Translation - fast and slow

We live in an age of instant information. Has a major event happened somewhere in the world? In the twinkling of an eye it is streamed, tweeted and live-tickered to every corner of the globe. Has a war broken out? A volcano erupted? A plane crashed? A ship stranded in the Suez Canal? We know it within minutes. We call this “real time”.

This strange realm of “real time” is also the land of instant coffee, fast food, real-time stock prices, express deliveries and just-in-time logistics. Its followers sometimes claim that “time is money”. This is the fertile ground in which the dream of instant automatic translation takes root and grows. Services such as Google Translate, DeepL and others are immensely popular, and it is claimed that the vast majority of language translation which is done in the world today is carried out by “machine translation”.

Is there an alternative to this expectation of an instant culture? I am reminded of a character in the epic novel and film trilogy “Lord of the Rings”. Treebeard looks like a tree but can move about, he is a “tree-herder” or “Ent”. In the book and film he explains his idea of communication to the hobbits:
“You must understand that it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say“.
That contrasts sharply with our impatient and short-lived culture. It is worth remembering some pioneer translators who took a long time to complete major translation projects.

Saint Jerome (Hieronymus)

Jerome lived and died over 1600 years ago. He was a priest in the Catholic church, but today he is better known for his translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Latin. This project, the Vulgate, took 17 years from 382 to 405, and during this period he lived in Bethlehem - in the country where the language of the original texts was spoken. He is commemorated in a wood carving in the crypt of the Church of the Nativity and a statue outside the Church of St. Catherine, which I photographed in Bethlehem in 2017.

Jerome died on 30th September 420 in Bethlehem. This day is now celebrated each year as International Translation Day. Many modern translators can relate to Jerome’s international biography. He was born in an area north of the Adriatic Sea (now in Croatia or Slovenia) and later spent time in Rome, Antioch (Syria), Jerusalem and Alexandria (Egypt). He moved to Bethlehem when he started his monumental translation. This helped him to learn the language of the original manuscript better, because he had to use it regularly in everyday life. Many modern translators also live in the country of their acquired language. I am one of them: I come from England but have been settled in Germany for very many years. And Jerome’s perseverance, working on a single translation project for many years, is also something that many translators can sympathise with.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther lived in Germany from 1483 to 1546. He is perhaps best known for his role in the Reformation and for the founding of the Protestant church in Germany. But he is also remembered as a translator. His German translation of the Bible was widely published, and it is still used in a revised form today. Luther’s translation even influenced the development of the modern German language. He did much of the translation work while he was in hiding at Wartburg Castle near Eisenach.

Luther was determined to translate the Bible into the language of the common people. This drew criticism from some conservative scholars of the time, and in 1530 he wrote the “Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen”, a letter in which he justified his work and explained his methods. For example:

“In my translation I have taken great care to write pure and clear German. We often had to spend a fortnight or three to four weeks searching for a single word, and even then we sometimes didn’t find it. We should not use Latin ideas when we speak German, we should ask mothers at home, children on the street, the common man on the market. We need to listen to them and learn how they speak. Then we should translate so that they will understand it.”

As translators today, we have on-line and off-line resources which Jerome and Luther could not imagine even in their wildest dreams. Sometimes our tools can help us to translate texts far more quickly. But sometimes we, too, need to take our time, explore the subject matter of our texts and search for creative ways to convey the content of the original. As Treebeard said in the Lord of the Rings:
“We never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say“.

Dear translation colleagues, is the content of our translation projects really worth taking a long time to say?

Humpty Dumpty and the TAUS quality concept

The “Translation Automation User Society” (TAUS) is a think tank which promotes the use of machine translation and technology within the translation industry. It organises events and offers services such as data sharing and language technology training. A recent article on the TAUS blog focused on the problem of quality evaluation in automated translation. It proposes a model called “dynamic quality evaluation”. This model has also been discussed onthe LinkedIn group “Translation Automation”, and Rahzeb Choudhury of Leeds University kindly sent me a link to a longer report in PDF format, the DynamicQuality Framework Report.

Looking at these materials, the underlying logic looks to me rather suspect, like a circular argument. It is worth considering the reasons for this.

The TAUS demographics

The Dynamic Quality Evaluation Framework report is based on a study conducted with a number of major multinational organisations (“reviewers”) which have a high volume of text which needs translation. Most of these organisations are large businesses with high volume technical products such as Dell, Google, Microsoft, Phillips and Siemens. The organisations also include the EU, which has a high volume of translations between the national languages in the European Community.

In other words, the work of TAUS, at least in this particular instance, is based on a very limited sample, i.e. major international organisations with an extremely high volume of multilingual text requirements, most of which service a limited range of subject areas. There is no consideration given to highly complex and confidential legal texts which will be read in different jurisdictions, no mention of complicated architectural texts, of urban planning, high-powered business management documents and much more. Given this highly selective demographic situation, it is not surprising that TAUS claims broad agreement on certain priorities in its reports and other documents. I would suggest, however, that the translation industry is much broader than the demographic group represented by TAUS.

The part and the whole

This limited demographic sample would not in itself be a problem if TAUS freely admitted that the study deliberately focuses on a certain scenario and certain types of translation work. But the actual usage in the report exacerbates the problem and is often misleading. For example, there are frequent references to “the translation industry”, although the actual descriptions and conclusions actually apply to clients (and perhaps selected suppliers) in the translation technology industry working on high volume automated translation in specified subject domains.

If the work of TAUS claimed to be impartial academic research, it would take a far more self-critical approach to its own sampling procedures and would openly point out the limitations of its material. Instead, it acts like a political pressure group, presenting its results in the way that most suits its own agenda. In some of the TAUS material that I have read, I have wondered whether this confusion is deliberate, or whether it reflects a genuine inability to perceive that there are different perspectives on the issues.

Dynamic quality evaluation – a definition of convenience?

The report on “dynamic quality evaluation” uses this very problem as its starting point. It states, for example, “Quality evaluation (QE) in the translation industry is problematic”. The blog post claims “The industry needs common measurable definitions”. Both of these statements pose more questions than they answer. Which sector(s) of the translation industry is TAUS referring to? What quality is referred to, who wants to evaluate this quality, for what purpose and in what kinds of text? What measurements could be used to define something as flowing and variable as language? To what extent would industrial-scale evaluation and defined measurements miss the essential characteristics of the material they are used on?

Instead of dealing with these fundamental issues, TAUS posits a quality evaluation system with three main elements, which it calls utility, time and sentiment. We are told that utility refers to the functionality of the content, speed refers to how quickly the translation is needed and sentiment denotes the effect of the resulting text on the brand image. You may notice that the actual quality of a text is not one of the three elements. So where does it come in? As far as I can gather, it seems to be relegated to a sub-category of “Utility” and to be marginally touched on in the category “Sentiment”. At the stroke of the categoriser's computer keyboard, the quality of the text itself is relegated to a mere sub-category.

The pinnacle of the “dynamic quality” logic is reached in the blog post. At the conference which is reported on the blog, there were apparently some participants who did not agree with the majority opinion – they advocated absolute rather than relative quality, and they felt that universal measurable standards did not do justice to the phenomenon of translation. Then comes the classic conclusion: most participants at the conference felt that “unless we maintain the simplicity of the model we get lost in endless details and personal requirements, and we end up … having no generalizable reference …”

Get yourself a cup of coffee and sit down and consider this sentence for a few moments. I would paraphrase it like this: some people argue that the world of language and translation is complicated, but we can’t handle a complex world because we could then not create the simple and measurable system that we want. We must have simplicity, so let there be simplicity. Simplicity rules, simply because we want it to rule.

This is rather like the semantic principles expressed by Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's novel “Alice in Wonderland”: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” It would be a wonderfully simple way to use language: I say what I want, and it means what I want. The only problem is the puzzled expression on the faces of my listeners.

The toxic disclaimer

The final section of the blog is where TAUS dances on the borderline of Imperialism. In the title of this section, and three times in the paragraphs, it mentions the possibility of applying for the “dynamic quality” system to be certified as a standard. Each time, the possibility is retracted, at least partially, rather like the song of the Mock Turtle in Carroll's novel: “Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?” In a TAUS context, this translates as “we would not be so sure that we would want to apply for official standardisation” and “Whether we go for standard certification is a decision we can take together when we get to this crossroads”.

Together? Dear TAUS, does this mean that you will gather all of the translators in the world and involve us in deciding whether to apply for certification of a standard? I think not. Your agenda seems to be domination of the translation industry rather than cooperation with real life translators. You do not look kindly on people like me who have differing opinions, far less do you take us seriously. For you, we are unwelcome “quality gatekeepers” who are “blinkered by prior assumptions”. Ho hum, I suppose Humpty would be proud of these sweeping allegations.

Unintended consequences

The occupation of Gaul by the Roman Empire gave rise to the insurrection by Asterix and Obelix in the wonderful French comics and films. Many other literary parallels come to mind, such as Luke Skywalker and the Empire, Thursday Next and Goliath Corporation, etc. If you continue to play Humpty with the values which translators hold dear, please do not be surprised when you meet opposition. Every group which aspires to global domination must expect resistance. The rhetoric adopted by TAUS and others will bring forth a myriad Luke Skywalkers, and your glorious automated future will be lit up by the flash of lightsabres all over the globe.

Previous related posts on this blog

Would I advise my grandchildren to translate?

Still building Babel?

Fight the machine? (1) 

Fight the machine? (2)