Sports writers to be replaced by 'bots

[Benjamin Barrett]

As in never. It's the same reason my job (translation) will never disappear: Writing is the product of a human being's take/angle on the event and translation is the product of the translator's take on the source material.

The underlying assumption in favorable assessments of robotic writing and MT (machine translation) is that there is an achievable result that is perfect, but no such thing exists. Show me a good article or translation and I will show you a way to change it that is still valid and often better from certain perspectives.

The other day, I translated 一石二鳥 (literally, one stone two birds) as "get the best of both worlds" because my *take* on the copy was that "kill two birds with one stones" was not the inner intention of the writer. But no bilingual lexicographer has figured that as a possible translation, and no machine will ever be able to make that determination--because translation is not working toward a perfect product, but toward a product that the translator feels is best.

As Soyka points out, two of the many tasks in writing are determining what your intended audience wants to read and determining what they will consider to be cliched.

Although Soyka doesn't make a definitive statement either way, my take on his article is that his evidence says no robot will ever take his place.

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

On Sep 24, 2011, at 6:07 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Sooner than you think:
>
> http://www.talentzoo.com/beyond-madison-ave/blog_news.php?articleID=11511
>
> JL

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