Crowdsourcing Translation for Community-Based Tourism Empowerment in Thailand

English has not only become a lingua franca for global communication, but it also carries a symbolic power that influences local people and stakeholders in community-based tourism (CBT) in Thailand. Thai villagers encounter communicative challenges due to their limited English proficiency. Thai-English speaking tour guides are valued, as they provide translation services on behalf of CBT members whose interactions with foreign tourists are minimal and marginalized. Losses in translation regarding local wisdom and heritage are inevitably unavoidable. This chapter addresses a conceptual model of crowdsourcing translation for CBT. The study hopes that the sociolinguistic and cultural gaps can be bridged for the enhancement of other CBT communities. Crowdsourcing in the form of collaborative translation and volunteering translators' efforts can potentially provide an alternative lens for possible translation scenarios. Tourism operators and stakeholders can apply these practices to assist the local people to promote lesser-known tourist attractions in remote areas in Thailand.

What can Analysis of the Organizations’ Web Sites tell us about AI? Comparative Study of the Online Resources operated at Google, Yandex, and Baidu

The current social and cultural debates on AI and how it is being embedded into the reality of social life have reignited scientific debates on how to study AI, what counts as data, and the conditions under which information and data pertaining AI turn into knowledge. In this paper the authors’ focus was exploring new sources of data on AI and methods of AI phenomena examination. The paper presents the results of a comparative analysis of Google, Yandex, and Baidu’s websites. Contrary to these companies commonly being perceived as online search engines, Google, Baidu, and Yandex have multiple offerings across mobile products and services, knowledge products, translation services, open platforms for startups, PC client software and AI technologies. In the first part of the paper the authors compare information presented on these companies’ websites about their goals, their technologies, how they define AI, the proclaimed social problems associated with using AI, and the forms of interaction between these companies and their audiences. The second part of the paper analyzes 20 projects that won the Google AI Impact Challenge contest. Analyzing these projects allowed for identifying areas of application of AI technologies inside and outside organizations, for characterizing AI’s potential roles as a mediator in relations between people, and finally for highlighting utopian and dystopian scenarios associated with implementing AI in social relations. In the conclusion the authors formulate a set of broader questions for social analytics concerning artificial intelligence grounded in the results of their analysis.

Mutual Learning for Policy Impact: Insights from CORE. Adapting research methods in the context of Covid-19

On 25 November 2021, the CORE Knowledge Translation Services team at the Institute of Development Studies, UK, hosted an online clinic session to facilitate the sharing of experiences and mutual learning on how CORE projects have or can adapt their research activities in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The clinic was attended by 22 CORE members from 12 projects and featured contributions from two CORE projects: The Youth Question in Africa: Impact, Response and Protection Measures in the IGAD Region and A New Digital Deal for an Inclusive Post-Covid-19 Social Compact: Developing Digital Strategies for Social and Economic Reconstruction. This learning guide captures the practical insights and advice from the event, to help inform the practice of participants and other projects across the portfolio.

Machine translation post-editing – Current situation and the future of translator training in Bulgaria

The current paper is an attempt to analyse the situation on the market for specialised translation services, and more precisely for Machine Translation in Bulgaria. It provides an overview of some of the generic MT systems and analyses the results coming from the translation of two types of text. The aim of the paper is to raise awareness about the results of Neural Machine Translation and to reveal the need for MT post-editing courses.

Can Machine Translation meet the needs of official language minority communities in Canada? A recipient evaluation

Canada is an officially bilingual country, but the only legal requirement is for federal services to be offered in both official languages. Therefore, services provided by provincial and municipal governments are typically offered only in the language of the majority, with cost being cited as the main obstacle to providing translation. This paper presents a recipient evaluation designed to determine whether machine translation could be used as a cost-effective means of increasing translation services in Canadian official language minority communities. The results show that not all communities have the same needs, and that raw or rapidly post-edited MT output is more suitable for information assimilation, while maximally post-edited MT output is a minimum requirement when translation is intended as a means of cultural preservation and promotion. The survey also suggests that average recipients are more receptive to MT than are language professionals.

The German EU Council Presidency Translator

This contribution describes the German EU Council Presidency Translator (EUC PT), a machine translation service created for the German EU Council Presidency in the second half of 2020, which is open to the general public. Following a series of earlier presidency translators, the German version exhibits important extensions and improvements. The German EUC PT is the first to integrate systems from commercial vendors, public services, and a research center, using a mix of custom and generic translation engines, and to introduce a new webpage translation widget. A further important feature is the close collaboration with human translators from the German ministries, who were provided with computer-assisted translation tool plugins integrating machine translation services into their daily work environments. Uptake by the public reflects a huge interest in the service, showing the need for breaking language barriers.

Intersectional Aspects of Education at the Nexus of Disability and Forced Migration: Perspectives of Parents, Educational Experts, and School Authorities in Greater Vienna

Although Austrian statistics inform about the distribution of students among different school types based on either their special education needs or their (forced) migration background, the group facing the disadvantages of both situations is almost invisible in the national context. There is a lack of data about the intersection of the kind of schooling (integrative setting, inclusive settings, or special education classes), gender, nationality, or first language use. In order to learn about the current educational practices and challenges in the Austrian context, parents of disabled children from a refugee background as well as educational experts and school authorities were interviewed. Findings showed that there is only a little awareness of the intersectional aspects of disability and forced migration among educational experts and school authorities, while the diagnosis of special education needs suffers from the complexity of the situation. Additionally, parents’ lack of information, as well as the need to improve collaboration and increase the availability of translation services, multilingual counseling, or service provision in general were other aspects that this study found. Parents perceived school choice as a key decision and findings underlined that their worries, also as a result of past experiences, affected current decision-making regarding their children’s education.

Raising Student Consciousness About Machine Translation

With the rise of virtual assistants and the proliferation of digital translation software, such as Google Translate and Weblio that speed up the translator’s work, it is time to question what role, if any, machine translation services should have in foreign language classes. In this paper, the authors describe some activities designed to raise awareness about the use and misuse of machine translation within a task-based learning framework. Inspired by Sharwood-Smith’s 1981 notion of “consciousness-raising”, we outline three activities highlighting the benefits and problems of machine translation. An analysis of two translation exercises by 86 tertiary students in Japan indicated how many felt uncertain of the quality of their translations. Moreover, semi-structured interviews with six respondents following these activities underscored how students felt ambivalent about their translations. We conclude the paper with a discussion of some resources for EFL students seeking to improve their translation skills. デジタル翻訳ソフトの普及に伴い、外国語の授業で機械翻訳サービスが、もしあるとしたらどのような役割を担うべきかを問う時期にきている。本稿では、タスクベース学習の枠組みの中で、機械翻訳の使用と誤用についての認識を高めるためにデザインされたいくつかの活動について説明する。 本稿では、機械翻訳の利点と欠点を強調する三つのアクティビティーを概説する。日本の高等教育機関で学ぶ86人の学生によるふたつの翻訳演習の分析から、多くの学生が自らの翻訳の質に不安を感じていることがわかった。、さらに、これらのアクティビティーの後に実施した6人の学部生への半構造化面接から、多くの学生が翻訳の質を判断するのに苦労していることが明らかになった。締めくくりとして、翻訳スキルの向上を目指すEFLの学生向けのリソースについて考察した。

What features of DHI design and deployment enable or hinder engagement with DHIs by demographic groups likely to be affected by the digital divide? Protocol for a systematic scoping review (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED Digital health interventions (DHIs) refer to interventions designed to support health-related knowledge transfer and deployed via digital technologies, such as mobile applications (apps) (Soobiah et al., 2020). DHIs are a double-edged sword: they have the potential to reduce health inequalities, for example by making treatments available remotely to rural populations underserved by healthcare facilities or by helping to overcome language barriers via in-app translation services. However, if not designed and deployed with care, DHIs also have the potential to increase health inequalities and exacerbate effects of the digital divide. Patient-level and public health measures delivered digitally therefore need to consider ways to mitigate the digital divide through DHI design, deployment and engagement mechanisms sensitive to the needs of digitally-excluded populations. This protocol outlines the procedure for a systematic scoping review focussing on features of DHI design and deployment that facilitate (or not) access to and engagement with DHIs by people from demographic groups likely to be affected by the digital divide. The results will have wider implications for researchers and policy makers using DHIs for health improvement peri-pandemic and post-pandemic and will inform best practices in the design and deployment of DHIs.