COLING 2016

Long-time Followers know that my second major interest after Natural Translation is Machine Translation. An apparent contradiction, but I have explained elsewhere how this came about many years ago and led me to become a member of the International Committee on Computational Linguistics or ICCL. (For more, enter ICCL in the Search box on the right.)

The ICCL sponsors the biennial COLING conferences in a different part of the world each time. The last COLING took place in Dublin in 2014. The upcoming COLING is scheduled to take place in Osaka, Japan, from December 11 to 16 of this year.

The latest news is that a record number of papers have been submitted: more than 1,100. Of these, 93 are specifically about MT; and many that are listed in other categories are relevant to it; for example speech recognition, which is now linked to translation in systems like Skype. So if you're passionate about MT and ways to improve it, Osaka in December is the place to be.

It's a tradition of COLING that one day of the conference is taken off for an excursion to help participants get to know each other. This time the excursion will be to Nara.

The website for COLING Osaka is at http://coling2016.anlp.jp/ or click here.

Witness: Nadia Comaneci's Perfect 10

I don't normally talk about my professional interpreting career on this blog, but today merits an exception. It's the anniversary, the 40th anniversary, of what for me was an unforgettable moment. And paradoxically it happened to me because at that very moment I was not interpreting.

It came about this way. In the summer of 1976 I was recruited to the large team of 60-odd conference interpreters who serviced the multitude of press conferences, committee meetings, etc., that accompanied the Montreal Olympic Games just as they always surround the Olympics. The public isn't aware how much of these activities goes on. I consider it was the high point of my career as an interpreter. I got the job because I had previously done work as a freelance interpreter for the Canadian government, I moved for a month into one of the apartments that were provided for us at great expense in Montreal and commuted most days between morning press conferences in the city and the afternoon equestrian events at Bromont, Quebec.

But at the very start of the games, just before the opening ceremony, we interpreters discovered a serious mistake had been made. Everyone on the staff of the games was issued with an identity tag to wear around their neck; it bore their photo, their name and their function. You had to show it to get to work. No tag, no admission. However, the people in charge had forgotten to prepare tags for the interpreters. Panic! In desperation, the official responsible issued an order: "We have press tags left over. Issue them all press tags." And then he was so busy that he forgot to ask for them back.

The unintended result was that the interpreters could get into the press enclosure at any event merely by flashing their identity tags. It was too good an opportunity to miss.

One evening, back from Bromont with no interpreting to do until the following morning, I walked up St Catherine Street to the Montreal Forum. The Forum is usually Montreal's premier ice hockey arena, vast, but it had been taken over for the Olympics. That evening it was hosting the gymnastics. I flashed my tag and eased myself into the front row of the press enclosure.

I had arrived just in time to witness history in the making. Between the spotlights and the camera flashes, and from a distance of barely 30 metres, I saw dainty, diminutive, precise, untrembling Nadia Comaneci, 14 years old, make her perfect score of 10. The first perfect score in Olympic gymnastics. As we onlookers stopped chattering, she, as she says in her BBC interview, was thinking only of what she had to do next. Her event barely occupied a quarter of the floor space but it was the corner nearest to where I was standing. I was there too when, to the initial bewilderment of the reporters and the crowd, the board flashed up 1.00 because it hadn't been designed to display 10.00.

Reference
Simon Watts, et al. The first Olympic gymnast to score a perfect 10. BBC Witness, 20 July 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36826597 or click here. This revealing video interview shows Nadia in childhood and as she is today – still graceful.

Young Interpreters and Roma Children

Followers of this blog are familiar with the Young Interpreters movement in UK schools. If you aren't, enter emtas in the Search box on the right. EMTAS channels the abilities of school children to act as language brokers for immigrant fellow pupils. The June issue of the YI Newsletter brings the usual cheery reports of success and expansion. Pupils at Hylands School in Chelmsford, which has just joined, express their feelings:

"I feel happy that I am a Young Interpreter as I can help out people who are struggling with English and who look lost around the school. - Paige, year 11.
"I think being a Young Interpreter is about putting the EAL student first and not myself. I am very excited about joining the Young Interpreters because I will meet new people and help them to understand what it is like to be at Hylands. Also I am a little nervous because I have never done this before. My mum says I would be excellent for this because I am a natural carer for others and will help in any way possible. - Mia, year 7.

And so on. Notice that these children see themselves as more than just language conduits, and such empathy is perhaps typical of Natural Interpreters. Our Followers are familiar with such sentiments. However, this issue of the newsletter also contains what for me anyway was a surprise, and I urge you to look at it via the link provided or by clicking here. It is that among the dozens of nationalities in Hampshire schools there are now Roma children. Do you know who the Roma are? EMTAS answers the question, insisting that they are not Gypsies.

"Most Roma families prefer to identify themselves by their country of origin, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania being the most common ones. They do this because of their fear of discrimination and prejudice.
"The linking of 'Gypsy' and 'Roma' in adscription documents is an unhelpful pairing as many Roma do not want to be allied with Gypsies. Their adscription as 'White Other' (WOTH) or 'Any Other Ethnic Group' (OOTH) means that Roma children in Hampshire schools do not receive support for their Roma background and all the cultural barriers to learning…. We need to be aware that many of these children will have no formal experience of schooling or a very interrupted education. Many find it difficult to settle in one area and are at risk of becoming 'lost in the system' because of their relatively high mobility. We should also be aware that our Roma communities are themselves diverse in terms of language, culture and religion (they may be Roman Catholic or Muslim, quite different from our indigenous Traveller groups)…
"Roma do not regard themselves as Gypsies and do not like to be classified as Gypsies although many of their customs are similar. European Roma call their language Romanes and UK Gypsies call theirs Romani. Whilst English Romani and European Romanes have vocabulary in common, the grammatical structures used may vary considerably and the languages are not necessarily mutually intelligible.
"It should be noted that although many of Hampshire's Gypsies and Travellers have a predilection for living in caravans and mobile homes, many Roma… have always lived in housing,"

Image
Roma community development worker Alexandra Bahor who is working with Roma children in the Lodge Lane area of Liverpool on an arts project in a bid to promote cultural cohesion in the neighbourhood.
Source: Liverpool Echo

Gregory Rabassa and Other Literary Native Translators

Recently this blog deplored the absence of literary translation from the International Conference on Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation (NPIT 3). It's true there always have been literary translators (LT) who were Professionals, for instance Karl Marx's youngest daughter Eleanor Marx Aveling. It's also true that a few LT became Expert Translators through the degree courses in literary translation studies that are offered by a handful of universities, for instance the MA in Literary Translation that used to be offered by the University of Alberta in Canada. However, academically trained literary translators are the exception.

There was a reminder of this last week in the sad news of the death of Gregory Rabassa, one of the most eminent of contemporary LT, He was of course by the end of his life a much sought-after Professional Expert for translating Latin American literature. Yet according to the obit in the New York Times, "His renown in the field was even more striking in that he had never intended to become a translator at all." He was already nearly 50 when he made his name and fortune by his translation of Julio Cortázar's Rayuela (Hopscotch). He went on not only to do translations but also to write as a practitioner about translating. His preparation for his success began already in his early bilingualism. He was born in New York into the family of a Cuban émigré. Then he taught Spanish and Spanish literature for several decades at Columbia University and at Queen's College of the City University of New York, His career therefore exemplifies two characteristics of the Advanced Native Translator – that is to say, the translator who does not study or receive training in translating but absorbs how to do it by living among translations done by predecessors: namely, fluent bilingualism and a close familiarity with and love for the literatures of the two languages. I heard Rabassa say that his success was due to his many friendships with Latin American writers.

The result is not necessarily a Professional Translator as in Rabassa's case. It may be altruistic. I've recently been reading a translation by an American university professor of Spanish from another generation. It's an English translation of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's Cañas y Barro (Reeds and Mud) by Lester Beberfall, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. [sic on the title page], He lived from 1911 to 1973 and was Professor of Spanish at Wisconsin State University in the 1960s. I'm reading it for what is probably the reason Beberfall translated it: it paints a fascinating, realistic picture of rural life around Valencia a hundred years ago. I see vestiges of it every day, especially the rice fields. But far from being a Professional, Beberfall didn't publish any other translations.

Yet another Ádvanced Native Translator who has brought me great pleasure is Prabha Sridevan, a native of Kennai (formerly Madras) in South India, who translates from Tamil to English. She is not a Professional Expert Translator by training or study, but a retired judge of the Madras High Court who has turned late to translating. Like many Indians, she grew up bilingual in Tamil and English. She studied literature as well as law. Now she has discovered for the delight of English readers the stories of Tamil woman author R. Chudamani (1931-2010). She was a prolific short story writer: more than 500 of them, yet we don't know her in the West. Subtle, sympathetic cameos set in a different family culture and translated into a perfect but faintly different English that goes with them admirably.

Prabha's book has introduced me not only to Chudamani but also to the rich world of translating in India. It is fostered by the multiplicity of native languages to which is added a surprisingly persistent prevalence of English as a literary lingua franca. The translation journals in the West carry many articles about translating in China, Japan, the Arab world, etc., yet little about that seething activity in India. A gap to be filled.

References
Gregory Rabassa. Wikipedia, 2016. There is a full list of his translations.

Margalit Fox. Gregory Rabassa, a premier translator of Spanish and Portuguese fiction, dies at 94. New York Times, 15 June 2016.

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. Reeds and Mud. Translated by Lester Beberfall. Boston: Brandon Press, 1966.

R. Chudamani. Seeing in the Dark. Translated with introduction by Prabha Sridevan. New Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 2015.

Image
Gregory Rabassa in 2007. Source: Washington Post.

Los distintos tipos de interpretación

Have you been frustrated by going to my academia.edu page (https://independent.academia.edu/BHARRIS or click here) in search of the above article and finding that it was unreadable? I'm sorry. It was due to a problem that occurs more and more with old texts. The word processing software, in this case Microsoft Word, has changed over the years and there are applications, in this case Scribd, that don't accept all the conversions. I've now put it right for this article, I hope, so please try again. Nevertheless the conversion has left some typos and I don't have the patience to correct them all for the moment.

It's the Spanish translation of an English article that's also on my academia.edu page. The Spanish version was published in its day but the English one never was. However, an Italian professor who read the English version recently, Gabi Mack of Bologna-Forli, tells me that it's still of interest. Tha could be, because it aimed to be all-embracing and up to date at a time (1994) when most of the recent developments in interpreting had already appeared. What has changed, I think, in the twenty years since it was written is the relative importance of certain types. Distance interpreting, and especially telephone interpreting, have become more widespread and accepted. Yet they are still surprisingly little taught in university training courses. There's a serious time lag.

Reference
'Panorámica de los distintos tipos de interpretación', translated by M. G. Torres. In P. Fernández Nistal and J.M. Bravo (eds.), Perspectivas de la Traducción Inglés/Español: Tercer Curso Superior de Traducción, Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain, 1995, pp. 27-48.

Who I Am

Last year a distinguished translator and reader of this blog, Chris Durban, chided me for not revealing my real name. It's true I've always posted under the pseudonym of Translatology, a name for which I have a certain affection. All you could learn about me from that was the little that's in the potted profile on the right hand side of this page together with what you might deduce from my writings here and on my academia.edu page. But now my cover has been blown because a kind Italian friend has put a fairly full biography of me in Wikipedia, the modern hall of fame. The editorial staff of Wikipedia aren't happy with the style of the entry, but I've checked the contents and they're accurate. So if you're curious, go to Wikipedia (English edition) and look for Brian Harris (translation researcher). But beware! Be specific or go directly to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Harris_(translation_researcher, because there are several other Brian Harrises in Wikipedia. And none of the Brian Harris photos on Google Images is me.

Birthday Post (No. 363)

I don't usually write about myself on this blog, but today calls for an exception. It's my birthday, my 87th. I'm statistically and medically lucky to be alive. Average male life expectancy in Spain, where I live, is 79.6 years; and though I'm not completely well, I'm in much better health than I was a year ago. Physically I attribute it to my parents' genes, my wife's vegetarian cuisine and some good Spanish cardiologists. Mentally it may have something to do with racking my brains about translation every day.

It so happens that I also have some other anniversaries to celebrate. It's just 50 years almost to the day that I first saw and worked with a computer. In a sense it was a rebirth. It happened in the summer of 1966. The computer was a new CDC 6400 at the Université de Montréal(see photo), where research on machine translation had recently started. It was a fast machine for its time, but it filled a space as large as a lecture hall though it was less powerful than my present-day laptop. Its input was on punched cards and its output on a line printer. No terminals.

Therefore it's just 50 years since I first became involved in machine translation and its concomitant corpus linguistics. We had received a corpus of English from Brown University on large spools of magnetic tape, and my first task was to scan a KWIC concordance of it for usage of English prepositions. But I didn't really know anything about computers, and a few months later I was humbled at a meeting of leading MT researchers in Ottawa. I scuttled back to Montreal to learn a little programming and Boolean logic.

And skipping a busy decade, it's 40 years since, as secretary of the 1976 COLING conference in Montreal, I was coopted to the International Committee on Computational Linguistics, of which I still am a member.

As well, in a different compartment of my career, conference interpreting, it's just 40 years since I interpreted for Lord Killanin (the IOC president) and Princess Anne of England as one of the team of interpreters at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. (For the princess it was at the equestrian events in Bromont, Quebec, and in my off time I saw Nadia Comaneci make her perfect score of 10 at the Montreal Forum)

And finally, for this post anyway, in another and more enduring compartment of my career, I was working 40 years ago with my assistant, Bianca Sherwood on the data for our joint paper Translating as an Innate Skill. I gave it the following year to the historic NATO Symposium on Language Interpretation and Communication held on San Giorgio Maggiori Island in Venice in the presence of such legendary luminaries as Jean Herbert, Wallace Lambert, Danica Seleskovitch, Patricia Longley, Barbara Moser and many more. I'd already given its forerunner, The Importance of Natural Translation, at the AILA World Congress in Stuttgart the previous year.

That's all for this post. More next year, I dare hope.

To all who helped me, my heartfelt thanks.

Image
A Control Data Corporation 6400 installation circa 1966. The central processing unit is in the background, the magnetic tape memory units are on the right. It's probably the card reader in the foreground.
Source: CERN.