[English translation] Thank you for your participation! “Panelist: Artificial Intelligence and Neural Machine Translation of Today and the Future”

Following is the English translation of my blog article "お陰様で無事終了しました！「パネリスト：人工知能とニューラル機械翻訳の現状と未来」" .

Thank you for your participation! “Panelist: Artificial Intelligence and Neural Machine Translation of Today and the Future”

Until now, I had only spoken in front of other translation companies or other translators, so it was my first experience to speak in front of university related people like this time. I believe about 50 people attended this event.

One of the panelists (not just a translator, more like a translation expert) was a well-known person who had their own Wikipedia page. I once hoped to be like that, but it might be difficult to accomplish, since I am not a translator myself (haha). I found out that when you are in a totally different field, the situation is totally different. Every field has its own difficulties. I found out for the first time that instead of word count x price, translation fee is sometimes paid in book royalties. It varies depending on the field.

(I believe) the purpose of universities is to produce a well-educated people, based on the educational philosophy of the institution. Whereas the purpose of private companies is to increase the profit and contribute to the society by paying a corporate tax. I wondered whether there is a good way to build a coexistence relationship between the two.

I also felt that the degree of knowledge and implementation of the machine translation greatly differs depending on the field or individuals.

It was interesting to hear about translation programs offered in universities. There was a Starbucks on campus of Kansai University. Universities are so stylish these days. It was nice to talk with a translator who passed the NIPTA 1 test. There were some people who read the article I wrote for the JTF. I’m glad I wrote the article.

The next schedule is the Memsource application seminar (Ichigaya, Tokyo) on July 26th. After that, I hope to see you at the MT summit (Nagoya) in September. We are also planning to have a Memsource User Meet-up in Osaka around October. I definitely want to make this happen.

Thank you for those who participated in the event. To all the panelists, thank you for having me.

Posted by Masa Kajiki
Translated by Hiroko Matsuda, J2E translator, MK Translation Firm