Event Details

Claudia Giannini, Spanish & Portuguese, will present “Why Google Translate Doesn’t Translate? The never-ending search for universal machine translation." As new technologies change the way many people think about inter-cultural communication, machine translation (MT) has come to be perceived as the next paradigm. Through a survey of the features that make language at once the most basic human institution and the most complex one, I attempt to show that translation is an inherently human and extremely multifaceted endeavor that goes well beyond the capacities of computers, which, by their very nature, are limited to the manipulation of linguistic symbols –with no access to meaning and intentionality. The success of MT is limited to controlled languages (those with a restricted vocabulary and syntax) and formulaic types of discourse and should not be taken as evidence of the potential that MT may have as a tool for effective inter-cultural communication in the future.  All faculty welcomed.  Lunch will be provided.