How would you translate these phrases into another language? “There are those who know how to fill a dishwasher, and those who don’t care” and “¡El chat GPT me ha hecho una paella!”
Bursting with translation anticipation, a quirky UN contest has had translators, interpreters, students, and lovers of a good multilingual idiom challenge submitting entries from around the world to the 2023 St. Jerome Translation Contest.
On hiatus for three years, the contest is back and participants from across the world were limbering up for a new bout of linguistic gymnastics.
AI beware
A panel of expert judges have combed through entries for each language, looking for accuracy in conveying not only the meaning of a frustrating household task, artificial intelligence (AI), and a traditional Spanish dish, but also the nuances of the source text, as well as style, submitted by students to seasoned translators.
The goal as always is to make sure nothing is lost in translation.
“In spite of the rise of Google and AI, which are threatening the very existence of our profession, there is continuing interest in translation,” said one of the judges, a senior text revisor in the Russian section of the UN Office at Vienna.
“We were very pleased with the liveliness of the language of many translations; it seemed like most of the contestants had had the same kind of problem loading dishwashers, and some of them seem to have PTSD when recalling those feats,” he told the audience in Vienna at the official award ceremony on Wednesday.
Full article: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1141877