The Age of Artificial Intelligence

Why translators are going to be the ones to turn off the lights in the office

after everyone else has long gone home

Jost Zetzsche jost@internationalwriters.com

@jeromobot

"Neural (MT)" - "(Artificial) Intelligence"

• Suggest that we are emulating functions of the human brain

Caenorhabditis Elegans

• First to have genome sequenced• One of most heavily researched

animals• Brain has 302 neurons (human brain:

100 billion)• Each of the neurons connected to 30

others (human brain: each neuron is connected to 1,000 others)

• Resulting in 10,000 synapses (human brain 100 trillion)

• We don't understand its brain and so far openworm.org has made little progress

"Neural (MT)" - "(Artificial) Intelligence"

• Suggest that we are emulating functions of the human brain

• And we certainly don't understand the human brain• How memories are stored• Why we need sleep and why we dream• Why some parts of the brain are responsible for some features but can

be completely reconfigured • How the different parts of the brain communicate with each other• Whether brain activity is actually a matter of computation or a

completely different kind of process• What causes many brain diseases and how they can be battled• What causes moods, creativity, intelligence, wit, emotions• What "mind" and "consciousness" is

What is (so-called) Artifical Intelligence?

• AI – as we know it right now – is the ability of a machine to non-concurrently process large amounts of data and make predictions exclusively on the basis of that data• Also known as "Narrow AI"

• AI – as developers hope it will be one day – is the ability of a machine to reason, use strategy, make judgments, learn, communicate in natural language, and integrate all of this towards common goals• Also known as "General AI" or "Artifical General Intelligence" (AGI)

• We have no idea whether this will be a further development of narrow AI or something completely different

The translation technology vendors' view on (narrow) AI

• What are the areas in which you see artificial intelligence playing a role in your technology and/or in translation-related technology of other vendors?

• You can find all the answers at xl8.link/vendorsAI

user name: xl8talk password: 20xl8talk18

The translation technology vendors' view on AI

• Time allocation

• Selecting the best linguist for a particular job

• Partially or fully replacing the project manager

• Deciding which MT, TM, corpus is the right one

• Recommendation engines for optimal workflow selection

• Sorting segments into different types of review and post-editing

• Alerts & diagnostics from real-time project management monitoring

• Proactive workflow health management

• Dynamic pricing (based on project factors)

• Reliable dictation

• Typing suggestions

• Automatically placing tags and formatting

• Localization engineering

• Identification of non-translatable content

• Predictive User Experience (UX)

• Handling accounting tasks

• Optimized terminology recognition and checking in morphology-rich languages

• Higher automation of alignment corrections

• AI-based classification and metadata management

• Sophisticated QA tools

• Neural MT

Let's get back to some basics

What is communication (and translation)?

• The ability to communicate on many levels is at the heart of who we are as human beings

• Successful written communication is based on assumptions• author and reader share a common language and writing system

• author and reader share common experience and education which determines common vocabulary, rules, and register

• Translators live by the assumption that they can near-miraculously make this happen between languages and cultures

Why are AI and translation so intertwined?

• Computer programmers realize early on that breaking the barrier of language is one of the most awesome challenges ("holy grail")• Plus, they're lonely and really want to talk to their computers ("Users

Strike Back")

• Science fiction authors and movie makers embrace that idea

• Public (and journalists!) are mesmerized

• Large technology companies play to their audience

Artificial Intelligence and the rest of the world

• There is no profession that is not affected by Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence and the rest of the world

• There is no profession that is not affected by Artificial Intelligence

• But ours is one of the last to remain

Artificial Intelligence and the rest of the world

• There is no profession that is not affected by Artificial Intelligence

• But ours is one of the last to remain

Artificial Intelligence and the rest of the world

• There is no profession that is not affected by Artificial Intelligence

• But ours is one of the last to remain

• Once translation (and communication) is done by AGI• We'll have to redefine ourselves as human beings

• We might not worry about concepts like "profession"

How much further AI translation will develop is still shrouded in mystery. As someone who researches machine translation every day, I can tell you no one can really claim to predict the

future of AI translation at this point.

Kyunghyun Cho (@kchonyc)

When?

On the other hand . . .

• . . . we should use AI-driven aspects for our technology and benefit from it

The translation technology vendors' view on AI

• Time allocation

• Selecting the best linguist for a particular job

• Partially or fully replacing the project manager

• Deciding which MT, TM, corpus is the right one

• Recommendation engines for optimal workflow selection

• Sorting segments into different types of review and post-editing

• Alerts & diagnostics from real-time project management monitoring

• Proactive workflow health management

• Dynamic pricing (based on project factors)

• Reliable dictation

• Typing suggestions

• Automatically placing tags and formatting

• Localization engineering

• Identification of non-translatable content

• Predictive User Experience (UX)

• Handling accounting tasks

• Optimized terminology recognition and checking in morphology-rich languages

• Higher automation of alignment corrections

• AI-based classification and metadata management

• Sophisticated QA tools

• Neural MT

On the other hand . . .

• . . . we should use AI-driven aspects for our technology and benefit from it

• . . . Including machine translation (if useful)

• . . . (Narrow) AI already has a significant impact on what we're doing

The impact

• For many work processes will change (and have changed) but one of the core services we offer ("expert translation") stays virtually unchanged • And is once again "owned" by us

"Neural machine translation is sometimes intelligible and fluent, but not really a translation of the source. Post-editing is simply editing the 'machine translation' of the source so that it is a 'translation' of the source. Therefore,

post-editors have to be translators, not just 'linguists.' Intelligibility is just one ingredient in the mix."

Mikel L. Forcada (@MikelForcada)

The impact

• For many work processes will change (and have changed) but one of the core services we offer ("expert translation") stays virtually unchanged • And is once again "owned" by us

• The changes result in something like "augmented intelligence"

The impact

• For many work processes will change (and have changed) but one of the core services we offer ("expert translation") stays virtually unchanged • And is once again "owned" by us

• The changes result in something like "augmented intelligence"

• The expertise of translators grows (has to grow!) from translation specialists to translation specialists with expertise in technology and AI

So . . .

• The translation profession is old ("second oldest in the world") but the "translation industry" is very recent and is still being formed

• So far, computers (or: developers) have determined how we work with machine translation, now it is up to us to redefine what "augmented intelligence" needs to look like

• The computer presents data, we present intelligence, so we should be driving the process

What does that "driving the process" look like?

• Engage with MT researchers and developers (conferences, social media etc.)

• Be open to changes in your workflow but be ready to present constructive alternatives

• Question otherwise unquestioned paradigms such as PEMT and show that other out-of-the-box processes might be more productive

• Engage with the public and journalists

What does that "driving the process" look like?

• Engage with MT researchers and developers (conferences, social media etc.)

• Be open to changes in your workflow but be ready to present constructive alternatives

• Question otherwise unquestioned paradigms such as PEMT and show that other out-of-the-box processes might be more productive

• Engage with the public and journalists

• Be firm and confident about technology • Especially "post-editing" and "AI emulates the brain"

Let's talk!

Jost Zetzsche jost@internationalwriters.com

internationalwriters.com @jeromobot