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At this year’s Anime NYC, we had the opportunity to, alongside other members of the press, speak with manga translator and historian Fred Schodt about his storied career, influential works, thoughts on the evolving industry, and perspective on translation as a career. Mr. Schodt is known for his translations of works including Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix and Astro Boy (the latter of which being featured on his shirt), The Rose of Versailles, The Four Immigrants, and many more. His most well-known work (among a long list of them) is Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, published in 1983. The industry has changed a lot since he first entered it, but at all times he’s been a pivotal figure within.
Popularizing Manga in the West
The landscape of manga consumption in the West was nowhere near what it was now just 40 years ago. At that time, most non-Japanese people had never heard of manga, so the demand for Japanese manga translated into English simply wasn’t there. Fred Schodt wrote Manga! Manga! mainly because he loved manga and Japanese comics and wanted to share them with the rest of the world. The work became a seminal text in the study of manga and was a crucial reason that Japanese manga was brought to the Western world at large. Mr. Schodt described his experiences in releasing Manga! Manga! during a time when manga itself was barely a concept in the greater North American consciousness.
In 2023, the Hollywood actor strike that paralyzed a number of localization activities in film, TV, and gaming productions, among others, allowed for dubbing work to continue. The July 2024 SAG–AFTRA union’s strike would require members to stop working altogether in video games, specifically, as covered by the union’s “Interactive Media Agreement.”
“Localization for foreign video games covered under the Interactive Localization Agreement (ILA) is struck work,” says a statement published by the union.
The list of services becoming off limits to members includes acting; singing; “voice acting, including performing sound-alike voice services;” and “authorizing the use of your voice or likeness (which includes integration or reuse of work already performed)” in video games.
The latest strike highlights a key point of contention: the use of AI in voice acting. SAG-AFTRA aims to protect its members from being replaced by AI technology, just as game studios are ever more tempted by the potential of AI dubbing to lower costs and shorten production timelines.
We asked readers if they think the video game actor strike will be a net positive for voice actors, and over a third (36.8%) believe that will be the case. A group of about the same size (34.2%) thinks it is probable, while less than a quarter (23.7%) find it unlikely and the rest (5.3%) think it will not be so.
Dr. B.J. Woodstein, Professor, Translator, and Writer, joins SlatorPod to talk about translation theory and its implications for literary translators, while also shedding light on the professional challenges, nuances, and ethical considerations.
B.J. discusses her upcoming book, “Translation Theory for Literary Translators”, where she aims to demystify translation theory and make it accessible to translators. She highlights the need for translators to understand and engage with translation theory to enhance their work and make informed decisions in their practice.
The author shares insights on the market dynamics of literary translation, including how translators are selected, rates are set, and the challenges faced in the industry.
She highlights the importance of human intervention in translation, especially in handling linguistic nuances, cultural concepts, and editorial decisions that go beyond what AI or machine translation can achieve.
B.J. reflects on the linguistic and cultural challenges in translating from Swedish to English, such as dealing with different language structures and cultural nuances that may not easily be translated. She also explores the complexities of translating sensitive or explicit content, where decisions need to be made to maintain cultural authenticity while adapting for the target market.
Researchers and people from the deaf community have teamed up to co-create a sign language machine translation (SLMT) app.
The research team designed a theatrical performance in sign language, seen through the eyes of artificial intelligence (AI).
“Historically, deaf people have been excluded from the development of automatic translation technologies,” explains Shaun O’Boyle, Research Fellow in the School of Inclusive and Special Education (Dublin City University DCU).
“This has often caused backlash and resistance from deaf communities, as the projects were designed and developed without any input from the very end-users they intended to serve—resulting in a technology no one wanted to use and a big waste of money,” adds Davy Van Landuyt, Project Manager at the European Union of the Deaf (EUD).
For this research, the team decided to reverse the standard approach, with O’Boyle, Van Landuyt, and the other partners of the European project SignON —including the Vlaams GebarentaalCentrum (Flemish Sign Language Centre) — asking participants “If we were to introduce an AI to Shakespeare texts in Irish Sign Language, which extracts would we choose first?
This engagement with the AI allowed them to connect with the audience and gather their opinions about the technology.
In a July 29, 2024 paper, researchers from Apple and the University of Southern California introduced a new approach to addressing gender bias in machine translation (MT) systems.
As the researchers explained, traditional MT systems often default to the most statistically prevalent gender forms in the training data, which can lead to translations that misrepresent the intended meaning and reinforce societal stereotypes. While context sometimes helps determine the appropriate gender, many situations lack sufficient contextual clues, leading to incorrect gender assignments in translations, they added.
To tackle this issue, the researchers developed a method that identifies gender ambiguity in source texts and offers multiple translation alternatives, covering all possible gender combinations (masculine and feminine) for the ambiguous entities.
“Our work advocates and proposes a solution for enabling users to choose from all equally correct translation alternatives,” the researchers said.
For instance, the sentence “The secretary was angry with the boss.” contains two entities — secretary and boss — and could yield four grammatically correct translations in Spanish, depending on the gender assigned to each role.
The researchers emphasized that offering multiple translation alternatives that reflect all valid gender choices is a “reasonable approach.”
Unlike existing methods that operate at the sentence level, this new approach functions at the entity level, allowing for a more nuanced handling of gender-specific references.
The process begins by analyzing the source sentence to identify entities (such as nouns or pronouns) with ambiguous gender references. Once identified, two separate translations are created: one using masculine forms and another one using feminine forms. The final step integrates these translations into a single output that maintains the grammatical integrity of the target language.
Lawyers are often disliked for their excessive attention to detail, but every word truly needs to be justified and carefully considered in international documents.
There are already several examples in Ukrainian legislature where the translation of international treaties have errors that distort their meaning.
Moreover, Ukraine has ratified a flawed translation of the Rome Statute.
The issue of translating international legal acts into Ukrainian has become increasingly relevant in Ukraine since 2014.
But significant steps to address this problem have yet to be taken.
It’s strange when Ukraine is convincing the world that Russia is violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, while not having an official Ukrainian translation of this convention.
Moreover, many documents ratified by our state (especially those ratified by Soviet Ukraine) still do not have official Ukrainian translations.
AI video creation platform D-ID is the latest company to ship a tool for translating videos into other languages using AI technologies. However, in this case, D-ID also clones the speaker’s voice and changes their lip movements to match the translated words as part of the AI editing process.
The technology stems from D-ID’s earlier work — which you may recall from the viral trend a few years ago where users were animating their older family photos, and later those photos were able to speak. On the back of that success, the startup closed on $25 million in Series B fundraising in 2022 with an eye on serving its increasing number of enterprise customers in the U.S. who were using its technology to make AI-powered videos.
With the company’s now-launched AI Video Translate tech, currently being offered to D-ID subscribers for free, creators can automatically translate their videos into other languages to help them expand their reach. In total, there are 30 languages currently available, including Arabic, Mandarin, Japanese, Hindi, Spanish and French, among others. A D-ID subscription starts at $56 per year for its cheapest plan and the smallest number of credits to use toward AI features and then goes up to $1,293 per year before shifting to enterprise pricing.
D-ID suggests the new AI video technology could help customers save on localization costs when scaling their campaigns to a global audience in areas like marketing, entertainment, and social media. The technology will compete with other solutions for both dubbing and AI video.
Continuing the celebration of Women in Translation Month and taking advantage of the few days left in August, I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Chantal Wright, Professor of Creativity and the Language Industry at ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences and, none other than the founder of The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, now coordinated by Holly Langstaff. And when I say “I had the pleasure…” I really mean that it was an honor and a privilege to chat with someone I personally admire greatly for her work, who is also incredibly kind.
For those who don’t know her, Chantal was born in Manchester, England, and she is a translator of literary and academic material from German and French into English. She is also the author of Literary Translation (Routledge, 2016), recipient of the inaugural Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation (2012), and of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant (2009), among many other accolades.
I’m excited to share the delightful conversation we had a few days ago as part of the ProZ.com Women in Translation initiative and Women in Translation Month, where she talks about how the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation addresses a significant gender imbalance in the field, discusses how translation studies have evolved over the years, particularly with the increasing focus on gender and diversity, and shares some advice for women aspiring to enter the field of literary translation.
In a July 30, 2024 research paper, Otso Haavisto and Robin Welsch from Aalto University presented a web application designed to simplify the process of adapting questionnaires for different languages and cultures.
This tool aims to assist researchers conducting cross-cultural studies, enhancing the quality and efficiency of questionnaire adaptation, while promoting equitable research practices.
Haavisto and Welsch highlighted that translating questionnaires is often costly and “resource-intensive,” requiring multiple independent translators and extensive validation processes. According to the authors, this complexity has led to inequalities in research, particularly in non-English-speaking and low-income regions where access to quality questionnaires is limited.
In questionnaire translation, maintaining semantic similarity is crucial to ensure that the translated version retains the same meaning as the original. As the authors noted, “semantic similarity is more important than word-by-word match.” According to the authors, cultural nuances and colloquial expressions can further complicate this process, making it difficult to achieve accurate translations.
To address these challenges, they developed a web application that allows users to translate questionnaires, edit translations, backtranslate to the source language for comparisons against the original, and receive evaluations of translation quality generated by a large language model (LLM).
The translation industry, like many other fields, thrives on the collective support and collaboration of its members. For women in this sector, building a nurturing community can greatly benefit both their personal and professional development.
In honor of Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth), which focuses on celebrating and advancing the contributions of female translators and the works of women in translation, this article explores how women can create a supportive network to uplift and promote each other’s achievements.
Here are some strategies for women to strengthen their connections and enhance each other’s success in this dynamic field:
The power of honest praise
Women in translation are the majority in the line of work, but (maybe not so?) surprisingly, the most visible and heard voices still relatively stay the domain of male colleagues. Women in the workplace need more positive encouragement to step into the spotlight than male colleagues. By being supportive and encouraging colleagues to each other, women can hope to see more women step up and shine.
To do this, female linguists can openly and honestly praise each other for their achievements. Some women rarely receive positive feedback as a “cog in the machine” of the language services providers’ world. Women can do it for each other, though!
In May 2024, researchers emphasized the crucial role that emotions play in human communication and introduced a new dataset designed to enhance speech-to-text and speech-to-speech translation by integrating emotional context into the translation process.
In July 2024, Alibaba incorporated speech emotion recognition (SER) into its FunAudioLLM to retain original emotions in AI-powered interpreting.
Building on this, an August 6, 2024, paper by Charles Brazier and Jean-Luc Rouas from the University of Bordeaux demonstrated how to integrate emotional context into large language models (LLMs) to condition translation and improve quality.
They argue that “conditioning the translation with a specific emotion would use a suitable vocabulary in the translation.”
This research builds on the authors’ previous work, which was the first to explore combining machine translation (MT) models with emotion information. Their earlier study demonstrated that adding emotion-related data to input sentences could enhance translation quality. In this latest study, Brazier and Rouas take the concept further by replacing the MT model used in their prior work with a fine-tuned LLM.
The Mexican embassy in Egypt has announced the second edition of its translation competition dedicated to Mexican literature, in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, in a spirited celebration of cross-cultural cooperation.
The ceremony, held on 11 August at the National Centre for Translation (NCT) in the Cairo Opera House, aimed to promote Egyptian translators, showcase the richness of Mexican literary works, and strengthen cultural ties between the two nations.
Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim Owaida emerged as the top prize winner, receiving $1,000 for his exceptional translation. The competition attracted 150 participants and resulted in 18 complete translations.
The event, launched in January at the Cairo International Book Fair, underscores the growing interest among Egyptian scholars and enthusiasts in Mexican literature.
Owaida’s winning translation is of El Dragón Blanco y Otros Personajes Olvidados (The White Dragon and Other Forgotten Figures), a collection of short stories by the acclaimed Mexican author Adolfo Córdova.
The book reimagines secondary characters from classic children’s literature as protagonists in their own stories and won the 2015 Juan de la Cabada Fine Arts Award for Children’s Stories. This prestigious award, named after Mexican writer Juan de la Cabada, honours exceptional contributions to children’s literature and celebrates storytelling that engages and inspires young readers.
Córdova’s work, which retains the essence of the original tales while adding fresh narratives, was praised for its powerful and insightful storytelling.
Yamakawa Shuppansha president Takeshi Nozawa holds the publisher’s textbook on Japanese history — used in high schools across Japan — alongside the new English version in Tokyo on May 23. | Francis Tang
As a family-run business with around 50 employees, Yamakawa Shuppansha is like many small and medium-sized enterprises in Japan — a tight-knit team of experts dedicated to executing the craft of their specialty.
What distinguishes the publishing company is history; not only do they have a long history that dates back to the end of World War II, they quite literally publish the nation’s most iconic history textbooks.
Anyone who has gone through the Japanese high school system will immediately recognize the orange and blue textbooks — which cover Japanese and world history, respectively — that Yamakawa Shuppansha has continued to deliver to students across the nation for the past seven decades.
But just because the company cherishes what it has built up over the years does not mean it shies away from challenges that emerge with the times, says its current president, Takeshi Nozawa, a grandson of the founder.
And the publishing company’s newest and possibly toughest challenge yet? Publishing an English language version of its iconic Japanese history textbook.
“To be honest, we initially thought we could produce it pretty easily — maybe within just a year or two,” Nozawa, 45, says in his Chiyoda Ward office.
His team and he ended up eating their own words as production took 10 years of hard labor jumping through the hoops of the language barrier and navigating the untrodden path before them.
The cross-party House of Lords Public Services Committee has today launched a short inquiry into Interpreting and Translation Services (ITS) in the Courts.
The inquiry seeks to understand the experience of procuring ITS in the courts, policy recommendations for supporting service providers, and the potential role of technology in enabling ITS. The Committee is inviting written evidence on topics including;
The extent to which the current ITS provided in court meets the needs of defendants, prosecutors, witnesses and legal professionals;
The key issues in the provision of ITS and how they impact the running of the courts, public trust, interpreters and translators, including whether there is any data on miscarriages of justice in relation to ITS;
The qualifications and experience of interpreters and translators and the recruitment process, including any barriers to recruitment;
Quality assurance and complaints procedure in relation to ITS;
The potential role of new technology (such as artificial intelligence, machine translation and the digitisation of court proceedings) in the future of interpreting or translation services in the courts; and
The current capability and accuracy of market leading artificial intelligence and machine translation tools in relation to ITS.
The Committee has invited written evidence to be submitted by 30 September 2024 and expects to report on its findings towards the end of the year.
Like many fans, I couldn’t wait for the My Hero Academiamanga finale to finally be released. It’s been a long journey, following the series for years, but despite my impatient urges to peek at leaks, I managed to wait for the official translation on August 4. And, after seeing how many fans have reacted to the fan translation of the finale, I’m extremely glad that I did.
It’s not uncommon for new chapters of Shonen Jump manga to leak online early, translated rapidly by dedicated fans, and then spread around the internet several days before the chapter is set to officially release. That was the case for My Hero Academia chapter #430 as well, but this time, something went wrong.
We all chuckle a little bit now and then at poorly translated road signs or the infelicities of Google Translate. But when it comes to communicating about health, accuracy in translation is a serious matter. In autism’s case, choosing the wrong words could mean a child goes undiagnosed and doesn’t get the help he or she needs.
In the past several years, researchers have begun to translate and adapt autism educational materials and diagnostic tools for use around the world. But the details of this process are rarely published, so no one can tell whether a translation was done in a way that is likely to capture key cultural differences.
A study published 11 March in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders outlines how ethnographic methods can help translations of autism-related materials truly reach their intended audience. The researchers enlisted the help of Korean mothers, doctors and teachers to create a culturally appropriate translation of the 100 Day Kit — a set of educational materials for families of recently diagnosed children, developed by the research and advocacy organization Autism Speaks.
The researchers began by interviewing 19 Korean psychologists, pediatricians, teachers and social workers in Queens, New York, to understand how concerns about autism arise in Korean families and what these families need to know about the disorder.
To learn how to accurately communicate about autism in Korean, the researchers turned to Korean mothers living in the U.S. They asked 23 of these mothers — 5 of whom have children with autism — to think of terms related to three concepts: autism, causes of autism and developmental problems in general. The women then ranked the terms in the resulting lists by importance and clustered those with similar meanings into groups.
This exercise revealed that Koreans frequently use terms that mean “in own world” and “isolated” to describe the social deficits associated with autism. But a Korean term that translates to “out of touch” refers specifically to someone who disrespects his elders or otherwise violates social norms. If the researchers had used the term for “out of touch,” which could describe autism in English, they would have inaccurately portrayed autism for Korean families.
Women in Translation Month (WIT Month) is an annual celebration held in August, dedicated to promoting and honoring women authors who write in languages other than English and the translators who bring their voices to a broader audience. This movement was initiated in 2014 by Meytal Radzinski, a blogger and translator passionate about addressing the gender imbalance in translated literature. Her efforts have spotlighted the critical yet often underrepresented contributions of female authors and translators worldwide, raising awareness and appreciation for their work.
Through August, we are all invited to celebrate women in translation in some way. Here are some fun and meaningful ideas:
Reading challenges: organize or participate in a reading challenge focused on books by women writers in translation. Share your progress and reviews on social media using the hashtag #WITMonth.
Book club discussions: host a book club meeting featuring a female author in translation. Engage in discussions about the themes, cultural contexts, and the translation process itself.
Author and translator interviews: arrange interviews with female authors and translators to share insights into their work, challenges, and the impact of translation on their stories.
Online events and webinars: attend or organize online events, webinars, and panel discussions featuring women writers and translators. These can provide valuable perspectives and foster a sense of community.
The British Museum has had to apologise after a translator’s words were used without permission. Writer and translator Yilin Wang shared on Twitter that their translations of work by the Chinese feminist poet Qiu Jin appeared in the museum’s exhibition, China’s Hidden Century, without consent.
The museum’s subsequent press release cited “unintentional human error”. It explained that it had corresponded privately with Wang and had now offered a fee for the use of the translations. Along with the Chinese poems, these were then removed from the exhibition. But the removal of the texts has also fuelled criticism of the museum, and sparked a debate about the role of translators.
Translation and copyright
Literary translation is legally recognised as an act of original artistic production. This means that translated literary texts enjoy their own copyright status, independent of the source texts. While Qiu’s work is now out of copyright because she died in 1907, Wang’s translations are not.
The role of original creativity in translation practices is frequently ignored or underestimated. It’s common to talk about reading “author X” rather than “translator Y’s translation of author X”. Even the Nobel Prize conveniently sidesteps the role of translators and their creative work when it confers its annual literary honour.
As businesses increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to bridge language gaps and reach global audiences, it’s crucial to navigate this landscape with awareness and precision.
3 Ways to Make AI Translations Clearer and Better
Diversify training data to include more languages.
Have human translators review and refine AI translations.
Hire cultural consultants to check cultural nuances in translations.
AI translations from one language to another are certainly convenient because they reduce the need for a human translator fluent in both languages. Yet AI translation has its pitfalls, too, and failures can cause significant legal, reputational and trust issues. A catchy English slogan might become nonsensical or offensive in another language. A mistranslated phrase in a legal context has led to a false arrest. Mistranslations can even introduce gender bias.
This article will explore what can go wrong with AI translations and discuss ways to enhance accuracy and cultural relevance.
In honor of Women in Translation Month, we are pleased to share this exciting list of recent books from the University of Chicago Press and our marketing distribution client publishers that evidence the evocative power of women’s writing from around the globe.
The first collection of Italian poet Jolanda Insana’s work to be published in English, featuring transgressive poems that evidence the power of language.
The translation news daily digest is my daily 'signal' to stop work and find out what's going on in the world of translation before heading back into the world at large! It provides a great overview that I could never get on my own.
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