Yet another script

Two in a row in Technology review. One that will make translators reek, and another shot for interpreters sure to spit venom and royal disdain. And you now even have the automated blast prevention announcement with a very keen message and wink to liaison interpreters :

"The goal of IraqComm is not to put human translators out of business, emphasizes SRI's Precoda. Language experts will still be needed to judge body language and colloquial subtleties that could reveal information not obvious to a computer, which is "not as smart as a human translator," she says."

Add to the curriculum "Body language analysis for interpreters" (Captain, I think he is reaching for his revolver), and "Interpreting colloquial subtleties".

I am not interested with the redundant matter of whether these will kill that. They already do, including Globish. As one customer I skyped with yesterday night said about the quality of email exchanged between him and his Japanese partners : "I am used to decipher what they try to convey in their messages." He should have added some comment about those partners deciphering what he has been trying to convey in semi-cooked English over the years. That is when I was proposing to intensify direct contact agency with these partners, face to face, in their language, to try and move forward. Efforts at "deciphering" were showing the limit : they were making no progress. As mentioned somewhere in a previous post, if there were a mathematical formula to calculate the loss of ROI as a result of approximate communication, I would have less time writing this blog. Unfortunately, there is no formula, and a one time interpreter fee sounds outrageously costly even when the issue at stake may means a stream of revenue over the years to dwarf the interpreter's invoice amount.

But I am digressing. The script is probably starting to spread over the discussion boards, private and public, the usual script of scorn at the menace those technologies mean, played down by the seasoned practitioners, looked down with pride and disgust in the booths, and ... well, what can be said about field interpreters? In the end, there is a common thread with the script around the matter of out of the booth interpreting as a valid "job". When IraqComm, or JapanComm, or WhateverComm will inquire almost human like : "And what do you do for a living?", we will have come full circle, and for once, someone in the profession will have asked you the question, not your butcher.