Negating the need for a human translator

[Bucky]

High-tech company NEC has come up with a device that it says will allow users to communicate with people of different languages.
Shaped like a pair of eye-glasses, but without the lenses, the computer-assisted Tele Scouter would use an imaging device to project almost real-time translations directly onto the user's retina.
The text -- provided instantly through voice recognition and translation programmes -- would effectively provide movie-like 'subtitles' during a conversation between two people wearing the glasses.
"You can keep the conversation flowing," NEC market development official Takayuki Omino told AFP at a Tokyo exposition where the device was on display.
"This could also be used for talks involving confidential information," negating the need for a human translator, said Omino.

Well, that about puts all those human translators out of business I guess.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Well, that about puts all those human translators out of business I guess.

I think it'll be awhile before simultaneous interpreting like this can be effectively handled by a machine. I do think we're not too far away from text translation being most done by machines though. Especially for things like technical and legal documents which are how most translators make money.

[IkemenTommy]

Why does Japan continue to invest in these silly machines but never try to learn another foreign language like English, which is spoken elsewhere around the world?

[Yokohammer]

Why does Japan continue to invest in these silly machines but never try to learn another foreign language like English, which is spoken elsewhere around the world?

They're trying, but it seems they only allow people who can't actually speak the language to teach it within the education system where it might make a difference.

Another thing ... there are enough Japanese who speak English well enough floating around these days (including kikoku-shijou) that you'd expect to see more of them in the translation business, at least for the basics. Do they consider that line of work to be below them? (Or do I need to get out more?)

As for machine translation, from what I've seen so far it's far from ready for anything more than providing a rough brief of content, as long as the reader keeps the system's level of reliability in mind. It would be terrifying if it was used for any kind of critical communication.

Politician: "We will destroy our bombs in an old quarry"
Machine Translation: "We will bomb you back to the stone age."

Well ... you know what I mean ...

[Coligny]

Come on... oogle translator works quite well for language including chinese (quite surprisingly good results here). It's just english<->japanese that is completly fucked up. nearly never make any kind of sense.

[Greji]

It's just english<->japanese that is completly fucked up. nearly never make any kind of sense.

Works that way with a Japanese wife as well......

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Works that way with a Japanese wife as well......

Must be about the only thing that works with a Japanese wife...

[Coligny]

Works that way with a Japanese wife as well......

And I thought I had one with a factory defect...

[Greji]

:rofl:

Must be about the only thing that works with a Japanese wife...

As I posted before Hair, the difference between an Elephant and a Japanese wife is that an Elephant will sometimes forget......

[sublight]

Another thing ... there are enough Japanese who speak English well enough floating around these days (including kikoku-shijou) that you'd expect to see more of them in the translation business, at least for the basics. Do they consider that line of work to be below them? (Or do I need to get out more?

Well, the pay isn't bad, but it isn't great (unless you're one of the tiny percentage that translates a best-selling novel). More importantly, it's in the same kind of a dead-end that eikaiwa suffers from: other than opening your own company, there's not a whole lot of potential for advancement or raises. Since a lot of kikokushijou are probably the kids of executives or corporate fast-trackers (that's my assumption anyway, I could be very wrong), they may tend to set their sights more ambitiously.

[Yokohammer]

Well, the pay isn't bad, but it isn't great (unless you're one of the tiny percentage that translates a best-selling novel). More importantly, it's in the same kind of a dead-end that eikaiwa suffers from: other than opening your own company, there's not a whole lot of potential for advancement or raises. Since a lot of kikokushijou are probably the kids of executives or corporate fast-trackers (that's my assumption anyway, I could be very wrong), they may tend to set their sights more ambitiously.

That's kind of what I thought. I can understand how a kikoku-shijou background would tend to make them more ambitious (leave the translation work to the dregs of society ... i.e. the FGs).

I know quite a few kikoku-shijou guys and girls working at major Japanese corporations, and their English is generally very smooth and natural, but very few of them can write well. Maybe that's part of it too: to be a good translator you need to be able to write well in addition to simply being able to read and interpret the source language.

[Coligny]

I know quite a few kikoku-shijou guys and girls working at major Japanese corporations, and their English is generally very smooth and natural, but very few of them can write well. Maybe that's part of it too: to be a good translator you need to be able to write well in addition to simply being able to read and interpret the source language.

Dude, beware... the topic is a minefield... I have to friends at home one medical translator Fr/Uk the other culinary translator and writer. They are nice gurls, as long as you don't start on the topic of translation and interpretation. Then it's war... Seems that some consider the slightest interpretation as a crime against humanity while the other thinks not interpreting is a waste of time since it limit the translation to sentences and not concept and ideas...

Have bandage ready...

[wuchan]

the problem is that there is no direct translation between J and E. If you don't believe me, pick up any number of the J-newspapers that translate US politician speeches. The translations will all the the same basic main points but the details will be totally different. At first I believed that this was just the papers al trying to push their view but the longer that I am here I see that there is no direct translation. It is what the translator has learned and experienced in their training.

[Yokohammer]

the problem is that there is no direct translation between J and E.

Exactly!

The differences in conceptualization and expression are so vast between Japanese and English that the term "direct translation" does not apply. You can do it, but you end up with gibberish.

Some "creativity" is required, and that is why machine translation between those two languages is so unreliable.

[james]

They're trying, but it seems they only allow people who can't actually speak the language to teach it within the education system where it might make a difference.

bingo! i have worked both with said people and more often than not against some of these useless old twats. one example of working against them being their insistence on 'correcting' my (personal juku) students' near-native pronunciation into katakana at school and undoing a lot of hard work and causing confusion. english education here is, has always been and will always be fucked until they give up on the current broken model.

sorry to sound so jaded but it's just one of the innumerate things that are done completely half-assed in this country. whenever i took a language course in canada, it was always taught by a native or near-native proficiency speaker of that language and the materials used were linked to the culture of the target country, not my own.

why in japan is this mindset that someone who can't speak the language is qualified to teach it and that english has to be taught in the context of japanese culture so prevalent?

english education here will not work until these ethnocentric tendencies are addressed and qualified native speakers take the helm of curriculum design and deployment (teaching).

Another thing ... there are enough Japanese who speak English well enough floating around these days (including kikoku-shijou) that you'd expect to see more of them in the translation business, at least for the basics. Do they consider that line of work to be below them? (Or do I need to get out more?)

hmm.. i'm not sure how i feel about that. translation / interpretation can be largely a grind, underappreciated and unrewarding and certainly not a career choice i'll be steering my own bi-cultural sons into. there are plenty of rewarding careers for bilinguals without being pigeon-holed into the above.

As for machine translation, from what I've seen so far it's far from ready for anything more than providing a rough brief of content, as long as the reader keeps the system's level of reliability in mind. It would be terrifying if it was used for any kind of critical communication.

interesting results abound for sure, but it's definitely improving!

[Samurai_Jerk]

Since a lot of kikokushijou are probably the kids of executives or corporate fast-trackers (that's my assumption anyway, I could be very wrong), they may tend to set their sights more ambitiously.

That's not necessarily true. For every senior manager on a great expat package there are a ton of underlings doing crappy salaryman work and getting average middle class salaries. I interviewed for a job at Nittsu's Seattle office once. They gave me a tour of the center and there was not one foreigner working there except the receptionist. I kid you not, even the forklift driver was Japanese. I lost out to one other finalist who was a fully bilingual Japanese-American.

So a lot of these kids come back to Japan after years in foreign public schools fuent in both languages but not native in either. Or sometimes their English (or some other language) is native but their Japanese isn't perfect. The worst case I heard of is from a friend of mine who's former coworked was a kikokushijo raised in in Hong Kong. He speaks native Cantonese but his English and Japanese are both kind of bad and spoken with a heavy Chinese accent. His parents really fucked him.

[hundefar]

Exactly!

The differences in conceptualization and expression are so vast between Japanese and English that the term "direct translation" does not apply. You can do it, but you end up with gibberish.

Some "creativity" is required, and that is why machine translation between those two languages is so unreliable.

This goes for all translation. Even languages that are related, such as German and English has the same problem. Hell, even with languages with a very close relationship, such as Norwegian, Swedish and Danish you can experience the same thing, though to a lesser degree. Translation always incorporates some amount of interpretation.

[sublight]

the problem is that there is no direct translation between J and E.

Oh, I definitely believe you. When we get a project now to create something in English based on an original in Japanese, one of the first questions is: "do they want me to write something, or just translate?" In other words, should I just quickly produce an English version of exactly what the Japanese says, or should I produce something that hits the same main points but will be something a native English speaker would actually want to read?

Mostly it depends on how much the client is paying.

[Western All Stars]

I interviewed for a job at Nittsu's Seattle office once. They gave me a tour of the center and there was not one foreigner working there except the receptionist. I kid you not, even the forklift driver was Japanese. I lost out to one other finalist who was a fully bilingual Japanese-American.

I've had this experience as well when job hunting in the States for jobs that require fluent Japanese. Hell, even in college when I applied for the monbukagakusho scholarship I found out that I lost out to a nisei already fluent and therefore had no point in receiving it. From a rumor I heard for the previous 3 years all the scholarships in my region had also gone to nisei.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Hell, even in college when I applied for the monbukagakusho scholarship I found out that I lost out to a nisei already fluent and therefore had no point in receiving it. From a rumor I heard for the previous 3 years all the scholarships in my region had also gone to nisei.

The point of that scholarship is not to teach people Japanese.

[Sarutaro]

Agree. Take "Bogballe", for example.

In Danish: a family name
In Swedish: lit. homo cock

This goes for all translation. Even languages that are related, such as German and English has the same problem. Hell, even with languages with a very close relationship, such as Norwegian, Swedish and Danish you can experience the same thing, though to a lesser degree. Translation always incorporates some amount of interpretation.

[hundefar]

In Danish: a family name
In Swedish: lit. homo cock

Though Bøgballe is a Danish family name, it will only be in some parts of Sweden that Bögballe will mean homo cock. In the south of Sweden it will mean homo testicle or maybe homo arse. Even within the Swedish language there can be ambiguity, and as we all know it can of crucial importance to know whether one really was talking about the cock or the arse.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Agree. Take "Bogballe", for example.

In Danish: a family name
In Swedish: lit. homo cock

No wonder Hamlet was so god-damned confused...

[Sarutaro]

[quote="hundefar"]Though Bø]

As someone who has resided in both the south and north of Sweden, I have learned this lesson the hard way.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

I have learned this lesson the hard way.

I hope the lesson wasn't learned literally the hard way....

[Typhoon]

gozar. verb

Portuguese: to enjoy

Brazilian Portuguese (colloquial) : to have an orgasm

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

If we're going along on this track, how about the following example...

English: man-child
Japanese:...er, yeah, well we can all guess where this one is going to end up.

[Greji]

You guys are giving me a stiffy. I think I'll just slip into the loo....

[hundefar]

You guys are giving me a stiffy. I think I'll just slip into the loo....

I like you. You've got spunk.

[james]

I like you. You've got spunk.

and if you ask him nicely enough, he may even share some with you