2013 ProZ.com International Conference

The Cyborg invasion and the Springsteen response

The issue of machine translation and/or human translation crops up regularly in groups on the internet, mockery on FB, and in other media. The frequent response to the perceived "threat" by machine translation ( the cyborg invasion) is to refer to human creativity and/or imagination. Nonetheless, some thinkers, such as Boden and Schmidhuber do hold that computers will be capable of creativity if they are properly programmed.

If, in fact, computers are capable of creativity, then they should be able to handle translation as a creative enterprise - in theory. Will there be need of translators then? The question I would like to explore in the session is what role creativity and imagination play in translation. We will look at how creativity and imagination are defined in the translation business but also beyond it.

Creativity is often viewed with suspicion. Is imagination on the same level as creativity or does it add something more to the discussion? The speaker will argue that translation, like all uses of language, always involves creativity and imagination, but in a deeper sense than what we usually accord those terms.

Henry Jansen (Netherlands)

Bio: Translator, literary theorist, philosopher, and theologian, Henry Jansen was born and raised in Canada. After moving to the Netherlands in 1989 with Lucy, his wife, and children, he earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion, and then a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature at VU University Amsterdam. He has been translating and editing academic books and articles part-time since 1990 and began doing so full-time in 2006. In addition to his translation work, he is still active in the area of philosophy of religion and literature. He has edited volumes and published articles on a diversity of topics, ranging from Harry Potter to Charles Dickens to the question of truth in art. In his spare time and sometimes not so spare time he practices martial arts and enjoys riding motorcycles. ProZ.com member: Henry Jansen, Ph.D.