TC43, Conference Report
For the second year the long standing and world renowned conference – Translating and the Computer – has moved to a fully online delivery. As it has, very generously been free to access for all, our students were encouraged to sign up and attend.
One of our students – Rahil – has written a conference report.
The very prestigious Translating and the Computer Conference in its 43 edition took place in November virtually for the second year in a row. Having the conference online enabled us, as EM TTI students to join the conference with ease to attend it with a lot of flexibility to connect with as many professionals and academics in the field as possible and also connect with hundreds of same-minded enthusiasts for translation in around 67 countries in the world. Being invited to this conference, I would like to start by thanking Prof. Ruslan Mitkov, The director of the Research Group in Computational Linguistics at the University of Wolverhampton, for inviting the EM TTI students to attend this conference as it has been a great opportunity for us to unveil state-of-the-art ideas that relate to our current research interests and our professional portfolios.
Over the three days of the conference, there were a span of topics, workshops, Q & A sessions, and chill-out sessions at the end of each day where we could discuss with the speakers any topic presented throughout the day. There were many interesting topics on Day One of the conference to mention some: Translation Technology, Cloud Translation Engines, and MT Quality. One of my favourite talks of that day was the one by the Keynote speaker Prof. Sharon O’Brien “ Can Machines Translate?”. This talk was insightful for me in many ways. To start with it was really rich in resources and information, but also it was tackling a very important ongoing debate over the conflict between Humans vs. Machines in the field of translation. Day two was equally resourceful and inspiring especially for those working or researching in the field of interpreting.
The conference concluded its activities with yet another enriching day on the 18th of November. We had the opportunity to join many interesting presentations about other topics like subtitling and post-editing. I enjoyed the talk of Jean Nitzke as her talk was drawing on an interesting area for me which is post-editing and the talk was also great as it mentioned the new translation market demands and how translators integrate technology in their profession. Overall, this conference has been an amazing and motivating event that enriched my knowledge in many areas of translation technology.
Post written by Rahil Nasser
