Linguists around the world celebrated International Translation Day last week on September 30th. It’s wonderful to celebrate all the talented people, both front and center and behind the scenes, who help the world to communicate.
My very respected colleague (who now resides in Paris—jealous!) wrote a timely article about human translation in the age of AI. Entitled “The Value of Human Translation,” Michael Schubert’s article points out when AI can be a useful tool and when we absolutely need human translators and interpreters. In addition to pointing out the fact that machine translation often spits out incorrect content and fills in ambiguous phrases with random words or “best guesses,” Michael provides the golden reason why human translation is so important:
“We translators rarely receive perfect texts to translate. A good translator will always correct errors, check facts, test and localize hyperlinks, fix formatting errors, and work with the client to clarify ambiguities. We glean the essence of the source text and deliver the message clearly and idiomatically in the target language. This is strictly gray-matter added value that goes well beyond the capabilities and mandate of AI solutions.”
You can read the full article here on Translorial, the online journal of the Northern California Translators Association.
Want to celebrate International Translation Day 2025? You can:
- Congratulate a local business or organization that provides translation and/or interpretation to their community (signage at your local hospital, interpreters at a school meeting, brochures at a museum, etc.)
- Purchase a book in translation! I love Transit Books and Two Lines Press.
- Check out this plethora of resources from my colleague Helen Eby. She has compiled information about how to use translation and interpretation services, access plans for people with Limited English Proficiency (LEP), and more. I will note that many of these resources, as of today’s date, were removed from the U.S. Federal Government’s websites, so it’s great that Helen thought ahead to save these. Thank you, Helen!
Alison Trujillo Translations 