18/02/2025
The cruellest language barrier: how AI translation is letting down asylum seekers
“It’s almost impossible for a machine to convey the same message that a professional interpreter with awareness about the country of origin can do, including cultural context.”
That was the concern expressed by Uma Mirkhail, a volunteer with Respond Crisis Translation, after seeing the effects of using AI-powered translation tools to vet applications from Afghan asylum seekers in the US. The speaker was quoted in an article published by the Guardian in September 2023, ‘Lost in AI Translation’, which found that some applications were being jeopardised because the language tools were misinterpreting the data.
Interpreters and translators are linguists, which means that they understand language on a deeper level than a non-linguist and much more comprehensively than an AI translation tool. Languages contain subtleties and cultural references that can only be acquired and ‘meta-textually’ used by a human. However, machine translation is increasingly popular because of its cost-effectiveness and speed.
Delegating high-stake decisions to AI translation tools such as Google Translate and Microsoft Translator also raises ethical questions due to the AI’s non-compliance with international law and human rights legislation. This is particularly relevant to asylum seeker applications. The Guardian article reported that in the US, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had set up contracts with several machine translation firms including Lionbridge and TransPerfect Translations International Inc, while officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had been instructed to use Google Translate to vet refugee applications. Customs and Border Protection had even developed its own app, CBP Translate, to help communicate with migrants. […]
No comments:
Post a Comment