The Association of Translation Companies will be represented in a six hour live debate hosted by BBC World Service, SuperPower Nation.  Geoffrey Bowden, General Secretary of the ATC has been invited to participate to represent the views of translation companies.

This unique experiment will explore whether technology alone can bring together the speakers of many languages in the digital world.

The BBC will be using Google Translate to translate the contributions from around the globe in Arabic, Chinese, English, Persian, Indonesian, Portuguese and Spanish.  Which  could give rise to some amusing results.

At SanTranslate,  we’re of the opinion that a human translator is still vital for any important translation work.  If it’s important that your translation accurately reflects technical terms and industry jargon, that it conveys the contextual meaning of your words, and that it expresses the personality and emotional content of your writing, it’s unlikely that a machine will capture the fine detail and subtle nuances you need.

Technology provides some great tools for translators – our partnership with SDL Trados provides great benefits to us and our clients – but we’ve yet to be convinced that it can provide a complete substitute for a qualified and experienced human translator.

SuperPower Nation will be running live on the BBC World Service site from 13:00GMT, today, 18th March.  You can take part, follow the conversation or watch video streams live from the event in London.  Just follow this link for further information:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/2010/03/100223_superpowernation.shtml