “partly invisible” and often poorly paid profession increasingly under threat from machine translation.
Named after the Norwegian novelist and playwright who won the 2023 Nobel prize in literature, Jon Fosse, the Fosse prize for translators will reward one author every year with 500,000 NOK (£36,000) for making “a particularly significant contribution to translating Norwegian literature into another language”.
Funded by the Norwegian government and managed by the National Library in Oslo, the prize is exclusive to those translating from Bokmål and Nynorsk, the two official written standards of the Norwegian language.
“For a small language like Norwegian, the work of dedicated translators are crucial,” said Aslak Sira Myhre, director of the National Library of Norway. “It is a strenuous, creative and partly invisible work that brings literature to people and cultures closer together.”
Lin King ’22 has won the 2024 National Book Award in Translated Literature for her work translating Yáng Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogueto Englishfrom its original Mandarin Chinese.
Competing in an original pool of 141 entrants in the category, King’s translation was named to the longlist in September, a finalist in October, and finally the winner on Wednesday night at the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony in New York City.
The novel follows the unlikely relationship of two women in 1930s Taiwan, a Japanese writer and her Taiwanese interpreter, as they tour the island nation under Japanese rule. The Translated Literature prize is particularly fitting for the book’s exploration of language, culture, and interpretation.
King accepted the award with Shuang-zi, who delivered remarks in Mandarin, which King then translated for the audience. “Some people ask me why I write about things from a hundred years ago,” King translated. “I always tell them, writing about the past is a means of moving toward the future.
“More than a century ago, some Taiwanese people began making the assertion, ‘Taiwan belongs to the Taiwanese,’” she continued. “Today, many Taiwanese continue to assert this, but now we are addressing it to a different audience. Before, we were saying it to the Japanese. Now, we are saying it to the Chinese.”
On November 14, 2024, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) announced an updated version of a previous agreement that covers the localization of video game projects produced in a non-English language.
With approximately 160,000 members, SAG-AFTRA calls itself the “world’s largest union representing performers and broadcasters.” The union also represents voiceover artists, including those who provide dubbing.
As comics and gaming website Bleeding Cool reported, the new Independent Interactive Localization Agreement is essentially an updated version of the base terms from the union’s Tiered Budget Independent Interactive Media Agreement, plus AI protections.
The new agreement is signed on a project-by-project basis by employers whose project was originally scripted in a language other than English, and whose intellectual property owner is based outside of the United States.
“Many brilliant, beloved games come to market in the U.S. from other countries, projects which need highly skilled localizing performers,” Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee Chair Sarah Elmaleh was quoted as saying in the press release. Elmaleh added that “[m]any such companies have already signed Interim Localization Agreements”.
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s timeless masterpiece, has reached a historic milestone by becoming the world’s most translated book of fiction, with 600 translations to date!
On June 25, 2024, as part of the project “The Little Prince at the Bedside of the World’s Languages”, the 600th translation of this masterpiece was presented to the National Library of Panama, in Dulegaya, the language of the Indigenous Guna people of Northeastern Panama and Colombia. This event reinforces the role of the Little Prince as a universal work that unites peoples and contributes to the preservation of endangered languages.
Since its first publication in 1943 in New York, this philosophical tale, illustrated by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, has touched readers of all generations and cultures, offering a universal message of love, kindness, and humanity.
Today, with many languages on the brink of extinction, The Little Prince uniquely preserves languages and transmits cultures. Thanks to the passion of translators, this work has been translated into rare languages and endangered dialects, thus contributing to the preservation of the world’s linguistic heritage.
The 600th translation confirms the cultural and social impact of the Little Prince, which transcends borders and becomes a link between peoples. This story is more than a story: it is a celebration of cultural diversity. 1,500 copies of this Dulegaya edition, entitled Sagla Massi Bibbi, were printed in the spring of 2024 by the Panamanian publishing house El Hombre de la Mancha. They will be distributed in schools and libraries in the Guna Yala region as of 2025.
NEW YORK, NY, November 18, 2024 (EZ Newswire) — Pronto Translations, a leading translation service in New York, has been integrating generative AI technology such as ChatGPT into its workflows for the past 18 months to support its translation processes.
Following the initial report issued last April, which detailed common AI errors, continuous enhancements in deploying AI have necessitated an update due to the emergence of further drawbacks that impact AI translation processes. Despite ongoing improvements to AI engines, experiences at Pronto Translations confirm that while AI technologies like ChatGPT can assist with translation efforts, they are not capable of replacing human translators. Effective translation requires a collaborative approach between AI tools and skilled linguists. Below are the 10 most critical reasons identified by Pronto Translations:
Mistranslation Risks: ChatGPT generally excels more than many other machine translation tools in identifying the correct contexts for meanings. However, significant errors have been observed, such as confusing “nuts” meant for vehicle assembly with edible nuts, or misidentifying a washer as a laundry appliance in a car maintenance manual. These errors underscore the risks involved in relying solely on AI for translation.
Fabrication of Information: ChatGPT can occasionally generate inaccurate content, especially when dealing with less familiar or obscure terms and concepts. While it handles well-known information from its training data competently, it struggles in areas where the data is scant or the terms are not widely recognized. In such instances, ChatGPT may make educated guesses, leading to translations that are not only imprecise but also potentially misleading. This is particularly problematic in technical or specialized texts where each term has specific and significant implications.
On the first weekend of November, dozens of poets, novelists, translators and other literary aspirants descended on Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, bringing an international presence to a quiet coastal town on the rebound.
This year marked the 18th edition of the Japan Writers Conference (JWC) and only the second fully in-person event since the COVID-19 pandemic. Across more than two dozen sessions over a day and a half, presenters and attendees grappled with a range of professional and aesthetic concerns in the domain of English-language writing.
Held in partnership with the Futaba Area Tourism Research Association, this year’s program took place in a town still vying to reinvent itself in the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. (The Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is located between Futaba and neighboring Okuma and is still in the lengthy process of decommissioning.)
JWC sessions are notably brisk, typically consisting of single presentations followed by a Q&A within 50-minute blocks of time. C.E.J. Simons, a British Canadian senior associate professor of British literature and creative writing at International Christian University, helmed an early morning session on poetry and photography inspired by the post-disaster landscapes of Fukushima, interrogating the ethical stakes of such observation and engagement. The role of climate change in literary world-building and speculative fiction was the focus for Sara Ellis, 57, an American senior assistant professor at Meiji University, who concluded her session with a writing prompt for participants to consider the impact of environmental degradation on cultural memory.
Google has announced that it has extended AI voice capabilities to over a dozen new African languages across a range of Google services.
Google — which already supports typing with a custom keyboard in Gboard for approximately 200 African languages, and machine translations for over 60 African languages in Google Translate — now supports voice search, talk-to-type on Gboard, and dictation on Google Translate for 15 regional languages.
The development means that the company has more than doubled the number of African languages that enable speech-to-text in Google Translate and has doubled existing voice input support for Gboard and voice search in the region.
Daan van Esch, Technical Program Manager at Google, said that the update “will enable around 300 million more Africans to use their voice to interact with the web.”
Speaking recently to Slator about the challenges and opportunities of the language services market in Africa, Christian Elongue, Managing Director of Kabod Group said, “there is limited training data that many African languages are facing, [and there are multiple initiatives] contributing to creating data sets for various low-resource African languages.”
Simultaneous machine translation (SiMT) aims to deliver real-time translations as a source language, spoken or written. Traditionally, this requires models that control when to “read” more of the source and when to “write” the translation — decisions that rely on intensive model training, complex model designs, and significant computing power.
Now, researchers Libo Zhao, Jing Li, and Ziqian Zeng from Hong Kong Polytechnic University and South China University of Technology have introduced PsFuture, a zero-shot, adaptable read/write policy that enables SiMT models to make real-time translation decisions without additional training.
The researchers said they drew inspiration from human interpreters, who dynamically decide when to listen and when to speak based on evolving contexts. “Interpreters shift from listening to translating upon anticipating that further future words would not impact their current decisions,” they explained.
PsFuture allows translation models to make similar, context-aware decisions, leveraging “the model’s inherent linguistic comprehension and translation proficiency” and eliminating the need for further training.
Simulated Look-Ahead
Rather than relying on a fixed number of source words to determine the right time to start translating, PsFuture allows a model to anticipate what’s coming next. By using pseudo-future information — a simulated, brief “look-ahead” similar to how interpreters anticipate what might come next in a sentence — the model assesses if additional context would change its next translation output. If not, the model proceeds with translating. If more context is needed, it waits to “read” further.
A stop sign in English, French and Inuktut syllabics is seen in Iqaluit, on April 25, 2015. One of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in this country is now available through Google’s translation service, the first time the tech giant has included a First Nations, Métis or Inuit language spoken in Canada on its platform. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson
By Brittany Hobson, The Canadian Press
Posted October 17, 2024 9:00 am.
Last Updated October 17, 2024 4:10 pm.
One of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in this country is now available through Google’s translation service, the first time the tech giant has included a First Nations, Métis or Inuit language spoken in Canada on its platform.
Inuktut, a broad term encompassing different dialects spoken by Inuit in Canada, Greenland and Alaska, has been added to Google Translate, which translates text, documents and websites from one language into another.
The latest addition is part of a Google initiative to develop a single artificial intelligence language model to support 1,000 of the most spoken languages in the world.
There are roughly 40,000 Inuktut speakers in Canada, data from Statistics Canada suggests.
The number of speakers alone is not enough to determine whether a language can be included in Google Translate, said Isaac Caswell, a senior software engineer with the platform.
There also has to be enough online text data to pull from to create a language model.
Other Indigenous languages in Canada have “had simply too little data to have any usable machine translation model,” said Caswell.
For example, engineers looked at adding Cree, which is spoken by more than 86,000 people in Canada, but there were fewer websites in the language to pull from.
“We don’t want to put anything on the product which just produces broken text or nonsense,” said Caswell.
Han Kang is lucky to have a translator as gifted and prominent as Deborah Smith, who enabled Han’s works to cross the borders of her country and meet foreign readers.
SEOUL – The news that novelist Han Kang has won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature came as a wonderful surprise to the Korean people. We feel it’s been a long time coming: Whereas Japan already has three Nobel laureates in literature and China has two, Korea had none until last week. At last, Korea has become a country with a Nobel Prize winner in literature.
These days, Korea is well known to the world, thanks to the immense popularity of Hallyu. In a sign of this recognition, McDonald’s sold BTS Meals for some time, and Coca-Cola is now selling a K-wave zero sugar product. In 2020, the Korean movie “Parasite” received six Academy Awards. In addition to the fame of its pop culture, Korea has now impressed the world with its literary works, too, which was acknowledged by the Nobel Prize, thereby accomplishing for Hallyu a “rondure complete,” as Walt Whitman might have put it.
To become universal, literature requires translation, because unlike music, dance or art, it can only be accessed through written language. Therefore, an excellent translation is a crucial prerequisite for a literary work to be read and praised around the world. Indeed, the famous Italian writer Italo Calvino said, “Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.”
Han Kang is lucky to have a translator as gifted and prominent as Deborah Smith, who enabled Han’s works to cross the borders of her country and meet foreign readers. People say that had it not been for the superb translator Edward Seidensticker, Japanese novelist Yasunary Kawabata could not have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. The same thing may apply to Deborah Smith and Han Kang, because no matter how great a writer is, he or she cannot be known overseas without translation.
Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has invested heavily in its fast-growing international business as growth slows for its China-focused Taobao and Tmall business.
BEIJING — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s international arm on Wednesday launched an updated version of its artificial intelligence-powered translation tool that, it says, is better than products offered by Google, DeepL and ChatGPT.
Alibaba’s fast-growing international unit released the AI translation product as an update to one unveiled about a year ago, which it says already has 500,000 merchant users. Sellers based in one country can use the translation tool to create product pages in the language of the target market.
The new version is based only on large language models, allowing it to draw on contextual clues such as culture or industry-specific terms, Kaifu Zhang, vice president of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group and head of the business’ artificial intelligence initiative, told CNBC in an interview Tuesday.
“The idea is that we want this AI tool to help the bottom line of the merchants, because if the merchants are doing well, the platform will be doing well,” he said.
Large language models power artificial intelligence applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which can also translate text. The models, trained on massive amounts of data, can generate humanlike responses to user prompts.
Organisations in Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine can apply now and before 11 February 2025 to get funding for the translation, publication, distribution, and promotion of European literary works of fiction. With a budget of €5 million, the EU programme ‘Creative Europe’ will finance about 40 projects under this call.
Interested organisations can apply individually or as a consortium of at least two eligible organisations. Each project must have a sound editorial, distribution and promotion strategy and propose a minimum of five eligible works of fiction written by authors who are nationals of, or residents in, or recognised as part of the literary heritage of an eligible country, including Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine.
Applicants can apply with projects of different sizes: small scale (at least 5 translations of eligible works), medium scale (at least 11 translations), and large scale (at least 21 translations).
The deadline for applications is 11 February 2025.
As it happens, today (October 10), there’s similar shortlist anticipation from another prominent book award, the United Kingdom’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, where executive director Toby Mundy, intends to research and report—on his own choice of timing and criteria after his awards—the impact of a Baillie Gifford Prize win.
In the aggregate, efforts of these kinds—to discern and evaluate the marketplce effects of a prize win—can establish some parameters of expecatation and actual influence, leading, presumably, to more clear-eyed enthusiasm—an honest appraisal of the impact of a “golden sticker” on a book cover, in terms of how much awards actually count.
And with ALTA’s focus on translation, particularly in the United States, it could be instructive to know if and how much an award might influence marketplace perceptions of translated work. The value of translation in literature has never been self-evident to broad swaths of many populations, and having actual numbers on how much an award might impact print-runs, unit sales, and so on, could be invaluable.
The role that interpreters play in health care is complex, difficult and largely unacknowledged. We couldn’t do our job without them.
The first patient arrives, flustered and tightly wound. She’s a refugee six months post-arrival in Australia. The initial flush of finally getting here has started to fade, the winter is getting colder and her children have to take three buses to school. She has increasing requests from her employment services provider to complete English classes and think about looking for work. In the country she left, the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate and the messages from family left behind are less frequent but more distressing. She’s ostensibly here to follow up on some outstanding blood results from her new arrival refugee health assessment, but it’s clear from the outset there’s going to be a lot more to manage here.
Like almost all of our consults, this appointment is made possible through the Translating and Interpreting Services (TIS National). We dial in, provide some details and — almost miraculously, within minutes — are connected to someone who speaks English and the language of the patient in front of us.
Communication between the patient and doctor is perhaps the foundation of medicine. International Translation Day falls on 30 September, formalised by the United Nations in 2017 to acknowledge the work of all language professionals and their role in world peace and security. The date was chosen in honour of Saint Jerome, a priest from Northern Italy known primarily for translating the Bible into Latin from Greek and Hebrew and considered the patron saint of translators. We want to celebrate the daily contribution of a largely unacknowledged workforce in the clinical space, the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National).
The nature of the refugee health service where we work means we use mostly on-call telephone interpreters rather than pre-booked or face-to-face services. Although the interpreters are rostered on to take calls, they are going about their day — sometimes with washing dishes, barking dogs or pedestrian crossings in the background — when we’re connected by the operator, they step out of their worlds and immediately into the intimacy of a consult room.
Torino’s international book fair presents its fourth annual conference for translators, featuring Italian books ready for business.
On Frankfurt Wednesday Morning
Dall’italiano al mondo means “From Italy to the World,” and this year’s iteration of the translation conference at Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 16 to 20) starts at 9 a.m. on the first day of the fair.
This year in its fourth iteration, the program, which targets translators, is to be an in-person event rather than digital, and the goal is “to support the translation of Italian litrature abroad and to promote networking between translators all over the world.” That of course is perfectly aligned with the mission of Guest of Honor Italy.
And this program has the patronage of CEATL, the Conseil Européen des Associations de Traducteurs Littéraires, which, as our readers know, is now in the middle of its own three-day translation conference in Strasbourg.
NEW YORK (United Nations) — The United Nations celebrates this Monday the International Translation Day, honoring language specialists and highlighting their crucial role in bringing nations together, promoting development and bolstering global peace and security.
Through its resolution 71/288, adopted on 24 May 2017, the General Assembly designated September 30 as International Translation Day, stressing the crucial role of language specialists in bringing nations closer together and promoting peace, understanding and development.
This year’s theme, “Translation, an art worth protecting: Moral and material rights for indigenous languages,” will focus on key ethical issues related to copyright, data collection and the use of translated works.
The event will shed light on the practical challenges our multifaceted global community encounters when collecting data and translating indigenous languages, as well as the strategies employed to tackle these challenges in line with industry best practices.
Professional translation, encompassing written translation, interpretation, and terminology work, involves conveying literary, scientific, or technical concepts across languages. This practice is crucial for ensuring clear communication, fostering a positive atmosphere and driving forward discussions in both international public discourse and personal interactions.
We haven’t been able to test Meta’s live translation, so we can’t say how seamless it will be. But development of these products is coming fast.
Justin Dawes
The Ray-Ban Meta AI-powered glasses are getting a feature for live voice translation.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Meta, demonstrated the new feature and a slew of other updates during the keynote speech of the Meta Connect developer conference, streaming from the company’s main campus in California.
When talking to someone who speaks Spanish, French, or Italian, the user wearing Ray-Bans should be able to hear a real-time English translation through a speaker in the glasses, he said. The user then replies in English, and a mic in the glasses picks up the voice and transfers it to the user’s connected mobile app. The translation from English to the other language is voiced aloud through the app for the other person to hear.
The implications for travel are obvious, and a press release from Meta about the upgrade said as much: “Not only is this great for traveling, it should help break down language barriers and bring people closer together.”
The company did not say when the update is coming but said it would be soon. The company plans to add more languages in the future.
Meta earlier this year said that it was integrating voice-activated AI into the glasses, which meant it could translate menus and answer questions about landmarks seen through the lenses.
Zuckerberg demonstrated the new translation feature with Brandon Moreno, former two-time UFC Flyweight Champion. Moreno spoke in Spanish to Zuckerberg, and Zuckerberg responded in English to Moreno.
The demo was brief, but the chatbot was able to translate in real time despite some slang and pauses.
– New research shows that 94% of multilingual event planning professionals said they would consider using AI as part of the live translation services at their events. –
New research announced today has revealed that an overwhelming majority of event planning professionals (94%) said they would consider using AI as part of the live translation services at their events.
However, as it stands for the moment, in-person professional simultaneous interpretation is THE most popular translation service used by 70% of multilingual event planning professionals.
AI-powered speech translation is a close second at 67%, which shows that event planning professionals are already considering which technology is best suited for the event they are organising.
These results are part of an exclusive report published by Interprefy, the multilingual event technology and services partner that surveyed the views of 1000 key decision makers in events, marketing, and project management positions for multinational companies around the world.
The market value of the AI/ machine translation industry is predicted to reach $3 billion by 2026/27. This shift has been fuelled by the adoption of hybrid working and the acceleration of organisations seeking out employees and freelance teams across the world.
Powwows are informal get-togethers of groups of ProZ.com users living in close proximity. The events are organized by local translators, for local translators.This event offers a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas among industry professionals.
Anyone who is registered with ProZ.com may attend, regardless of membership status. In addition, spouses, children and guests of members, as well as translators who are not ProZ.com members, are welcome.
If you’re a linguist, translator, and/or interpreter based in or around the city of La Plata, Argentina you’re invited!
This event is organized by local translators, for local translators.
The powwow is scheduled for September 28th at Green Garden, where we’ll gather over coffee (or beer). Come together with us to share insights and experiences while enjoying the evening.
Looking forward to connecting with you and fostering meaningful connections!
As in previous years, ProZ.com is hosting a two-day an online event for International Translation Day on September 25-26th, 2024! ITD2024 includes free online streaming webinars and presentations, live Q&A, networking sessions and features sessions from speakers and panels from industry experts and recognized members at ProZ.com.
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