Man vs. Machine

In Spanish: "The hand washes itself, don't whiten don't fall, lovely iron" 
via WTF? Microservios

We've recently heard some providers say that they no longer send translations out professional translation services because online tools such as GoogleTranslate have become so effective.  We thought in the interest of scientific discovery, we'd put this theory to the test.

This great website puts your simple phrase through a series of machine translations, back and forth to English so that you can see the linguistic distortions.  For more giggles, the program will allow you to run something through 30 or even 50 translations.  In no short time the simplest text goes awry: "How many apples did you buy?" in just 10 machine translations becomes "How Apple Store?". 

This is fun enough, but let's really illustrate the importance of a human interpreter and/or translator.  What happens when we do some medical and legal texts?  Even the simple "Take one pill in the morning and one in the evening" becomes "Morning and evening sleeping pills."  Very different!  The classic "You have the right to remain silent.  Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law." becomes "You have the right to remain silent. You can say that in court." in just 10 iterations. 

All this is very relevant given that recently a murder case in Ohio was thrown out due to a human interpreter's error in interpreting the Miranda warning.  If humans can get it wrong sometimes, and we have yet to build a computer that can even come close to what the human brain does, imagine the danger in using machine translation for anything beyond the simplest of phrases. 

Our review: machine translations are useful in a pinch, and perhaps good for basic phrases (what time is the bus?), should never be used when someone's life or liberty is on the line.  For that, the old-fashioned human being is probably still your most reliable option.

Getting a new start

It's not easy to begin again.  It is common for refugees to arrive in the United States with only one bag of possessions.  Often their credentials and degrees from other countries do not transfer to our American system, and they are left with difficult choices about how they will work to support their family. 


Samuel "El Hag" Albino was once
a professor in Egypt.  He now works
as a CCME Language Partners
interpreter and a case manager
at Community Counseling Center.
(Image Source:Portland Press Herald)


Recently many of our interpreters participated in a job fair, aimed at solving this very problem.  Sometimes the most difficult barrier is just getting to know the right people.  Catholic Charities Maine and other community partners worked to organize an event where qualified refugees and immigrants could meet and network with industry leaders.  This event was the first of its kind. 


I'm excited about this new endeavor.  We're amazed daily at Catholic Charities Language Partners by the background and experience of our interpreters.  We have among our staff doctors, professors, nurses, architects, and engineers.  It is an honor to offer our positions as interpreters as a means for our staff to move back to the professional credentials they once had. As we all know, sometimes getting the right job is as much about who you know as what you know.  And getting to know these sorts of highly skilled refugeees is one of the perks of my job.  I'm glad that these industry leaders got the chance as well.

It's more than being bilingual

Boston University's news outlet, BU Today, published an article about their professional interpreter training program and the role of interpreters in the hospitals and courts today .


Years ago, I enrolled at this same Boston University program because I knew that interpreting is more than being bilingual.  So many times, lives literally hang on the turn of our words; I wanted to be sure I was getting it right.  I remember my assessment test, and how my palms sweated--"Am I good enough to become an interpreter?" 


Today language testing is becoming standard practice among professional interpreters.  It is not enough to be bilingual, we have to know nuances and double-meanings, slang and technical jargon.  Every interpreter will tell you that's one of the things that makes our job fun--we never stop learning! 


As a user of interpreter services, stop to ask if your interpreter is language tested (and ask to see a copy of the results!).  Or work with a company like Catholic Charities Language Partners that provides a guarantee of quality screening and credentials.  If you are interested in learning more about interpreter credentialling, you can contact Language Access for New Americans (LANA), who is leading the movement in Maine towards more rigorous interpreter quality standards.


Yes, until we achieve state and national licensing of interpreters it will be cumbersome to check the credentials of every interpreter you use.  However, lives hang in the balance, and interpreting is more than being bilingual.