Found in Translation

Who Ne e ds Eng ine e rs?
“I’m bringing a translator and a security officer. Why would I need an engineer?” These were the
words of the character named Archer in an episode of Star Trek that aired in 2001 (but took place in
2151). Truth be told, all computerized translation gadgets rely heavily on humans—both those with
linguistic expertise and engineering know-how.
The Futurist Has Faith
Inventor and technologist Ray Kurzweil is probably best known throughout the
world for his predictions about technology and how it will shape the future. At
age fifteen, he wrote his first computer program. Before graduating from high
school, he was invited to the White House and congratulated by President
Lyndon B. Johnson for winning first prize in the International Science Fair for
a computer he had built. In his books, The Age of Spiritual Machines and The
Singularity Is Near, he talks about how machines will replace humans in a
variety of areas.
What many people may not realize is that Kurzweil’s long and impressive
career in science and technology has been characterized by a close
involvement with the arts. His father was a musician and his mother was a
visual artist. That computer he created in high school? It composed music.
Over the course of his career, he has developed a visual art synthesizer, a
“cybernetic poet” that automatically generates poetry, and computer programs
to assist the creative art process. In 1984, he unveiled an electronic synthesizer
called the Kurzweil K250. In tests, musicians could not discern the difference
between the synthesizer and a grand piano.
In other words, Kurzweil has devoted most of his life to automating
processes and functions performed by humans, paying special attention to the
arts. But when it comes to automating the art of translation, he doesn’t think it
will ever be fully possible. Kurzweil believes that society will get to a point at
which computers have human levels of language understanding by 2029. He

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also believes that machines will eventually be able to translate information—
both spoken and written—better than they do today. He points to the fact that
automated translation options like Google Translate are already available on
mobile phones. However, machine translation will never be perfect.
Many of the stories we’ve shared so far in this book make it clear that the
tasks of translation and interpreting are extremely difficult to do well. That’s
precisely why human translators and interpreters need machines. These two
professions have evolved over time, though perhaps not enough. Interpreters
still have to rely on the terminology in their heads. Translators for most
languages still depend largely on their own recollections of grammatical rules.
Most interpreters and translators would actually benefit from getting more help
from technology—not less—to make them more productive and improve the
quality of their work.
When asked about whether machines will ever fully replace human
interpreters and translators, Kurzweil points out the similarities with the field
of music. When he invented his synthesizer in the 1980s, many musicians
feared that they would be out of a job. He says, “I don’t think these
technologies so much replace whole fields, in general. What they do is replace,
perhaps, a certain way of applying them.” He points out that most of the jobs
that exist in the world today didn’t exist just a few decades ago. He believes that
the actual translation and interpreting tasks performed by humans may evolve,
but the demand for language services as a whole will only grow.
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The complexity of translation is not lost on Kurzweil—far from it. He goes
so far as to say that the epitome of human intelligence is our ability to
command language. He even characterizes translation as “the most high-level
type of work one can imagine.” Tools like machine translation, he says, will
only boost humans’ ability to use, transform, and manipulate language. And, as
with many things in Kurzweil’s career, it all comes back to the arts. When
asked how the language professions will evolve with technology, he says, “I
think what we’ve seen already, in the music field, is a good model of that.” The
need for human musicians has not faded away in spite of advances in
technology. Music continues to surround us and enrich our lives. So, too, will
translation.

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