AI and Translation: An Insider’s Perspective - Show #116

2023-07-26

Adam Bittlingmayer is CEO and co-founder of ModelFront, a language services technology company striving to “make high-quality human translation radically more efficient” for large enterprises. The ModelFront API helps translators and language services agencies quickly determine the quality of machine-translated content, analyzing content segments for accuracy; with AI and human guidance, the technology’s ability to “predict” quality continues to improve over time. Adam is an industry expert on automated translatio...

Adam is an industry expert on automated translation - before co-founding the leading provider of machine translation quality prediction, he worked at Google Translate as an engineer, and founded Machine Translate, the foundation for open information and community for machine translation. Google Translate “makes bad translation free,” he says, adding that because most people can’t access translation the service is great for humanity, but not dependable for high-quality translation.

None of this is new to the language services industry, which has embraced machine translation from the outset. In this episode, Adam and I discuss AI, generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, and the technology’s general unreadiness for quality translation right now. AI-powered technologies are clearly and quickly redefining our concept of the future – what has changed is how we in the industry think about quality and client expectations in relation to potential (or perceived) time- and cost savings.

Adam also lays out a framework to help you decide what type of translation method works best, based on the value and uniqueness of content. Content with the highest “value” impacts a company’s revenue, brand reputation, and legal obligations and still requires human translation.

That need for quality will always be there, he says, even as the quality of AI translation improves. To keep up and stay relevant, the menu of services LSPs offer (and the methods they employ) will have to change, as the demand for services will likewise increase as the capacity to scale becomes greater.

Adam and I agree that there exist extremist viewpoints on whether technology will take over jobs from humans. To maintain a balanced discussion on the topic – he comes from the technological side and I come from the human side – we also agreed that ensuring the quality of any translation project currently requires both technology and humans.

Listen to the full episode to hear more from both perspectives and find out where they coalesce and collide. In addition, we discuss: