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6. i
“This is an important and necessary book, on a subject about which
I often ponder and speculate and converse, but never know where exactly
to turn to deepen my understanding. I suspect that there are many, many
others out there in the same position, and they will welcome this publi-
cation too.”
Polly Barton, Japanese-English prize-winning
literary translator (www.pollybarton.net/about-me)
“This is a book to be read by anyone who has a practical or theoretical
interest in the newly emerging field of the use of machines in the transla-
tion of literary and creative texts, be they students of translation, transla-
tion scholars or practising literary translators.”
Roy Youdale, Spanish-English literary translator and
author of Using Computers in the Translation of Literary
Style: Challenges and Opportunities (Routledge Advances in
Translation and Interpreting Studies)
“This volume offers a fresh look at one of the most exciting areas in con-
temporary translation studies: computing, creativity and translation, as
well as offering a new look at the interaction between technology and the
translation of creative texts. With this timely contribution to one of the
most exciting areas in contemporary translation studies, Hadley et al.
make the case for a closer look at the role of computers in translation,
even for creative texts.”
Dorothy Kenny, Professor of Translation Studies at
Dublin City University
8. iii
Using Technologies for
Creative-Text Translation
This collection reflects on the state of the art of research into the use of
translation technologies in the translation of creative texts, encompassing
literary texts but also extending beyond to cultural texts, and charts their
development and paths for further research.
Bringing together perspectives from scholars across the discipline, the
book considers recent trends and developments in technology that have
spurred growing interest in the use of computer-
aided translation (CAT)
and machine translation (MT) tools in literary translation. Chapters
examine the relationships between translators and these tools—
the
extent to which they already use such technologies, the challenges they
face, and prevailing attitudes towards these tools—
as well as the eth-
ical implications of such technologies in translation practice. The volume
gives special focus to drawing on examples with and beyond traditional
literary genres to look to these technologies’ use in working with the
larger group of creative texts, setting the stage for many future research
opportunities.
The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in
translation studies, especially those with an interest in literary transla-
tion, translation technology, translation practice, and translation ethics.
James Luke Hadley is Trinity College Dublin’s Ussher Assistant Professor
in Literary Translation and Director of the College’s MPhil in Literary
Translation. His research represents his wide-
ranging interests, many of
which centre on translation in under-
researched cultural contexts. His
interests include machine translation and computer-
assisted transla-
tion research, as well as integrating empirical research into Translation
Studies.
Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov is Professor of Multilingual Translation
Studies and Vice Head of the School of Languages and Translation
Studies at the University of Turku. Her research interests include literary
translation, translation history, and ethics of translation. Throughout her
career, she has worked on the notion of “voice” in translation, which she
has examined from theoretical, historical, and ethical perspectives.
9. i
v
Carlos S. C. Teixeira is a Localisation Engineer at IOTA Localisation
Services and Adjunct Professor, Universitat Rovira i Virgili. His research
and publications have focussed on translation process research, not-
ably the interaction between translators and technology in profes-
sional settings. With Routledge, he has authored a chapter on “Revising
Computer-
Mediated Translations” in Mossop, Brian. Revising and
Editing for Translators, 4th edition (2020).
Antonio Toral is Assistant Professor in Language Technology at the
University of Groningen. He holds a PhD in Computational Linguistics
from the Universitat d’Alacant and has carried out research in the area of
machine translation (MT) since 2010. His research interests include the
application of MT to literary texts, MT for under-
resourced languages,
and the analysis of translations produced by machines and humans.
10. v
Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies
Lifestyle Politics in Translation
The Shaping and Re-
Shaping of Ideological Discourse
By M. Cristina Caimotto and Rachele Raus
Reframing Translators, Translators as Reframers
Edited by Dominique Faria, Marta Pacheco Pinto, and Joana Moura
Transfiction and Bordering Approaches to Theorizing Translation
Essays in Dialogue with the Work of Rosemary Arrojo
Edited by D. M. Spitzer and Paulo Oliveira
Translating Controversial Texts in East Asian Contexts
A Methodology for the Translation of ‘Controversy’
Adam Zulawnik
Using Technologies for Creative-
Text Translation
Edited by James Luke Hadley, Kristiina Taivalkoski-
Shilov,
Carlos S. C. Teixeira, and Antonio Toral
Relevance Theory in Translation and Interpreting
A Cognitive-
Pragmatic Approach
Fabrizio Gallai
Towards a Feminist Translator Studies
Intersectional Activism in Translation and Publishing
Helen Vassallo
For more information about this series, please visit https://www.routle
dge.com/Routledge-Advances-in-Translation-and-Interpreting-Studies/
book-series/RTS
14. i
x
Contents
List of contributors xi
Introduction 1
JAMES LUKE HADLEY, KRISTIINA TAIVALKOSKI-
SHILOV,
CARLOS S. C. TEIXEIRA, AND ANTONIO TORAL
1 Collecting literary translators’ narratives: Towards a
new paradigm for technological innovation in literary
translation 18
PAOLA RUFFO
2 Dutch literary translators’ use and perceived
usefulness of technology: The role of awareness
and attitude 40
JOKE DAEMS
3 Human–
computer interaction in pun translation 66
WALTRAUD KOLB AND TRISTAN MILLER
4 Bilingual e-
books via neural machine translation and
their reception 89
ANTONI OLIVER, ANTONIO TORAL, AND
ANA GUERBEROF ARENAS
5 Catching the meaning of words: Can Google Translate
convey metaphor? 116
ALICJA ZAJDEL
15. x Contents
x
6 Pragmatic and cognitive elements in literary machine
translation: An assessment of an excerpt from
J. Polzin’s Brood translated with Google, DeepL,
and Microsoft Bing 139
PAOLA BRUSASCO
7 The “Oxen of the Sun” hypertext: A digital hypertext
in the study of polyphonic translations of James
Joyce’s Ulysses 161
LAURI A. NISKANEN
8 Translating with technology: How digitalisation
affects authorship and copyright of literary texts 180
MAARIT KOPONEN, SANNA NYQVIST, AND
KRISTIINA TAIVALKOSKI-SHILOV
Index 199
16. x
i
Contributors
Paola Ruffo is a researcher in the field of Computer-Assisted Literary
Translation (CALT). She has recently joined Ghent University as a
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow to work on ‘Developing
User-centred Approaches to Technological Innovation in Literary
Translation (DUAL-T)’. She has previously worked as a freelance trans-
lator and as a Lecturer in Translation Technology at the University of
Bristol.
Joke Daems is Postdoctoral Research Assistant at Ghent University in the
field of machine translation and human-
computer interaction. They
are one of the editors of Reuniting the Sister Disciplines of Translation
and Interpreting Studies (Routledge, 2020), and have contributed a
chapter to Translation Revision and/or Post-Editing: Industry Practices
and Cognitive Processes (Routledge, 2020).
Waltraud Kolb is Assistant Professor of Literary Translation at the Center
for Translation Studies, University of Vienna. One focus of her research
is on digital tools and machine translation in the literary field and lit-
erary translation and post-
editing processes. She is a member of the
executive board of the Austrian Association of Literary Translators.
Tristan Miller is Research Scientist at the Austrian Research Institute for
Artificial Intelligence. He is a computational linguist specialising in
lexical semantics, language resources and evaluation, and creative lan-
guage. He is a consulting editor for Humor: International Journal of
Humor Research and a contributor to The Routledge Handbook of
Language and Humor.
Antoni Oliver González is Associate Professor at the Open University of
Catalonia (UOC) and Director of the Master’s Degree in Translation
and Technologies. His main area of research is Natural Language
Processing, with a special focus on machine translation and automatic
terminology extraction.
Ana Guerberof Arenas is MSCA Research Fellow at University of
Groningen. Her project (CREAMT) looks at the impact of MT on
17. xii List of contributors
x
i
i
translation creativity and the reader’s experience in the context of lit-
erary texts. She is also a Senior Lecturer in Translation and Multimodal
Technologies at the University of Surrey (UK), where she is a member
of the Centre for Translation Studies.
Alicja Zajdel is Predoctoral Researcher at the University of Antwerp,
where she is a member of the TricS (Translation, Interpreting and
Intercultural Studies) research group. She is currently conducting
translation process research on decision-
making processes in audio
description script writing. Her other research interests include media
accessibility, machine translation, and literary translation. She is
Secretary to the Editorial Board for the Journal of Audiovisual
Translation.
Paola Brusasco is Associate Professor in English Language and
Translation at the University of Chieti-
Pescara. Her research interests
and publications are in the areas of Translation Studies, ELT, and
Postcolonial Studies. She has translated many contemporary and
classic works.
Lauri A. Niskanen has PhD in comparative literature from the University
of Helsinki and researches James Joyce, literary translation, and inter-
textuality. Niskanen wrote his doctoral thesis on the Finnish and
Swedish translations of Joyce’s Ulysses and has also published on
parody, pastiche, intermediality, polyphony, and the musicalisation of
fiction.
Maarit Koponen is Professor of Translation Studies at the University of
Eastern Finland. Her work addresses the use of translation technology,
particularly machine translation. She is one of the co-
editors of the
volume Translation Revision and Post-
editing: Industry Practices and
Cognitive Processes published by Routledge in 2021.
Sanna Nyqvist is Adjunct Professor (Docent) of Comparative Literature
at the University of Helsinki. She is the author of several articles on
literary appropriation and copyright. Her contribution to this volume
was funded by the Academy of Finland (285279) and the Emil
Aaltonen Foundation.
newgenprepdf
18. 1
DOI: 10.4324/9781003094159-1
Introduction
James Luke Hadley, Kristiina Taivalkoski-
Shilov,
Carlos S. C. Teixeira, and Antonio Toral
How to solve the problem of translation
The histories of Machine Translation and Translation Studies are funda-
mentally intertwined, and not only because both concern themselves with
translation. They both developed as focused areas of study in the wake
of the Second World War (Tymoczko 2006, 156). At this time, a new
awareness of translation as a means by which speakers and writers of
other languages can be made intelligible was being led by developments
in communications, computational technologies, increasingly mechanised
work practices, widespread literacy, and the availability of written
materials. During the war, early computers had famously been employed
by cryptographers in the race to decode enemy transmissions (Gambier
2018, 132–
133). Fundamentally, these machines were codebreakers
that could decipher the cyphers used to encode messages, such that the
messages could be decoded in order to make them intelligible.
This approach has close parallels with Saussurean linguistic theories,
which were preeminent at the time and which had shifted the study of
linguistics away from etymology and language change to the analysis and
description of linguistic structures, underpinned by the notions of the sig-
nified and the signifier (De Saussure 2011, 75). Under this paradigm, the
lexical unit used to express something is seen as arbitrary, acknowledging
that there is no intrinsic link between a word and the thing it represents
(De Saussure 2011, 68). In turn, this notion tends to lead to the conclu-
sion that signifiers or words are interchangeable, and, therefore, that one
language can be used to indicate the same things as another language,
even though the two may have no words in common.
Thus, if cryptographical machines could be used to replace one set of
signs with another to encode or decode messages, it is reasonable to think
that the signs could be replaced by words, and, therefore, languages could
be treated as coding systems. Under this paradigm, translation is effect-
ively the act of moving between coding systems such that the message is
recoded but not fundamentally altered (see Lennon 2014, 137). Kenneth
E. Harper (1955, 41), an American Russianist and early participant in
experiments in what he calls “mechanical translation”, reasons that
19. 2 Hadley, Taivalkoski-Shilov, Teixeira, Toral
2
“since mathematics is itself a language—
a set of symbols used to com-
municate thought—
why can’t computers be used to translate French into
English, or Chinese into Portuguese?”
Some version of this understanding of translation, that texts in different
languages could be “equivalent” to one another in terms of the messages
they convey, underpinned much research in Translation Studies for the
majority of the second half of the twentieth century. This research could
be seen as a search for the solution to the equivalence problem, which
made translation a messy, time-
consuming, and laborious business.
The same understanding informed the early experiments in Machine
Translation, which took place in the early years of the Cold War, when
American intelligence hoped to develop an automatic tool for the
deciphering of Russian materials, essentially seeing the Russian lan-
guage as a code to be broken. Early experiments, though crude by today’s
standards, appeared to provide a proof of concept for the researchers,
who created a system capable of translating over 60 Russian sentences
into English and, on the basis of this, assumed that the problem of trans-
lation could be overcome in the foreseeable future:
“Linguists will be able to study a language in the way that a physi-
cist studies material in physics, with very few human prejudices
and preconceptions … The technical literature of Germany, Russia,
France, and the English-
speaking countries will be made available to
scientists of other countries as it emerges from the presses”
(Macdonald 1954, 8)
The experiments and their promised results led to substantial state
investment over the following years, though the speed of progress was
not as meteoric as had been hoped. Despite early successes in trans-
lating simple sentences, training machines to decode messages in one lan-
guage and then recode equivalent messages in another was more difficult
than had been anticipated. Early systems attempted to imitate language
teaching models that relied on rules and exceptions. Thus, grammatical
structures were programmed into the systems along with those cases
which did not conform to the same structures. The highly complex and
labour-
intensive nature of this work, coupled with the limitations on
storage and processing power available in the mid-
twentieth century, led
to slow progress. This progress was assessed in 1966 by the Automatic
Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC), which determined in
its report that the early confidence in Machine Translation’s potential had
been overestimated, asserting that “translations of adequate quality are
not being provided” (National Research Council 1966, 16). As a result,
it recommended that research funding be redirected into more fruitful
endeavours. Such endeavours included finding “means for speeding up
the human translation process,” the “adaptation of existing mechanised
editing and production processes in translation,” and the “production
20. Introduction 3
3
of adequate reference works for the translator, including the adaptation
of glossaries that now exist primarily for automatic dictionary look-
up
in Machine Translation” (National Research Council 1966, 34). As a
result, funding into Machine Translation-
proper was reduced, with the
funds channelled into what later came to be known as computer-
aided
translation.
Re-evaluating priorities
This move opened the door for the development of rudimentary computer-
aided translation features, such as terminology databases, which store
previously encountered terms in the source language and their user-
defined translations in the target language. The same concept developed
into translation memories, which are effectively corpora of previously
encountered source language sentences, paired with their previously
provided translations. These features developed from the 1990s on into a
series of tools that could very well be argued to be indispensable to most
professional translators of technical texts by the second decade of the
twenty-first century.
Meanwhile, Machine Translation had also shifted its focus from rules
and exceptions to parallel corpora, entering the Statistical Machine
Translation paradigm by the late 1980s (Brown et al. 1988). Instead of
relying on manually programmed rules and exceptions, Statistical Machine
Translation relies on large bodies of parallel sentences representing both
the source and target language. Systems built under this paradigm use
statistical inference to determine the most likely parallel to the source text
provided by referring to the parallel source-
target corpus of sentences.
The benefits of these systems are not limited to output quality but also
include flexibility and the level of human intervention they imply. With
rules-
based systems, it is necessary to build one system per language pair,
and the effort of programming all the rules and exceptions is very sub-
stantial. On the other hand, statistical systems rely on the corpora they
are given, meaning that the work associated with building a system for
a new language pair focuses on creating the parallel corpus rather than
crafting the system itself.
Statistical Machine Translation systems improved translation quality,
especially for language pairs such as English and French, which have
similar grammatical structures and large enough amounts of data for the
parallel corpora to be created. However, translation between languages
with very different structures, or between languages with less human-
translated material to base a corpus on, was still problematic.
During this time, Translation Studies too saw a shift of paradigms,
from the focus on equivalence that had historically dominated research to
a more nuanced examination of translations as sociocultural phenomena.
The first steps in this direction had been made several years before,
when Toury (1978) and others instigated the shift from prescribing best
21. 4 Hadley, Taivalkoski-Shilov, Teixeira, Toral
4
practice in translation activity to describing observed translation activity.
Functionalist approaches had come to see translations as texts that fulfil
specific roles in their target contexts, as opposed to simply representing
their sources, and the field shifted to assessing those roles and the strategies
used by the texts to meet them (Snell-Hornby 2006, 51–
56). As a result
of two developments, the field shifted from attempts to make overarching
theories of translation in the search for equivalence to more granular
assessments of translation activities in context. Thus, the field expanded
and diversified exponentially in response to the number of contexts
in which translation activity is to be found, the case study became the
dominant approach, and the theoretical basis around which Translation
Studies had previously gravitated—
the search for equivalence—
lost most
of its meaning.
Literature and other creative texts
Interest in literary translation as a distinct subdivision of Translation
Studies could be said to have begun emerging around this time. However,
it is important to note that literature had dominated theoretical and pre-
scriptive discussions of Translation Studies since the earliest days of the
field. And, to this date, it is not clear whether there is, or could be, a clear
divide between literary and non-
literary forms of translation. Even while
Translation Studies diversified into fields ranging from non-
professional
translators to translation in crisis scenarios, from publishing practices to
audiovisual translation, a substantial substratum of research remained
squarely focused on the translation of literature in historical or contem-
poraneous contexts. A strong branch of research developed around the
production of translation historiography, which very frequently focused
on works of literature. For example, a whole series of works entitled
The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe (www.bloomsbury.
com/uk/series/the-reception-of-british-and-irish-authors-in-europe/) has
been published by Bloomsbury since 2004, covering figures such as Jane
Austen (Mandal and Southam 2007), Robert Burns (Pittock 2014), H.G
Wells (Parrinder and Partington 2005), and Oscar Wilde (Evangelista
2010). While this series does include figures such as Charles Darwin
(Glick 2014), the vast majority are individuals whose work was either
fictional or poetic in nature.
As has already been noted, literature had a historically prominent
place in theoretical studies on translation. However, while professional
training in translation and interpreting existed since before the Second
World War in some contexts (Gambier 2018, 133), systematic training
specifically for the translation of literature and other creative texts was
less widely available. However, the early years of the twenty-
first cen-
tury saw the development of an increasing awareness of the specific
skills and training pertinent to the translation of texts of a primarily aes-
thetic, rather than primarily functional, nature. Thus, this period saw an
22. Introduction 5
5
increasing number of specialist courses on the translation of literature
and other creative texts emerge. Eventually, this growing awareness of
what sets creative texts apart, and the training needs of translators specif-
ically working on them, led to codification in the form of the PETRA-
E
Framework for Literary Translator Training. This framework is the first
of its kind and was originally the product of a network of eight European
partners with specialisms in literary translator training: BCLT (Norwich),
CEATL (European network), Deutscher Übersetzerfonds (Berlin), ELTE
(Budapest), FUSP (Misano), KU Leuven, Nederlandse Taalunie (The
Hague), and Universiteit Utrecht, which, by 2022, has expanded to at
least 25. It aims to “set up and strengthen the European infrastructure
for the education and training of literary translators” (https://petra-
education.eu/about-petra-e). As part of this aim, the framework was
first produced in 2014, drawing together the research and pedagogical
expertise of the network’s partners. The framework sets out to cata-
logue, rather than prescribe, the skills and competencies pertinent to con-
temporary literary translators, subdividing these competencies into five
levels: Beginner, Advanced Learner, Early Career Professional, Advanced
Professional, and Expert (https://petra-educationframework.eu). Many
of the skills listed inside this framework, including research and evalu-
ative skills, overlap substantially with those expected of translators with
many different specializations.
When the PETRA-
E Framework was first developed, literature was
still very much beyond the reach of Machine Translation systems, and
this relative incompatibility was reflected by the framework’s competen-
cies, in which technology was only mentioned in relation to the ability
to search the internet. However, this situation was soon to change, since,
at much the same time, Machine Translation was experiencing another
paradigm shift with the introduction of Neural Machine Translation
systems (Bahdanau, Cho, and Bengio 2014). Like statistical systems,
neural systems rely on corpora of existing parallel texts in both source
and target languages. But the underlying mechanics of how these systems
work differ in that statistical systems “chunk” sentences into smaller units
which can be processed as they are. On the other hand, Neural Machine
Translation systems process each sentence as a whole. But instead of
representing the words as they are, the system represents them as numer-
ical vectors, which can be used to calculate mathematical relationships,
including the distances between words, leading to an improved level of
fluency.
Thanks to this approach, Neural Machine Translation systems
represent a substantial advance in output quality over statistical systems.
However, they still suffer from similar limitations, including some which
were previously unseen in Statistical Machine Translation systems. For
instance, systems that are intended to work in specific domains of know-
ledge work best if the training data they are built on also draw from
the same domains. It can also be that there is a payoff between generic
23. 6 Hadley, Taivalkoski-Shilov, Teixeira, Toral
6
training data and domain-
specific training data, meaning that more is
not always better than less. The exception, however, is literature and
other forms of creative text. Creative-
text translation here refers to the
translation of texts from one language to another where the texts them-
selves pivot broadly on the human creativity employed in their pro-
duction. They rely more heavily on aesthetics for their existence than
texts that aim to bring about an outcome directly, as in the case of tech-
nical texts. Thus, although literary texts—
fictional works: novels, short
stories, poems, plays, comics, and so forth—
have historically occupied
the central focus, the broader category of creative texts includes these
and also:
• non-
fictional texts, such as philosophical works, didactic books, and
self-help books;
• performative works, such as songs, speeches, films, TV shows, and
computer games; and
• promotional texts, such as commercials, advertisements, and
propaganda.
While there appears to be a correlation between the quality of domain-
specific technical translations produced using domain-
specific training
data, some, though not all, creative texts challenge this correlation by
being highly internally variable. On one end of the literary spectrum are
highly popular recent bestsellers with high readability scores brought
about by their short, uncomplicated sentences and use of standard
vocabulary. However, on the other end of the spectrum are works such
as James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), which has comparatively low readability
and generally very low BLEU Machine Translation quality scores (Toral
and Way 2018).
One of the reasons that Neural Machine Translation systems tend to
work better in the specific domains of knowledge on which they have
been trained is because these knowledge domains tend to have formulaic
constructions that become recognisable and reproducible when enough
training data are introduced. On the other hand, creative texts are, to
a large extent, defined by their idiosyncrasy, fitting into one and many
national, cultural, temporal, and even personal styles. Neural Machine
Translation systems generally require training data of many millions of
words, organised as parallel sentences. Thus, training a system to translate
legal statutes is fundamentally different from training a system to translate
sonates, because while all the legal statutes included in the training data
may follow a given tradition, the equivalent number of sonates will likely
straddle multiple authors, periods, or traditions. Moreover, whereas, in a
statute, each sentence can generally be taken as a distinct unit of meaning,
enjambment means that, in a sonate, one line may or may not represent
one unit of meaning and may also capitalise on this ambiguity to create
further meaning. Thus, because a Machine Translation system needs to
24. Introduction 7
7
break up a text into units before processing can begin, where such breaks
should be introduced in the context of creative texts is not always clear.
Broadening the field
At the same time as the Translation Studies’ shift from generalized
equivalence-
based arguments was allowing for greater consideration of
context and a questioning of its historic Eurocentrism, the advance into
Neural Machine Translation systems facilitated experimentation with
new means of dealing with the issue of so-
called low-
resource languages,
those languages that are generally not supranational and do not have
large amounts of material that readily lends itself to the creation of par-
allel corpora. Previously, these languages could not readily be included
in Machine Translation systems because there was insufficient data to
achieve a meaningful result. However, Neural Machine Translation
systems open new opportunities for such languages, including so-
called
transfer learning, in which a system is first trained using a high-
resource
language then a low-
resource language that is related. For example,
Spanish, a high-
resource language, could be used as the basis for training
a system to work with Catalan, a comparatively low-
resource language
that is closely related.
Another issue associated with translating creative texts is the com-
paratively high rate of referential consistency they exhibit (Voigt and
Jurafsky 2012). Referential consistency describes meaning that ties indi-
vidual sentences together, often introducing ambiguity if each sentence
is considered in isolation. This issue, like other issues of ambiguity, is
often not even noticed by human translators, who have a real-
world
understanding of the contents of the text that underpins their interpret-
ation of it. However, the machine has no recourse to any such knowledge.
Therefore, in examples such as “the cat tried to climb into the box but it
was too small,” a human intuitively grasps that “it” most likely refers to
the box into which the cat attempted to climb. However, for the machine,
whether “it” refers to the cat or the box most likely comes down to a
statistical operation in the training data that is irrelevant to the specific
sentence in question, effectively meaning that the choice informing the
translated output is a guess. In a language like English, such a guess is
unlikely to have a noticeable effect. However, if translated into a language
such as French, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish, where “cat” and “box”
belong to different grammatical genders, the effects could be sizeable.
For these and many other reasons, literature specifically, and creative
texts more broadly, have traditionally been viewed as fundamentally
beyond the ken of Machine Translation systems as well as computer-
assisted translation systems, which also function most efficiently in
contexts with large amounts of repetition and large numbers of for-
mulaic constructions. Among literary translation specialists, this senti-
ment has traditionally been expressed with a certain amount of hubris,
25. 8 Hadley, Taivalkoski-Shilov, Teixeira, Toral
8
where computer-
based systems in general are seen as a threat, but one
which is kept at bay by the nature of the material. Conversely, Machine
Translation specialists have tended to see literary translation as a high
cost–
low reward activity when compared to the translation of medical,
legal, or other technical documentation.
However, traditional sentiments change, and, on both sides of the
divide, a new generation of scholars has come to ask new kinds of
questions over the past ten years (Voigt and Jurafsky 2012; Besacier
and Schwartz 2015). In the world of literary translation, a generation
of scholars who consider themselves digital natives has arrived who
tend away from the subjective description that has often underpinned
much case study research in Translation Studies towards empirical evi-
dence. In Machine Translation, challenge-
oriented scholars have come
to describe literary translation as the last bastion of human translation
(Toral and Way 2014, 174). Both camps are converging with their dis-
creet skillsets on the textual, societal, economic, legal, and technological
issues associated with translating creative texts with machines.
The year 2019 saw the first CALT (Computer-
Assisted Literary
Translation) workshop, which was followed by a workshop at the
Machine Translation Summit on Literary Machine Translation and a
panel at the EST Conference on Technology for creative-
text translation.
In 2020, the Goethe Institut created an online debate on AI and Literary
Translation. In 2021, a full conference on CALT was instigated, there was
a panel at the IATIS conference on creative texts, technology and ecology,
and the PETRA-
E conference devoted a whole day to issues surrounding
literary Machine Translation and computer-
aided literary translation.
Over the same period, seminal publications making the first steps towards
synthesizing a range of technological solutions with the translation of lit-
erary and other creative texts have been appearing, mostly in the form of
the journal articles that are heavily cited throughout this book, but also,
importantly, in monograph form. The year 2019 saw the appearance
of Youdale’s Using Computers in the Translation of Literary Style:
Challenges and Opportunities, which combines Translation Studies’ trad-
itional translation and commentary approach with a range of electronic
tools that can inform the human translator’s work.
Thus, it is clear at this stage that interest in the subject is high and
growing rapidly, not only among Machine Translation scholars keen
to push the boundaries of what is technically possible but also Literary
Translation specialists keen to assess the effects of the advancing tech-
nology on texts and readers. This synthesis is bringing about new ways
of researching translation for both parties. For Machine Translation
specialists, it is increasingly clear that seeing a human translation as the
monolithic embodiment of the ideal, as has traditionally been the case, is
an overly simplistic perspective on a highly variable process. More and
more, it is becoming clear that for what and for whom a translation is
produced are also important questions to ask when designing Machine
26. Introduction 9
9
Translation systems. Equally, for literary translation specialists, it is clear
that, without a quantifiable definition, nebulous but fundamental aspects
of text production such as style are not easily analysed empirically, and
subjective assessments of textual features can fall flat for an unsympa-
thetic audience. However, retaining relevance in translation practice is a
substantial challenge for Translation Studies as a whole, as it continues to
grapple with the palpable divide with the industry, which has tradition-
ally viewed “theory” as useless.
Crafting a snapshot
This book represents a snapshot of research into this emerging topic at
this early stage. It is by no means representative of all the work currently
underway on synthesizing technology with creative-
text translation.
However, it demonstrates not only how far the research has already come
in a relatively short period but also what kinds of developments we may
begin seeing soon. The chapters are arranged to flow from surveys on
existing knowledge through new developments in tools for translating.
A further examination of tools, this time in the context of analysing
existing translations, follows. Finally, the book moves on to consider the
legal and ethical implications of machines being more heavily integrated
into human creative-
text translation workflows.
In Chapter One, Ruffo sets out to assess the state of the relationship
between technology and literary translators, asking about translators’
perceived roles in society as well as their attitudes towards the use of
technology in literary translation. She goes about this assessment by first
establishing the basis on which literary translators build their own self-
image and the input that literary translators have had in conversations
on the technologiation of translation workflows to date. However, at the
core of Ruffo’s study lies a survey of 150 literary translation practitioners
from 35 countries, designed to capture their positionality relating to the
use of technology and correlate this with other aspects, such as their
language pairs or level of experience. Building on Youdale’s distinction
between general and translation-
specific technology, Ruffo’s findings
highlight an important point when considering technology in general as
far as it relates to translation of whatever kind—
that it is not clear where
a line should be drawn between technological and non-
technological
interventions. While few would argue with the statement that Machine
Translation is inherently technological, it is, perhaps, less immediately
apparent, but no less true, that an online dictionary or archive, or indeed
a word processing application, is also inherently technological in nature,
as are paper dictionaries, even though the technology in question may
not be digital.
In Chapter Two, Daems also makes use of a survey method, focusing on
emerging technologies pertinent to literary translation workflows. Daems
assesses the awareness and adoption of such technologies among 155
27. 10 Hadley, Taivalkoski-Shilov, Teixeira, Toral
1
0
literary translators working into Dutch and establishes the factors that
impact a translator’s willingness to adopt new tools into their workflows.
Her findings indicate that literary translators may be relatively slow to
learn about emerging technologies, implying a kind of vicious cycle of
technical translators being the heaviest users of such tools, and, there-
fore, the group to which such tools are primarily marketed. A minority of
Daems’ respondents appear to hold that technology is inappropriate for
the translation of literary texts, implying that it might not be technology in
general, but rather the technology that exists currently that is not ideally
suited to literary translation. Daems further demonstrates that, despite
the potential knowledge gap between the tools that exist and the literary
translators who might make use of them, an overwhelming majority of
the literary translators she surveyed have an interest in knowing more
about technological developments pertinent to them. Thus, it may be that
tools specifically aimed at literary translation, which are sensitive to the
concerns expressed by literary translators, may be met with less resistance
than may be assumed.
Turning to one of the functions that such creative-
text translation-
specific tools might focus on, in Chapter Three, Kolb and Miller assess
the usefulness of PunCAT, a tool that assists in the translation of puns.
Kolb and Miller focus on the English-
German language pair on which the
system was originally built by Miller (2019). They evaluate translations
produced with and without the tool, the latter done by nine graduate
students. Their findings demonstrate that tool use is not always straight-
forward, particularly in the context of translating. They find that, in
some cases, users’ reactions to the outputs provided by the tool are not
as simple as reject or accept but are more nuanced than this, serving as
ingredients for brainstorming, and ultimately assisting the translator in
coming to an ideal solution. Importantly, Kolb and Miller also assess the
translators’ emotional reactions to the use of this tool, finding that, while
many appreciated the tool as something that provides suggestions which
can be ignored or built on, others found the use of the tool stressful and
potentially constraining. These findings are very important both for the
future development of the field and for tools that may be developed in the
coming years. They show that managing expectations is as important as
producing a tool that fulfils a given need. It is important that translators
are made to feel that their agency is expanded, rather than constrained,
by the tool. Or, to put it another way, that the tool provides one or
more possible candidates, but these candidates aim to assist, rather than
replace, the human translator’s thinking.
In Chapter Four, we turn to the use of Machine Translation as a tool
for advanced language learning. Oliver, Toral, and Guerberof Arenas dis-
cuss the use of a Neural Machine Translation engine in conjunction with
the InLéctor collection of bilingual books for the creation of translated
works of fiction that are not intended to be read in isolation but are
aids for advanced language learners to decipher the work in the original
28. Introduction 11
1
1
language. The underlying principle is that there is a balance to be struck
between the speed of Neural Machine Translation and the quality of its
outputs. If a language learner is sufficiently advanced to be able to read
the work primarily in the original language and only requires reference
to a translation as a means of support, the quality of the output may be
sufficient to serve this purpose, and the speed by which the output can be
produced may make its availability highly attractive. Oliver, Toral, and
Guerberof Arenas’ findings show that readers, especially those with a high
level of proficiency in the target language, can benefit substantially from
the presence of the machine-
generated outputs. Specifically, the readers
of the bilingual editions, as opposed to monolingual counterparts, found
the reading experience easier and more enjoyable. At this stage, it remains
to be seen whether these findings transfer into increased learning on the
part of the readers or whether finding the answer instantly may hamper
retention. Nonetheless, this experiment does stand in very good company
with, for example, the Loeb Classical Library, which has been publishing
works of classical literature with facing English gloss translations for
pedagogical purposes for over 110 years (www.hup.harvard.edu/collect
ion.php?cpk=1031). Moreover, the experiment highlights the importance
of not seeing translation, whether machine or human, in monolithic terms
but as a highly nuanced practice with different requirements depending
on intended readership and use.
Naturally enough, comprehension works on multiple levels, particu-
larly in the case of literary and other creative texts, which may make
use of idioms and other devices that problematise understanding through
gloss translation. In Chapter Five, Zajdel asks about the specific case of
metaphor, comparing the translation of a work of literature into Spanish
by a Machine Translation system with the same work translated by
human translators. Zajdel subcategorises metaphors into four types,
along with idiomatic expressions, and assesses the translation procedures
used by a Machine Translation system on 50 of these metaphors found in
a single work of literature. She then compares these procedures with their
counterparts in two human translated versions of the same text. Zajdel’s
findings underscore the importance of not necessarily perceiving a human
translation as the zenith of translation quality, as the procedures employed
by the two human translators in question vary somewhat. Indeed, this
variability is of note, since one of the biggest dividers between the human
and machine translators in Zajdel’s findings is the range of procedures
employed by each when encountering metaphors. Whereas the Machine
Translation system tends to translate each metaphor with a metaphor,
the human translators exhibit a wider range of procedures, such as
extrapolating metaphors or replacing them with alternative metaphors.
Zajdel also finds, to some surprise, that idiomatic expressions tend not
to be well translated by the machine in this case, despite such idiomatic
expressions presumably finding their way into training data. This finding
may be pertinent to future research on idioms and puns as far as training
29. 12 Hadley, Taivalkoski-Shilov, Teixeira, Toral
1
2
data are concerned. One might conjecture that idiomatic expressions do
not become statistically significant in training data until the point that
they can be seen as cliché by human readers. Zajdel’s work is important
in dispelling any assumption that Machine Translation is simply incap-
able of working with metaphor or is restricted to working on the purely
superficial level in this regard. Her results illustrate the creativity that
can emanate from the use of Neural Machine Translation systems, which
could easily prove to be a highly positive attribute as research in the field
of literary Machine Translation develops.
In Chapter Six, Brusasco focuses centrally on this issue of creativity
in Neural Machine Translation systems. She uses three Neural Machine
Translation systems to translate the same extract of a literary text in order
to assess the procedures that each undertakes and the extent to which cre-
ativity is manifest in each case. Brusasco’s analysis assesses the quality of
each translation, not only on the basis of creativity but also on the basis
of acceptability in the target context. She also raises the important point
that it can and possibly should be taken for granted at this stage that
the outputs of Neural Machine Translation systems, particularly in the
context of translating literary and other creative works, require human
intervention in the form of post-
editing. While some literary translators
may see this shift as a profound one, where the human is demoted to
controlling the quality of the machine’s outputs rather than producing
their own outputs directly, taken from another point of view, Neural
Machine Translation systems as a whole could also be seen as computer-
aided translation systems. In other words, since the human post-
editor
still retains decision-
making agency and can choose to alter or overrule
the machine’s outputs, in just the same way as in Kolb and Miller’s
study, if human post-
editing is taken for granted, the post-
editor may
rise in perceived importance. Brusasco speculates on the possible effects
associated with training Machine Translation systems on works of lit-
erature, possibly by collecting texts belonging to single genres or even by
single authors, and identifies certain potential issues with such a practice.
She observes that such an approach could codify idiosyncrasies of style
in Machine Translation outputs, which may have the effect of fossilising
or stratifying high and popular literature, in a manner reminiscent of the
current stratification between high-and low-
resource languages.
Niskanen shifts our attention in Chapter Seven to the use that machines
can have in supporting and augmenting the kinds of descriptive case study
research that have become the norm in Translation Studies. His research
focuses on intertextuality in four human translations of the same pastiche-
laiden text, asking whether the extratextual cues present in the source
text are reproduced in each of the translations. Niskanen’s analysis is
based theoretically and terminologically on Genette’s (1997) work, codi-
fying the hypertext, hypotext, and paratext. The tool he develops uses an
electronic version of the text which contains tags that allow a user to gain
further insights on intertextual references present within the text and to
30. Introduction 13
1
3
assess their treatment in each of the translated versions. Niskanen’s pri-
mary aim in this study is to explore the range of new research questions
that such a system may make possible to Translation Studies researchers.
He finds that, in the process of analysing these intertextual links, it can
be observed that some human translators use the translation procedure
of drawing on the target tradition as well as, or instead of, the source
tradition. While Niskanen’s work immediately opens up new ways for
Translation Studies scholars to bring technology into traditional close
reading analytical techniques, it also highlights the research element that
lies at the heart of much literary and creative translation practice. It is easy
to see that, armed with a tool that identifies and elucidates intertextual
elements in a literary work, the element of chance that can underpin such
work may be reduced. Translators using such tools may be able to work
with a certain level of confidence that any intertextual links missed by the
human translator will likely be found by the machine. Naturally enough,
as seen in Kolb and Miller’s work, the obverse may also be true, that
such tools could lead especially emerging translators into a false sense
of security that all intertextual links will be identified by the machine, or
that the human translator is obliged to act on the links and only those
that the machine has identified.
Bringing the book to a close are Koponen, Nyqvist, and Taivalkoski-
Shilov in Chapter Eight, whose focus falls onto the legal, technical, and
ethical issues of copyright and ownership in the context of creative and
literary works translated in part or in whole by machines. Koponen,
Nyqvist, and Taivalkoski-
Shilov set out by assessing the situation of
translation in general in the context of copyright, observing the uneasy
relationship between a mode of text production that is inherently deriva-
tive and a system intended to control the creation of derivative work.
Copyright further operates on the assumption that works have named
and identifiable originators whose rights can be asserted in the event
of derivations of those works being produced. Koponen, Nyqvist, and
Taivalkoski-
Shilov rightly point out that much computer-
aided transla-
tion technology, as well as Machine Translation technology, relies on cor-
pora of work produced by many individuals whose precise contribution
may or may not be identifiable. Even in simple cases such as individual
companies’ Translation Memories, the production of the memories’
contents is a collective process, and the assumption is that individual
segments will be reused many times in the production of translations.
Koponen, Nyqvist, and Taivalkoski-
Shilov revisit the assumption that
texts produced by Machine Translation systems currently require human
intervention in the form of post-
editing by pointing out that there are
many cases where the copyright for a work has lapsed, leading to the
production of new translations in which no such intervention has taken
place. This issue, as Koponen, Nyqvist, and Taivalkoski-
Shilov point out,
is one of quality and reputation from the point of view of authors. They
conclude by calling for a reassessment of copyright practices to reflect the
31. 14 Hadley, Taivalkoski-Shilov, Teixeira, Toral
1
4
changing landscape of translation in general. Now that the use of tech-
nology has come to be integrated into many translation workflows, such
legislation should continue to act as a protective measure for text produ-
cers in general and not only for those in positions of power.
The missing chapters
While it cannot claim to be comprehensive in encompassing all research
into the use of machines in the translation of creative texts, this book
does offer an overview of some of the key aspects of the emerging topic,
which may become increasingly prominent over the coming years. In
many ways, these topics are tied to the progress not only of technology
but also of our understanding of the processes associated with translating
creative works. Research abounds in Translation Studies on the interplay
between ideology or philosophy and the translation process (e.g. Mason
1994; Leonardi 2007; Tymoczko 2006), the visibility or not of the trans-
lator in the final product (e.g. Venuti 2017), and the effects on target
readers of the interpretations underpinning translations (e.g. Ece 2015;
Vandaele 2002).
On the other hand, in Machine Translation, focus has historically
fallen squarely on the question of how to produce translations of the
highest possible quality. Now that Neural Machine Translation outputs,
in the context of high-
resource language pairs at least, have reached the
stage of being directly comparable with human translations on more
than the superficial or grammatical level (see Toral and Way 2018), it is
possible to begin knitting these two areas of exploration together to ask
how and whether decisions made in the creation of Machine Translation
systems go on to have observable effects on the texts produced that fall
beyond the scope of quality control.
At the same time, it becomes more meaningful than ever before to
begin asking questions of a primarily stylistic nature about text-
specific
features, genre-
defining conventions, and author-
particular idiosyncra-
sies, and how and whether these are rendered by human and machine
translators given the same task.
With such features in mind, it is no surprise that experiments are
beginning in Machine Translation and computer-
aided translation specif-
ically in the context of highly stylised or formally constrained traditions
of text production such as poetry and song. Questions are beginning to
be asked about how such constraints can be harnessed in the production
of Machine Translation outputs, and, concurrently, how machines can
be used to facilitate the work of human translators working with such
texts—
for example, by identifying rhyme schemes and metrical patterns
automatically. Similarly, advances in artificial intelligence mean that it
may soon become possible to make computer-
aided translation tools in
general work not only more efficiently but also more intelligently. At the
32. Introduction 15
1
5
same time, work on the experiences of users working with these systems
may see changes to interfaces that could assist in familiarising technology
to translators who have been historically resistant to it or found it less
than useful. In the coming years, it is likely that the pace of research in
these and many other aspects will increase, leading to ever more flexi-
bility in translating under formally constrained conditions and other situ-
ations relevant specifically to creative texts.
Another topic that is not directly handled in this book and is likely to
attract attention over the coming years is that of voice dictation. As speech
recognition software improves in quality, particularly for high-
resource
languages, it has been integrated with Machine Translation systems,
giving a rudimentary workaround for the interpreting of the spoken
word. Interpreting is seen by many as a sister skill to translation, with
many of the same concerns as well as additional practical constraints, the
most obvious of which is possibly the ephemeral nature of the spoken
word. Machine Translation systems and CAT tools, on the other hand,
have historically only processed written text, meaning that oral speech
has needed to be transcribed before it could be translated. In the context
of creative texts with oral and other performative components, such as
speeches, plays, and many forms of poetry, conceptualizing the material
purely in textual form tends to overlook the performative aspect and the
textual fluidity that this creates. It is not currently clear how or whether
current Machine Translation or CAT tool systems could be adapted to
material that is not in a written form. There are fundamental differences
between written text and spoken speech that go beyond their two media
of communication.
Work on copyright and other legal aspects associated with the pro-
duction of translations, of the kind seen in Koponen, Nyqvist, and
Taivalkoski-
Shilov here, is also likely to become increasingly important
over the coming years and as the number of works of literature produced
primarily or partly by machines rises. The substantial variation in copy-
right law in various jurisdictions around the world, coupled with dra-
matically different translation and publication norms and expectations
globally, will likely mean that issues pertaining to the legal interplay
between human and machine in the production of intellectual property is
likely to become substantially more complex as the technology advances.
Thus, the primary objective of this book is to capture the state of the
art of the use of machines in the translation of creative texts at the first
stage of its development, when discussing the field in solid, rather than
abstract, terms has become meaningful. The book works in full awareness
that, in such a rapidly developing field, the gap between the cutting edge
and obsolescence is short. However, the thematic range of the research
represented by its chapters also goes some way to showcasing the vast
opportunities and challenges that are only now being made apparent to
us as we take the first steps into this new landscape of research.
33. 16 Hadley, Taivalkoski-Shilov, Teixeira, Toral
1
6
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35. 1
8
DOI: 10.4324/9781003094159-2
1
Collecting literary translators’
narratives
Towards a new paradigm for
technological innovation in literary
translation
Paola Ruffo
Introduction
Research on technological innovation in translation tends to systematic-
ally exclude literary translation. This trend was best captured by Toral
and Way when they defined the latter as “the last bastion of human trans-
lation” (2014, 174). The rationale behind this is mainly twofold. On the
one hand, the very nature of creative texts almost implies an inherent
degree of resistance to automation. In fact, they are characterized by
“vocal multilayeredness and deliberate ambiguity” (Taivalkoski-Shilov
2018, 695), which makes them uniquely inscrutable to the machine’s
eye. On the other hand, literary translators’ self-
imaging strategies are
rooted in the creation of idealized personae, which revolve around their
most human qualities and further remove them from the wider discourse
surrounding other branches of translation (Sela-Sheffy 2008). In view of
this, there would seem to be little to no place for the adoption of tools
such as Computer-
Aided Translation (CAT) and Machine Translation
(MT) for the translation of creative texts. However, despite such tools
often being perceived “as either inappropriate or a threat to the skills and
livelihoods of literary translators” (Youdale 2019, 199), an increasing
number of studies are focusing on the introduction of translation tech-
nology to literary translation workflows. These have mainly focused on
the application of MT and post-
editing to the translation of poetry and
prose (Genzel, Uszkoreit, and Och 2010; Greene, Bodrumlu, and Knight
2010; Voigt and Jurafsky 2012; Jones and Irvine 2013; Toral and Way
2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2018; Besacier and Schwartz 2015; Tezcan, Daems,
and Macken 2019; Toral, Wieling, and Way 2018; Murchú 2019). This
being said, little attention has been given to literary translators as end users
of such tools. Furthermore, their voices are consistently missing from the
discourse around technological innovation in their profession, with only
a few recent studies relating to their attitudes and perceptions, namely
Moorkens et al. (2018), Slessor (2019), and Kenny and Winters (2020).
36. Collecting literary translators’ narratives 19
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9
The characterisation of translation as a form of Human-
Computer
Interaction (HCI) by O’Brien (2012) ultimately highlighted the need to
account for both material and immaterial aspects when investigating
contemporary translation. In this respect, Littau (2016) defines materi-
ality as the non-
human element, e.g., digital tools, machines, computers.
Conversely, immateriality is embodied by creativity, spirit, mind, con-
science, soul, and anything associated with being quintessentially human
(Littau, 2016). In her view, both material and immaterial elements
interact symbiotically and reciprocally shape and influence each other to
the point where “[technologies] are active in effecting the ways in which
we think, read, write and translate” (Littau 2017, 100). Furthermore,
Cronin notes how the constant stream of information, incessant digital-
isation of materials, automation of processes, and speed of communica-
tion that are typical of the Information Age contribute to an overall “sense
of confusion” (Cronin 2013, 1). This “sense of confusion” characterizes
translators as they try to give meaning to this new order of things (Cronin
2013, 1). Thus, it is paramount to include translators in the conversa-
tion and, by giving them a voice, perhaps discover new ways for literary
translators to exist in this new socio-
technological landscape, as well as
co-
exist with new technologies.
This chapter is based on a 2018 study aimed at exploring the dynamic
between human (immaterial) and non-
human (material) factors in literary
translation, recognising materiality as central to contemporary transla-
tion practice and trying to bring literary translators’ voices back into the
conversation. More specifically, literary translators were asked to share
their attitudes towards technology and perceptions of their role in society.
The study’s main research question was “what is the dynamic between
humans and technology in literary translation?”. Two sub-
questions were
formulated to assist and guide the research process, respectively (a) “how
do literary translators perceive their role in society?” and (b) “what are
their attitudes towards technology as related to literary translation?”.
Respondents’ narratives were collected via means of a questionnaire
that registered 150 responses, mostly from Europe. Overall, the study
adopted an interpretivist, constructionist, and mixed-
methods approach.
The theoretical framework and data analysis were informed by the Social
Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework as theorized by Pinch
and Bijker (1984). Although the overall relationship between self-
image
and technology will be briefly discussed in this chapter, its main focus will
be on how participants constructed the notion of technology as related to
their professional practice. The chapter will first provide a review of the
literature on literary translator status and the application of technology
to literary translation workflows. It will then introduce the study’s meth-
odology and present the research findings on literary translators’ attitudes
towards both general and translation technology tools. Finally, it will dis-
cuss the results and suggest a way forward for research on the topic.
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Literary translators’ self-
imaging strategies
Literary translators are often depicted as having a different perspective
on their profession than that of their readership, clients, or colleagues
in other branches of translation (Sela-
Sheffy and Shlesinger 2008; Katan
2017; Ruokonen and Mäkisalo 2018). In particular, this seems to be a
direct response to the way their profession is depicted by outsiders, which
usually clashes with the way literary translators see themselves. In this
respect, their self-
imaging strategies can be said to be based on an anti-
professionalisation discourse through which literary translators elude any
form of standardisation and institutionalisation in order to affirm their
professional identity (Sela-Sheffy 2005, 2010, 2016).
According to Sela-Sheffy (2008), literary translators adopt three main
idealized personae, mainly to oppose their profession’s low status: cus-
todian of language, cultural ambassador and innovator, and artist. As
custodians of language and cultural ambassadors, literary translators por-
tray themselves as gatekeepers of entire cultural and linguistic systems, in
that they determine both what enters the translated literature ecosystem
and how, effectively shaping the literary landscape in which they operate
(Sela-Sheffy 2008). In a similar way, they are innovators of said systems,
introducing new works of literature to an audience who would be unable
to access them otherwise (Sela-Sheffy 2008). Lastly, their ability to bring
creative texts to life in another language is often described with words
belonging to the semantic fields of artistry and craftmanship, highlighting
the creative effort involved in their work (Sela-Sheffy 2008).
These accounts are further probed by other research on the topic,
where literary translators’ identities have been found to be deeply related
to their perceived professional status. The dynamic between identity and
status results in a tendency to amplify traits associated with personal
qualities and circumstances and to place emphasis on characteristics
that are hard to quantify in terms of professionalisation, such as voca-
tion and creativity. In this regard, the literary translation career path is
often depicted as the result of a natural inclination, an almost inevitable
occurrence, more than a professional choice (Sela-Sheffy 2005, 2008,
2010, 2016; Sapiro 2013; Voinova and Shlesinger 2013). According
to Heino (2020), literary translators prioritize social and cultural cap-
ital over economic capital. Furthermore, the line between writing and
rewriting is often blurred, and literary translators emerge as agents of art-
istic creation, often assuming the role of directors as well as performers
in the obscure process of the translation and dissemination of literary
works (Jänis 1996; Sela-Sheffy 2008, 2016; Sapiro 2013; Voinova and
Shlesinger 2013).
Ultimately, literary translators’ symbolic capital is structured around
the need to actively respond to outside narratives of low professional
status, which, if not perceived as threatening, are at least viewed as
unrepresentative of their lived truths. In order to oppose these narratives,
38. Collecting literary translators’ narratives 21
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1
literary translators construct their self-
image by emphasising their unique
traits and by creating distance from the outside world, a quality that
Voinova and Shlesinger call a “strange outsiderness” (2013, 41).
Literary translation and technology
As mentioned in the introduction, despite translation technology being
an integral part of contemporary translation workflows, its use in literary
translation and by literary translators is understudied. This has started
to change in the past few years, with an increasing number of research
projects exploring the potential uses of MT, post-
editing, and CAT tools
for literary texts. The first of these studies focused primarily on MT, and
results highlighted how it struggled to preserve both meaning and form
with literary and poetic texts (Genzel, Uszkoreit, and Och 2010; Greene,
Bodrumlu, and Knight 2010; Jones and Irvine 2013). This being said, sub-
sequent studies found that factors such as predictability of the text and
relatedness of the language pair could improve MT output, thus making
it more suitable for post-
editing (Toral and Way 2014, 2015a, 2015b).
In this respect, Besacier and Schwartz (2015) found that including post-
editing in the translation workflow halved translation time, although at
the expense of quality. The introduction of Neural Machine Translation
(NMT), which, unlike its predecessors, uses artificial neural networks to
predict translations, is rapidly changing this. In fact, most of the studies
cited above used Statistical Machine Translation (SMT), which works at
phrase level and uses probability to determine its output. NMT, instead,
considers both the source and content that has already been translated in
the target text. Recent studies that employed NMT noted an increase in
both productivity and MT output quality, with 17–
34% of output being
evaluated as equivalent to human translation (Toral and Way 2018).
This being said, the studies mentioned so far seem to focus primarily
on improving productivity and reducing costs, while practitioners’
wants, needs, and support are rarely considered. In this respect, Youdale
(2019) opted for taking the spotlight off MT and post-
editing to leave
more space for the exploration of an alternative technological workflow
revolving around the literary translator. In doing so, Youdale (2019)
introduces the close and distant reading (CDR) approach. This leverages
corpus linguistics and text-
visualisation tools to support and enhance
the process of literary translation while respecting the translator’s work-
flow and prioritising their point of view. With a similar premise, Youdale
and Rothwell (forthcoming) challenge the notion that CAT tools are
inherently incompatible with literary translation, investigating ways
and situations in which their functions might indeed assist the trans-
lator and enhance their work. This might be the case for retranslation,
for example, whereby the co-
presence of the source text and previous
translations could not only highlight connections between them that may
otherwise have been lost but could also give the texts a multidimensional
39. 22 Paola Ruffo
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character with the potential of shedding new light on both the source and
its retranslation (Youdale and Rothwell, forthcoming).
Despite an evident shift towards human-
centred approaches to
technological innovation in creative-
text translation, the voices of lit-
erary translators are still virtually absent from research accounts of
technological innovation in the profession. This is especially surprising
given that literary translators are arguably the ones who are most likely
to be affected by the introduction of such tools in their daily practice.
At the time of writing, the only exceptions to this are Moorkens et al.
(2018) and Slessor (2019). In the former, literary translators indicate a
marked preference for translating from scratch rather than post-
editing
MT output, which they feel hampers their creativity and leads towards a
more literal rendition of the text (Moorkens et al. 2018). Slessor (2019),
instead, reports the findings of a survey on literary translators’ attitudes
towards technology. Results indicate that literary translators employ sev-
eral standard tools and electronic resources, while translation technology
is almost absent from their practice (Slessor 2019). Furthermore, when
they do employ translation technology, they do so in unique ways, which
suggests a need to review technology training for literary translators,
considering their distinctive approach to technology adoption (Slessor
2019). These studies indicate that the reasons behind translators’ rejec-
tion of technology might not always be straightforward. In non-
literary
translation, Koskinen and Ruokonen (2017) found that translators are
not averse to technology as such but rather to poor usability and tool
malfunctions that hinder efficiency and productivity. They ultimately
propose user-
centred translation technology design and development as a
possible solution (Koskinen and Ruokonen 2017).
Overall, research on literary translators’ relationship with technology
has highlighted a discrepancy between the focus of translation technology
research and practitioners’ attitudes. In this respect, Taivalkoski-Shilov
(2018) shines a light on how many of the studies on MT in literary trans-
lation seem to neglect narrative aspects of literary texts and separate con-
tent from form when evaluating translation quality. The separation of
content and form is also inherent in the MT+
PE pipeline itself, which
seems incompatible with literary translation, in that it separates struc-
ture and content (Taivalkoski-Shilov 2018, 694). In fact, it prevents
translators from working on the text as a narrative whole since “the
segment-
by-
segment or sentence-
by-
sentence translation made by the
machine cannot but alter the meaning and structure of the source text”
(Taivalkoski-Shilov 2018, 694). This being said, MT and other transla-
tion technologies could still be useful to the translation of literary text,
provided their introduction is the result of sustainable development
involving all stakeholders (Taivalkoski-Shilov 2018). From this perspec-
tive, it is not the nature of translation technology itself that should be
criticized but the discourse surrounding it and the lack of inclusion of all
interested parties in the innovation process.
40. Collecting literary translators’ narratives 23
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Since the introduction of translation technology in non-
literary trans-
lation workflows, translators have reported feelings of devaluation and
dehumanisation, as well as a worsening of working conditions and pay
(O’Brien 2012). In order to prevent this from happening in literary trans-
lation, it is paramount to proactively explore the boundaries of Human-
Computer Interaction in literary translation and identify areas for
improvement, collaboration, and change. As suggested by Large (2018),
by attending to the more mechanical tasks, translation technology could
ultimately encourage more creativity for the human involved. One of the
broader aims of the study reported in this chapter was indeed to explore
this newfound interaction between material and immaterial elements
in literary translation and identify possible solutions to reduce the gaps
between research, practice, and development in the process of techno-
logical innovation by centring literary translators’ viewpoints. Some of
these possible solutions will be presented in this chapter when discussing
results. The next sections will delve deeper into the study’s methodology
and the data collected on participants’ attitudes towards technology and
technology use.
The SCOT framework
The theoretical and methodological structure of the study was supported
by the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework, which was
theorized by Pinch and Bijker (1984) to study technological innovation
from a sociological standpoint. It is characterized by being a multidirec-
tional model, in that it takes into consideration not only the final version
of a technological artefact as resulting from a linear development pro-
cess but also all of its variations before it reached the stage of closure.
This allows the researcher to lead a retrospective social constructionist
analysis of technological innovation by accounting for the problems
and solutions that emerged from contrasting meanings assigned to it by
different social groups.
The framework refutes technological determinism, in that it is not
technology that determines society. Rather, in order to be accepted in
society, every new piece of technology goes through a process of variation
and selection until all issues raised by relevant stakeholders are agreed
upon, solved, or a compromise is reached. In practice, a SCOT-
informed
analysis allows for a retrospective analysis of this process and consists of
three main stages. In the first stage, all social groups relevant to the devel-
opment of a certain technological artefact and their varying interpret-
ations of it are identified. The objective of the second stage is to identify
any conflicts that arose from these differing interpretations and how these
were ultimately solved and stabilisation reached. This is usually achieved
by devising what Pinch and Bijker (1984) call an appropriate “closure
mechanism”. During the third stage, research findings are reported to the
wider sociocultural context.
41. 24 Paola Ruffo
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SCOT has been identified by Olohan (2017, 2019) as an ideal frame-
work for the study of technology in translation from a sociological rather
than historical standpoint. In fact, looking at technological development
through a SCOT lens could help foster a better understanding of the
social and power dynamics underlying technology acceptance, its rejec-
tion, and the consequences of its introduction in professional translation
practice (Olohan 2017). In this study, the SCOT framework was adopted
at a conceptual level to guide data collection and analysis, with some of
its tenets having been amended to serve the study’s research questions.
In Pinch and Bijker’s (1984) words: “our model is not used as a mould,
into which the empirical data have to be forced, coûte que coûte. […]
Its function is primarily heuristic—
to bring out all the aspects relevant
for our purposes” (Pinch and Bijker 1984, 419). More specifically, this
study is not retrospective in nature, as its object is not the ex post facto
exploration of a tool that has already reached closure. Instead, SCOT is
here adopted proactively, in order to address controversies as they arise
in the present and give voice to literary translators as a relevant social
group. Furthermore, instead of identifying all relevant social groups and
analysing one specific artefact, this study focuses on literary translators
only and on technology in general. This is due to the lack of previous
studies in this area and to the limited timeframe of the project, which
led to prioritising literary translators as a social group whose livelihood
is more likely to be affected by socio-
technological changes in their pro-
fession. Furthermore, the study is not ethnographic in nature—
as SCOT
research usually is—
due to literary translators’ technology use being an
under-
researched area, which thus calls for the need to survey this aspect
before proceeding with an ethnography of specific tools. The overall aim
when employing SCOT was to pre-
emptively identify emerging issues in
the relationship between materiality and literary translation, as well as
devise potential solutions.
Methodology
The study adopted an interpretivist, constructionist, and mixed-
methods
approach. It is interpretivist, in that it “prioritizes people’s subjective
understandings and interpretations of social phenomena” (Saldanha and
O’Brien 2014, 11–
12)—
in this case, literary translators’ narratives of the
technologisation of their profession. In doing so, it also recognizes their
role as “a constructing and constructed subject in society” (Wolf 2007,
1) and as agents of sociocultural change. An interpretivist and social con-
structionist analysis thus allows insights into the way practitioners inter-
pret and assign meanings to their professional reality, which is a pivotal
step for a sustainable technological development. As far as the mixed-
methods approach is concerned, this was adopted to maximize the poten-
tial of a large data set, with quantitative elements helping to support
and contextualize the qualitative nature of participants’ narratives. Both
42. Collecting literary translators’ narratives 25
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elements were combined in a questionnaire by using closed and open
questions.
The questionnaire consisted of 31 questions and was divided into 6 main
sections, namely Background Information, Language Skills, Professional
Practice, Confidence with Technologies, Open Questions on perceptions
of role and attitudes towards technology, and Final Comments. The lan-
guage used in the questionnaire was English and all answers received
were in English except for one written in German, which was translated
by the researcher. The sampling frame was defined using non-
random
sampling and by targeting literary translators in UK translation associ-
ations and online translation communities. The questionnaire was sent
out to a total of 13 UK general and literary translation associations and
68 online translation communities. The latter included online forums,
Facebook and LinkedIn groups, and mailing lists aimed at both general
and literary translation. Due to the non-
random nature of the sample,
results cannot be statistically generalized; instead, theoretical and logical
generalisation was sought. In this respect, Luker (2008) notices how, even
when sampling issues do not allow for statistical generalisation, it is still
possible to work on a logical and theoretical level of abstraction. When
theoretically generalising, findings are compared to previous theories
and studies “to see how [they] illuminate, contradict, extend, or amplify
existing theory” (Luker 2008, 127).
The questionnaire was live on the Online Surveys (formerly BOS) plat-
form for six weeks between September and October 2018, and it was
completed by 150 respondents. This chapter presents and discusses data
related to participants’ professional and educational background, their
levels of confidence with technology, the technology tools used in their
practice, and their overall attitudes towards technology in literary transla-
tion. It is worth mentioning that the questionnaire did not include closed
items about specific tools. Instead, it only distinguished between general
and translation-
specific technology. General technology was defined in
the questionnaire as “any technology tool that is not translation-
specific
(e.g., online dictionaries, a time management app, a text-
editor software,
etc.).” Translation-
specific technology was defined as “any technology
tool that is translation-
specific (e.g., Translation Memory systems, ter-
minology management software, Machine Translation systems, etc.).”
Given the exploratory nature of the study and the lack of previous
research in this area, respondents could indicate the tools they use in
their daily practice and express their attitudes with as few restrictions
from the researcher as possible. In turn, results could form the basis for
future research on specific tools.
The data analysis consisted of three main phases. During the first stage,
a thematic analysis of the open questions was performed. The coding pro-
cess was supported by the use of NVivo, a software package for quali-
tative and mixed-
methods data analysis. The second phase focused on
quantifying and collating results from the closed questions; no statistical
43. 26 Paola Ruffo
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analysis was performed. During the third stage, data related to age, edu-
cational background, and professional status was cross-
referenced with
data on perceptions of role and attitudes towards technology to delve
deeper into the relationship between respondents’ background and the
way they construct their self-
image and approach technology. The SCOT
framework informed the structure and analysis of the Open Questions
section of the questionnaire. In particular, questions about literary
translators’ feelings and attitudes towards technology and its appealing
and unappealing aspects were designed to uncover respondents’ inter-
pretations as a social group and any emerging controversies in relation to
other stakeholders.
Results and analysis
Respondents’ profile
The questionnaire attracted 150 respondents from 35 countries and
all age brackets, providing a large and varied sample. The majority of
respondents belong to the age groups 36–
45 (23%) and 46–
55 (28%),
while the youngest respondents (18–
25) are the least represented, making
up 6% of the total. Three-
fourths of respondents work in Europe. They
are mostly based in the UK (24%), and almost half have English as their
first language. As far as respondents’ academic background is concerned,
63% hold an academic qualification in translation—
40% have a Master’s
degree and 9% a PhD—
however, only 20% have received translation
technology training as part of said qualification. A quarter of respondents
have received non-
academic training in translation technology. In
terms of professional background, there is an almost equal number of
respondents with 1–
5 years of experience (27%) and those with over
20 years of experience (26%). Almost all of them work as freelancers
(87%) and define their status as “professional literary translator” (83%),
while more than half work part-
time (58%). Finally, 65% are members
of a translation association and 88% of an online community.
Confidence with technology
Participants were asked to indicate on a Likert scale their levels of confi-
dence with general and translation-
specific technology, respectively. The
great majority of respondents indicated being either “Confident” (44%)
or “Extremely confident” (35%) with general technology, with only 3%
being “Not confident at all” (Figure 1.1).
The situation appears considerably more complex when looking at
data for confidence with translation technology (Figure 1.2). In fact,
levels of confidence drop considerably, with a quarter of respondents
indicating they are not confident at all with translation technology. When
compared with the previous question, values are halved for the answer
44. Collecting literary translators’ narratives 27
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“Confident” and reduced by two-
thirds for the answer “Extremely confi-
dent”. Notably, 11% mention that the question is not applicable to
them, suggesting they are either not aware of or not using any translation
technology tool.
The youngest respondents (aged 18–
25) are the most confident with
translation technology, while the least confident are the oldest, aged over
65. Overall, levels of confidence start decreasing for everyone aged over
36. Conversely, age does not affect confidence with general technology.
Educational background has a bearing on confidence with both general
and translation technology, as those with a postgraduate academic quali-
fication in translation tend to be the most confident. When looking at
translation technology, 45% of those with a Master’s degree and 39% of
those with a PhD are either “Confident” or “Extremely confident”. These
valueslowerto29%and21%respectivelyforthosewithanUndergraduate
degree and those with no academic qualifications. Furthermore, levels of
confidence rise considerably for those who have received translation tech-
nology training, both academic and non-
academic. In particular, 63%
of respondents who received academic technology training were either
“Confident” or “Extremely confident”, as opposed to 28% of those who
did not receive academic training. Values are similar for non-
academic
technology training, with 50% of those trained being either “Confident”
or “Extremely confident” versus 29% of respondents without technology
training. Finally, professional status appears unrelated to how confident
literary translators are with translation technology.
Figure 1.1
Confidence with general technology.
Figure 1.2
Confidence with translation technology.
45. 28 Paola Ruffo
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Technology use
Two open questions asked participants to list, respectively, all the general
and translation technology tools they employ in their literary transla-
tion activity. For general tools, 82% of respondents mentioned online
dictionaries, which top the list, while 38% mentioned, respectively, text-
editing software and internet search (Table 1.1). Other popular tools are
digital glossaries, terminology databases and thesauri (11%), and task-
and time-
management apps (10%). Additionally, 9% of respondents said
they use no general technology whatsoever. Overall, 397 responses were
recorded, and the tools mentioned were grouped into 29 categories. The
great variety of tools revealed how, while most respondents agree on
online dictionaries, text-
editing software, and internet search, both their
definition of general technology and the technological customisation of
their workflow present widely differing degrees of complexity. In fact,
answers include basic hardware, such as mouse, keyboard, and screen,
as well as slightly more complex tools, such as bookkeeping software
and web hosting services, and highly specific technology (for instance,
speech recognition software, desktop publishing, and alignment tools).
This suggests that literary translators’ technological landscapes—
and
their notion of technology—
could be as unique as the translators them-
selves. Finally, it is worth noting that, while the number of mentions for
each tool gives an indication of the ones that are most widely used, it is
possible that some of these are so integral to their workflow that many
respondents might not have thought about mentioning them at all.
Data on translation technology use also supports the distinctiveness of
literary translators’ relationship with technology, with 71% of
respondents reporting not using any translation technology tools in their
practice. Of all the different tools mentioned by those who employ trans-
lation technology in their literary translation practice, the vast majority
Table 1.1
General technology tools in literary translation (selection)
General technology tools Count %
Online dictionary 123 82%
Text-editing software 58 39%
Internet search 57 38%
Digital glossary/terminology database/thesaurus 17 11%
Task-/time-management app 15 10%
None 13 9%
Laptop/PC 11 7%
Microsoft Office suite 9 6%
Social media/
Online communities 9 6%
Corpora 9 6%
Speech recognition software 6 4%
Total respondents: 150
46. Collecting literary translators’ narratives 29
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were CAT tools, with only a few mentioning MT and terminology man-
agement tools (Table 1.2). Although only a few participants further
commented on their use of translation technology, their answers still pro-
vide an insight into potential reasons for tool adoption or rejection and
the alternative ways in which literary translators might adapt existing
technology to their specific needs. More specifically, four respondents
described how they use CAT tools for literary translation: one uses them
to compile the first draft of a translation, one only when working with
a specific agency that requests it, and the other two are in the process of
learning how to use them.
Finally, it is worth noting that all 43 respondents who reported using
translation technology in their practice have high levels of confidence
with technology, being either “Confident” or “Extremely confident”.
Furthermore, slightly less than half (n=
21) of those using translation tech-
nology have received training (academic or not), and virtually all of them
(n=
39) also use translation technology in their non-
literary translation
work. Having seen in the previous paragraph how training increases con-
fidence, it would seem that literary translators who are more familiar with
translation technology—
be it because of specialized training or having to
use it for other types of translation—
are also more prone to integrating
these tools into their workflows. The following sections will explore
this further by detailing how literary translators’ attitudes towards tech-
nology play into this dynamic.
Appealing aspects of technology
One of the open questions asked participants to list appealing aspects
of technology, whether general or translation-
specific (Table 1.3). The
most appealing aspect of technology concerns research. In particular,
respondents mentioned online dictionaries, internet searches for context
clarification, asking colleagues and experts for advice on translation
solutions, and the ability to access a great amount of information
instantly via the internet. As some respondents put it, appealing is
anything “that allows fast information retrieval and fast working and
Table 1.2
Translation technology tools in literary translation
Translation technology tools Count %
None 107 71%
Translation technology 43 29%
CAT tools 38 25%
MT 10 7%
Terminology management tools 7 5%
Subtitling software 1 1%
Total respondents: 150
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reworking of texts” and facilitates “the breadth and depth of research
needed for a good literary translation to be done from home.” Technology
is also appreciated when it improves efficiency—
for example, by reducing
time spent typing or proofreading and editing a text. Dictation and
voice-
recognition software, Translation Memory (TM) and autosuggest
features all make an appearance in this category. By assisting translators
with “the housekeeping aspect”, this type of technology can “[take] out
the donkey work” and allow them “more time to focus on the creative
part of [their] work.” Technology was also praised for its ability to com-
pensate for human shortcomings, especially in relation to memory. In
fact, several responses mentioned TM being effective in “[reminding] the
translator of previous renderings (perhaps also the need to avoid them)”
and providing “a searchable record of [one’s] decision-
making process.”
Overall, an appealing tool is one that “helps [one] concentrate on trans-
lating instead of having to fiddle around with complicated systems.” To
add to this, one respondent notes: “I would welcome technology […] that
enabled me to make better quality choices […]—
quality being judged in
my subjective experience of freedom and self-
expression.”
Ultimately, literary translators welcome technology that enhances their
practice by assisting with all aspects surrounding the act of translation—
be it in terms of accuracy, consistency, reducing editing time, or accessing
previously translated content—
rather than interfering with the act of
translation itself. This becomes even clearer in the next section, which
looks at their narratives of unappealing aspects of technology.
Unappealing aspects of technology
While appealing aspects were mainly associated with general technology
and TM, the discourse on unappealing aspects is almost exclusively
focused on translation technology (Table 1.4). In this respect, TM
resurfaces here as a hindrance to human translation, being described as
causing memory to grow lazy and language to become standardized.
According to respondents, TM is in direct opposition to literary
Table 1.3
Appealing aspects of technology (selection)
Appealing aspects of technology Count %
Research 58 39%
Efficiency 33 22%
Assistance to human 27 18%
Accuracy and consistency 24 16%
None 23 15%
Networking 14 9%
Total respondents: 150
48. Collecting literary translators’ narratives 31
3
1
translation’s essence. In fact, it “takes away from the need to artfully turn
a phrase over and over until it is right, accurate, and artful.” Furthermore,
others expressed concerns regarding the impoverishment of language,
with one respondent noting: “I doubt we’d agree on a voice.” This being
said, stronger attitudes are expressed in regard to MT and AI, which are
associated with a potential worsening of working conditions and wanting
to substitute human translators. What is unappealing about this type of
technology is that it “tries to bypass the human understanding of lan-
guage and its nuances in order to save costs” and, according to another
participant, “attempts to push the boundaries of technology within an
essentially contemplative profession which requires an unfashionable
degree of isolation and respect for experience.” Another theme that
emerges here is that of translation technology disrupting the translation
process and diminishing translator autonomy. CAT tool segmentation
and MT are often mentioned as examples of this, with one respondent
simply stating: “I don’t want a machine singing my part of the duet for
me.” In addition to this, narratives of replacement surrounding some of
these tools are also a source of frustration for literary translators, who
simply do not believe MT to be compatible with literary translation. The
uneasiness that participants feel in this respect is engendered by what they
perceive as a misunderstanding of what literary translation entails and
the misuse of technology in the name of saving time and costs. The fear
is that “all the talk by technology buffs who claim that [this] art/
profes-
sion will be obsolete” will “[lead] publishers to think that all they need is
a good translation tool and a skilled editor.” Finally, other unappealing
aspects mentioned include accessibility of translation technology tools in
terms of costs and learning curve, complicated user interfaces, and ineffi-
ciency caused by too many or wrong inputs.
Ultimately, when talking about unappealing aspects of technology,
the focus shifts to tools developed specifically for translation. In par-
ticular, MT and TM are perceived as a hindrance to the translator, as
well as causing disruption to the translation process, with the discourse
surrounding them threatening translators’ livelihoods in the future.
Table 1.4
Unappealing aspects of technology (selection)
Unappealing aspects of technology Count %
Hindrance to human 41 27%
None 30 20%
Disruption/
Loss of autonomy 27 18%
Outsiders’ narratives 21 14%
Usability and access 17 11%
Inaccuracy and inconsistency 9 6%
Total respondents: 150
49. 32 Paola Ruffo
3
2
Attitudes towards technology
One of the open questions devised to elicit respondents’ attitudes towards
technology asked them to share their feelings about the relationship
between the latter and literary translation. Overall, 49% of participants
expressed positive feelings. These were followed by 20% feeling torn
and 13% demonstrating negative attitudes. The rest of the responses
mentioned indifference, uncertainty, and the belief that technology is in
no way relevant to literary translation. The majority of respondents felt
lucky, comfortable, confident, happy, grateful, relaxed, and even excited
about technology in literary translation. Among those who demonstrated
ambivalence in their attitudes are those who are torn between love and
hate, gratitude and anxiety, and, again, hate and thankfulness. These
feelings seem to originate from uncertainty regarding the future role of
technology in the profession and the nature of some translation tech-
nology. In particular, some of the unappealing aspects of CAT tools
and MT are reprised here, whereby the former are perceived as “inflex-
ible”, while some respondents are “uncomfortable about the rise of
machine translation,” which is “good in theory, but potentially abusive.”
Conversely, technology that facilitates networking and communication
is appreciated, together with the internet, the virtually instantaneous
availability of electronic resources, and online dictionaries, which is in
line with what was reported earlier in relation to general technology use.
Finally, negative feelings were mainly directed at the future of the pro-
fession and the potential role of translation technology in it. These were
feelings of apprehension, sadness, uneasiness, or anger. One respondent
states: “I should not be expected to use MT and if I am, I will probably
leave the job to someone else.”
With the aim of further uncovering their narratives of technology in
their profession, respondents were also asked to describe how they see
technology as related to their profession (Table 1.5). Differences with
the previous question are immediately evident, in that the results are
less polarized. In fact, the largest group of respondents either regarded
Table 1.5
Relationship between literary translators’ self-
image and technology
(selection)
Relationship with technology Count %
Ambivalent 36 24%
Helpful 36 24%
Less or not helpful for literary translation 23 15%
No relationship 19 13%
Resistance 9 6%
Imposed 5 3%
Total respondents: 150
50. Collecting literary translators’ narratives 33
3
3
technology as helpful or expressed ambivalent attitudes, while 15%
stated that there is no relationship between the two or that technology is
less or not helpful for literary translators.
The differences between general and translation technology first
noted when looking at appealing and unappealing aspects of technology
re-
emerge even more clearly in the answers to this question. In particular,
the ambivalence originates from thinking of general technology as helpful
for research, terminology, and networking, while translation technology
once again is a source of concern in terms of disruption of the trans-
lation process. One participant thinks such tools “discourage freedom
in interpreting text on larger scales,” while another states: “I wonder
how much they interfere with my originality.” Corpora, online search
engines, and dictionaries are often referred to as helpful, together with
any technology that aids in “sorting thoughts, terminology, and other
things you’d have to keep in your head otherwise.” Translation tech-
nology is also at the centre of participants’ more negative attitudes. These
narratives see translation technology as not relevant or less helpful for
literary translation than for other kinds of translation and revolve around
the incompatibility of such tools with the complexity of the literary trans-
lation task. Epitomising this viewpoint, one respondent states: “I have
the impression those [translation technology tools] are for people in a
hurry. I work slowly and carefully”. Finally, a few literary translators
mentioned being unwilling to adopt translation technology regardless of
its usefulness and feeling that technological innovation in literary transla-
tion is an imposition from above rather than a response to practitioners’
actual needs.
When linking attitudes towards technology with respondents’
backgrounds, those aged between 18–
25 have the most positive rela-
tionship with technology: 50% thought of technology as helpful for lit-
erary translation, while the rest described the relationship between the
two as either necessary (25%) or harmonious (25%). Generally, those
aged 46+are more inclined to think of technology as being unrelated
to literary translation. In fact, the “No Relationship” category barely
appears in respondents below 45 years of age (it does not appear at all
in the 18–
25 group); however, it occurs for all 46+respondents (14% of
the 46–
55 group, 23% of those aged 56–
65, and 15% of the over 65s).
Those who have received academic translation technology training also
view technology more positively. In particular, 70% of those with aca-
demic training believe the relationship between literary translation and
technology to be a positive one, against 45% of respondents without
academic training. The latter present higher levels of torn feelings (27%
versus 7% of those with academic training). The same happens for those
with higher levels of confidence with technology, as respondents with less
or no confidence were more likely to think of technology as irrelevant or
unhelpful for literary translation. For example, 44% of those who are
extremely confident find technology helpful and only 6% think there is
51. 34 Paola Ruffo
3
4
no relationship between the two. Conversely, most of those who are not
confident at all think there is no relationship between literary translation
and technology (24%), while 18% find technology helpful, and 14% less
or not helpful.
Eventually, while literary translators are generally positive about tech-
nology, their attitudes become more nuanced when this is put in direct
relation to their professional character. This manifests in more ambivalent
attitudes, which, in turn, consolidate the emerging opposition between
general and translation technology tools. The dichotomy between general
and translation technology tools and the relationship between literary
translators’ self-
image and technological innovation that emerge from the
findings will be discussed in the next section.
Discussion and conclusion
The results have highlighted that literary translators are not averse to
technology as such. In particular, a dichotomy between general tech-
nology and translation technology has emerged when respondents
were allowed to define technology in their own terms. Overall, general
tools align with narratives of enhancement and support of the literary
translator’s character and work. This type of technology is more fre-
quently associated with efficiency, quality, and consistency, and it is not
perceived as compromising literary translators’ self-
image. Conversely,
the description of translation technology takes on a tone that is more
deeply related to the essence of literary translation than the practicalities
of the work. Furthermore, tools such as CAT, TM, and MT are portrayed
as imposed from above, incompatible with the very essence of literary
translation, and generally interfering with creativity, originality, and
freedom. The (perceived) inflexibility of translation technology is where
virtually all negative associations with technology converge. Fear, anger,
and uncertainty surround the narrative (perceived or real) that transla-
tion technology’s aim is to replace the translator, despite it being incap-
able of handling the complexities of literary texts, while threatening to
impoverish language. Ultimately, literary translators, rather than refuting
technology as a whole, seem to inhabit two spaces at the same time, one
where technology proves useful to “craft the best literary texts,” and one
where its trajectory is in contrast to their notion of a good translation—
possibly a sign of the “sense of confusion” highlighted by Cronin (2013,
1). The above are in line with Koskinen and Ruokonen’s (2017) findings
that translators reject technology because of its poor usability and nega-
tive effect on efficiency and productivity rather than on principle.
The complex relationship between materiality and immateriality in
literary translation seems to be further exacerbated by what Pinch and
Bijker (1984) would term a controversy between different social groups
involved in the technological innovation of the field. In this respect, the
focus of recent research on MT and post-
editing appears to be at odds
52. Collecting literary translators’ narratives 35
3
5
with results from this study, as 71% of respondents do not use transla-
tion technology for literary translation and only 8% mention MT. These
results also confirm Slessor’s (2019) findings regarding the limited use of
translation technology by literary translators and support Taivalkoski-
Shilov’s (2018) views on MT and post-
editing as not aligned with literary
translation. Additionally, when looking at participants’ attitudes towards
technology, both research and tool development processes appear
removed from literary translators’ realities and are mainly perceived as
being preoccupied with reducing costs and enhancing productivity rather
than accounting for practitioners’ practical needs or reflecting their
demands.
One of the aims of employing the SCOT framework proactively was
to identify potential closure mechanisms (Pinch and Bijker 1984) arising
from social groups’ different interpretations of technology in literary
translation. Findings indicate that stabilisation could be found by pro-
moting collaboration between all social groups involved, paying par-
ticular attention to developing tools that consider literary translators’
specific needs and unique ways of employing existing technology and
changing the discourse (or how it is perceived) around technology imple-
mentation in the profession. Overall, the relation between self-
image and
materiality in literary translation is complex and warrants nuance. For
example, although the association between positive attitudes and gen-
eral technology and negative attitudes and translation technology has
emerged, some results point towards aspects of translation technology
that are not thought of as antithetical to literary translation. This is
the case for TM tools sometimes seen as helpful in dealing with recur-
rent translation and consistency issues. Thus, a more productive way of
reframing the discourse around materiality in literary translation would
be to focus on the concept of enhancement (as also suggested by Youdale
2019). In terms of SCOT, enhancement emerges in this study as the link
between literary translators and other social groups involved in the pro-
cess of technological innovation. In fact, according to the participants, a
sustainable tool is one that supports literary translators and empowers
them to improve quality and consistency by allowing them to spend less
time on more mechanical tasks, freeing up space for an enhanced cre-
ativity. While Youdale’s (2019) approach is remarkable in this sense,
it appears too complex at this stage, in that it involves different text-
visualisation and text-
analysis tools and techniques. In this respect, it is
worth recalling that levels of confidence with translation-
specific tools
are generally low: between 65–
75% of respondents did not undertake
any translation technology training and only 6% mentioned corpora.
Nevertheless, Youdale’s focus on enhancement and offer of an alter-
native to MT-
centred workflows show great potential for the develop-
ment of new technology-
inclusive workflows in the future. This study’s
results suggest that an ideal tool for literary translators would feature
easy access to online dictionaries and internet searches, a straightforward
53. 36 Paola Ruffo
3
6
text-
editing interface, translation memory functions, and powerful ter-
minology, autosuggest, and quality assurance tools that interfere as little
as possible with the translation experience. In order to achieve this, a
highly customisable interface would seem ideal. Additionally, since most
literary translators work in other areas of translation that often require
the use of translation technology, a highly customisable interface could
promote the development of a single tool that would be able to adapt to
different types of texts and areas of translation. Optimising translation
technology in this way would also help tackle issues related to tools’ cost
and learning curve.
Results also showed how technology training positively affects levels
of confidence with technology, in addition to being linked to more posi-
tive attitudes. This suggests training as another central aspect of potential
closing mechanisms. In particular, the active inclusion of literary transla-
tion in technology training and a focus on how existing technology can
be adapted to the specificities of literary translation could provide literary
translators with practical ways of navigating the new socio-
technological
landscape, as well as improving their confidence. This is also in line with
Slessor (2019), who noted the need to account for literary translators’
specific needs when developing technology and training.
Findings also show that, for technological innovation to be sustain-
able and respectful of literary translators’ self-
image, it is fundamental
for the latter to be included in the conversation around technological
innovation as well as in the tool development process itself, as suggested
by Taivalkoski-Shilov (2018). To achieve this, collaboration between all
relevant stakeholders should be promoted, with the aim of producing
tools that support and enhance literary translators. By rebalancing the
relationship between materiality and immateriality, literary translators
could eventually “be liberated from the shackles of ‘faithful’ reproduc-
tion, of ‘equivalence’ narrowly defined, and freed up to become rather
their inner Picasso” (Large 2018, 94). In this respect, this chapter has
identified (1) the inclusion of literary translators in the tool develop-
ment process and discourse and (2) the development of translation tech-
nology training for literary translators as potentially successful closure
mechanisms and something future research should focus on.
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58. [1] When the mamo became rare the natives began to
substitute the light yellow feathers growing under the wings of
the o-o. This bird is now extinct.
[2] In the first Reciprocity Treaty with Hawaii, which was signed
in Grant's administration, there was no reference to Pearl Harbour.
It was when the treaty was renewed in a revised form during the
administration of President Harrison, that Hawaii ceded Pearl
Harbour to the United States as a naval base.
[3] General M. M. Macomb was in command from 1911 to
1913, General Frederick Funston during 1914, General W. H.
Carter followed and General J. P. Wisser is there in command to-
day.
[4] Even to a late date this custom has been known in civilized
countries. In France a figure of one's enemy was modeled in wax
and was slowly melted before the fire while being prayed to
death.
[5] The legend which ascribes the creation of man to Kane is
only one of many Hawaiian creation myths, in which other gods
figure as fathers of the human race.
[6] A. Fornander, The Polynesian Race.
[7] Guam belonged to Spain until Colonel Thomas Anderson
stopped there on his way to the Philippines with the first United
States troops. The Spanish governor had not even heard that war
was declared, and when the ships fired, he thought it was a
salute in his honour. He surrendered the fifteen small islands;
fourteen were given back to Spain in the Treaty of Paris and they
were sold to Germany. Guam has an excellent harbour. It is under
the control of the United States Navy at present. Marines are
stationed there.
[8] The party at present in power in the United States appears
to have given very little attention to the Islands, except as a
source of income for deserving Democrats, if we may judge from
the latest Democratic platform. That document contains the
59. promise, as soon as practicable, to give a territorial form of
government to Hawaii. For eighteen years they have had it!
[9] When Mr. Dole's term as United States judge expired a few
months ago, President Wilson refused to reappoint him, though
all Hawaii petitioned for him. The position was given to a
Democrat.
[10] Castle says Halemaumau really means, home of the
Maumau fern, this fern having a leaf much like the curled and
twisted lava in shape.
[11] A trip to the Lake of Bay should be taken and to the fertile
valley of the Cagayan. The gorge of Pagsanjan is very beautiful.
Los Banos is an old bathing establishment not far from Kalamba,
where Rizal was born. It is part of a day's trip from Manila to this
hot mineral spring, which was a fashionable resort in days gone
by. Now an American military hospital has been built there.
[12] The American coloured troops in the Philippines certainly
deserve mention. They were among the best fighters we sent out
there.
[13] Koxinga was really one of the most noted characters of the
Orient at that time. He was the son of a Japanese mother and a
Chinese father, and seldom has China had a man to compare with
him in courage, enterprise and ability. At the age of twenty-two,
he held one of the highest military commands in his country. With
his courage and natural ability it was his purpose to carve out a
kingdom for himself. Being as shrewd as he was bold, Koxinga
made the acquaintance of a Dominican friar in Amoy, whom he
converted into an ambassador and sent to Manila. Fortunately for
the Spaniards, Koxinga's career was cut short by his early death,
in 1662, while still under forty years of age, and just as he was
making preparations to invade the Philippines.
[14] To-day Aguinaldo seems to be a thoroughly reconstructed
rebel, as this incident told by General Anderson's daughter
shows:
While spending the day with friends who have a sugar estate
near Kalamba, our party was augmented by Aguinaldo, Pablo
60. Ocampo and another ilustrado whose name I've forgotten. They
had come over from Cavite, where Aguinaldo has his farm, to see
this estate with its modern sugar machinery. After going over the
farm very thoroughly with the party I found myself next the
former General at lunch. Conversation was difficult, as he spoke
no English and not very fluent Spanish. I timidly asked him in
desperation of something to say, if he remembered my father. On
learning that he was the first Americano General to fight him,
over fifteen years before, he became most interested, and asked
very warmly to be remembered. When I told him my father was
also retired and settled on his little farm he was pleased and said
it was the real life. I think he is sincerely a farmer and will not be
lured back to the hazards of political life. He is a modest, quiet,
diffident little native of the pure Filipino type. He assured me that
his children were making good progress in English and were at
school working hard.
[15] After Mr. Taft had made his journey to Rome to arrange
the friar land question, he received a remarkable ovation upon his
return to the Philippines. When he was appointed Secretary of
War, Manila was flooded with posters bearing the words, in
various languages, We want Taft, and such a host of petitions
from influential citizens was sent to Washington that Mr. Roosevelt
canceled the appointment. It was not until some time later that it
was renewed and Mr. Taft left the Philippines to take his seat in
the Cabinet at Washington.
[16] It is difficult to realize the importance of the mestizo class
in the Philippines. There are about seventy-five thousand Spanish
mestizos and half a million Chinese mestizos.
[17] Any one who is inclined to regret American rule in the
Islands is cordially invited to read chapter sixteen in Dean
Worcester's book, The Philippines, Past and Present.
[18] The cause of the pneumonic plague is so little known that
it may be interesting to mention it here. The disease, it is said, is
carried by marmots. It had not broken out since the fourteenth
century, because Manchu hunters had for generations been
taught not to kill marmots for this very reason. But in late years,
with the great demand for furs, new hunters who knew nothing of
this, killed the diseased marmots and so caused an epidemic.
61. [19] The name Bashee, originally applied to the Batan
Islands, was derived from an intoxicating drink of that name
made from sugar-cane and berries. It is still used very liberally,
especially on all festal occasions. When Dampier's ships first
touched these shores the Bashee was highly regarded by these
ancient mariners.
[20] Although we think of Japanese territory as far away from
ours, here it approaches within sixty miles, as I have said, and
within twenty-four miles of Guam the Japanese have lately
occupied the former German islands of the Mariana group. In
Bering Straits we are within three miles of Russian territory. There
are two islands, the Diomedes, in the center of the strait, one of
which is owned by Russia and the other by the United States. We
usually consider both Japan and Russia very far off, but their
possessions are in fact almost as near ours as Canada and
Mexico.
[21] An interesting passage from Worcester describes this
Kalinga dance with more detail:
Into the ring steps the hero of the occasion, dressed in his
best clothes, decked with his gaudiest ornaments, and bearing
the shield, lance and head-ax used in the recent fights. Behind
him there creeps along the ground a strange, shrinking figure,
clad in soiled garments, with a dirty cotton blanket pulled over its
head. The hero attracts attention to himself by emitting a squall
which resembles nothing so much as the yell of a puppy when its
tail is heavily trodden upon. He then begins to speak in a
monotonous and highly artificial voice, the tone and cadences of
which are strongly suggestive of those of a Japanese actor. With
word and gesture he describes his recent exploit, using the
shrinking figure beside him as a dummy to represent his fallen
foe. When he stops for breath the ganzas strike up again, and
when their clangour ceases he resumes his narrative. After
concluding his pantomimic discussion of his latest exploit, he
describes and boasts of previous achievements. Incidentally he
indulges in high stepping and high jumping and displays deadly
skill in the manipulation of his weapons. The crowd grows even
more excited and, during the intervals while the ganzas are
playing, shrieks its approval and shrills its monotonous war cry.
Finally when his voice has grown hoarse and his muscles are
tired, the principal actor retires and another takes his place. As
62. darkness comes on, a blazing fire is lighted within the cañao
circle.
Ultimately the young and vigorous warriors who participated in
the recent fight are succeeded by the old men, who have been
kept at home by the burden of years and infirmities. Strong drink
has caused the dying fire in their veins to flare up for the
moment. Each of them has a history of warlike deeds, which he
proceeds to recount. The crowd already knows his story by heart,
and when the forgetfulness of age or that of intoxication causes
him to falter, prompts him and shouts with laughter at the joke.
Gradually the basi begins to exert its stupefying effect; but so
long as the music and dancing, and the shouting continue every
one manages to keep awake. At last, food is passed, and in the
interval during which it is being consumed the liquor gets a fair
chance to work. As the east begins to glow with the coming
dawn, men and women fall asleep in their places, or hasten to
their homes, and the cañao ends, for the time being at least.
[22] It is not so well known in this country as in the Far East
that the fine code of laws which we have given the Philippines
was drafted by our great statesman, Elihu Root, with the aid of
some suggestions from Mr. Worcester.
[23] I have taken a few remarks from several speeches.
[24] The ascent of Mt. Mayon is dangerous except for
experienced mountain climbers. The vista from the summit is said
to surpass even the famous view from Mt. Ætna.
[25] The Santo Niño of Cebu has a famous rival in the village of
Antipolo where Our Lady of Peace and Prosperous Voyages is
found. This image was brought to the Islands in 1626 by the
Spanish government. It is said the Virgin has crossed the Pacific
eight times to and from Mexico and each time calmed a
tempest.
[26] This great missionary is buried on the island of Sibutu.
[27] Worcester writes in regard to fishing: There are
barracudas of seven different species, some of which attain a
63. length of six feet and weigh a hundred pounds or more. Bonitos
of four different species have been taken, and afford fine sport.
Croakers and groupers (locally known as lapu-lapu) are found in
great variety. Hardtails and leather-jacks, commonly called
dorados, are also very abundant. They take the spoon freely and
fight well. There are also several species of mackerel and
pampano, which are excellent table fish; and snappers, of which
we have thirty-four known species. The large red snappers fight
well. Sea-bass of two distinct species are common. Specimens
weighing fifty to seventy-five pounds are frequently seen in the
markets. The largest specimen as yet recorded from the Islands
weighed three hundred thirty-four and a fourth pounds.
Swordfish, nine feet or more in length, may be taken during
the cooler months. Tarpons up to five feet in length may be taken
at the proper season, off the mouths of large streams. The
species are distinct from that found in Atlantic waters, and the
young take the fly freely.
The great, or leaping, tunas are met with in large schools
during the winter months. The natives call them cachareta.
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