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With the introduction of six new languages, the translation services are now available in 16 languages in the Lok Sabha. Meanwhile, DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran objected to the Lok Sabha Speaker’s announcement.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Tuesday announced the extension of translation services to six new languages in Parliament, including Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Manipuri, Urdu, and Sanskrit.
Addressing the House, Birla said that previously, translation services were available in 10 languages—Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu—along with Hindi and English.
“Now, we have included six more languages—Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Manipuri, Urdu, and Sanskrit. Additionally, as human resources become available, we are working to provide simultaneous translations in 16 more languages,” he said.
“India’s parliamentary system is a democratic framework that offers translations in multiple languages. When I discussed at the global level that we are making efforts to provide translation services in 22 languages in India, it was widely appreciated on international platforms”, the Speaker highlighted.
The government of Nunavut, a territory in northern Canada that speaks a variety of endangered Native Inuit languages, has reportedly already signed up for the program.
Meta is partnering with world heritage organization UNESCO in a move that could lead to lesser-known Indigenous languages being incorporated into Meta AI, TechCrunch reports.
The Language Technology Partner Program is currently looking for contributors who can provide more than 10 hours of speech recordings with transcriptions. Contributors will also need to provide pre-translated sentences and a significant body of written work in the target language, which will then be used to build Meta’s AI systems.
The government of Nunavut, a territory in northern Canada that speaks a variety of endangered Native Inuit languages, has already signed up for the program as a partner, TechCrunch says.
Meta’s contributions to the translation and transcription space might not be as universally well-known as Google’s omnipresent Google Translate, but the company is devoting a lot of attention to it at the moment. In January, the tech giant’s AI research division previewed a new AI model that could reportedly translate speech from 101 different languages, which it presented as a key step toward a widely available speech-to-speech translation model.
We are excited to announce that ProZ is Gold Sponsor of the 5th Africa International Translation Conference (AITCO 2025)! This premier event, taking place on February 7-8, 2025, at Hotel Verde, Zanzibar, brings together translation and interpretation professionals from across Africa and beyond for two days of networking, learning, and industry growth.
Why AITCO 2025 matters to the translation community
As one of the largest platforms connecting translators and outsourcers, ProZ is dedicated to fostering professional relationships, expanding career opportunities, and supporting industry growth. AITCO 2025 is a key event for translators and interpreters looking to expand their knowledge, connect with peers, and engage with key players in the language industry.
This sponsorship reflects our commitment to supporting language professionals and ensuring they have access to resources that help them thrive in the evolving world of translation and localization.
What AITCO 2025 offers translators & interpreters
With a focus on professional development, AITCO 2025 will feature:
Industry expert sessions – Gain insights from leading voices in translation, interpretation, and localization.
Workshops & training – Practical learning sessions on the latest industry trends, tools, and best practices.
Networking opportunities – Meet fellow translators, potential clients, and industry leaders.
Technology & AI in translation – Learn about innovations that are shaping the future of the industry.
Panel discussions – Explore the evolving demands in the language services sector and how to stay competitive.
Despite advancements in AI speech translation, many so-called “real-time” systems may not be as real-time as they claim.
A new study finds that much of the research in simultaneous speech-to-text translation (SimulST) is based on unrealistic assumptions that do not reflect real-world conditions — potentially limiting the industry’s ability to deploy truly live, low-latency translation solutions.
In their December 24, 2024 paper, Sara Papi from Fondazione Bruno Kessler and Peter Polák, Ondřej Bojar, and Dominik Macháček from Charles University, reviewed 110 papers on SimulST and found that the majority focus on translating pre-segmented speech — where the input has been manually split into short utterances before translation — rather than continuous, unbounded speech streams.
The researchers argue that this “narrow focus” simplifies the problem by avoiding challenges such as latency, segmentation, and synchronization, ultimately hindering the development of systems that can work in real time without human intervention.
“Despite its intended application to unbounded speech, most research has focused on human pre-segmented speech, simplifying the task and overlooking significant challenges,” the researchers said.
On January 7, 2025, LinkedIn News UK published its “Job trends 2025: The 25 fastest-growing jobs in the UK” list, where the role of interpreter comes in at #22. LinkedIn calls the list “Jobs on the Rise” and considers them indicators of areas of career opportunity based on data collected over the previous three years.
Mentioning both spoken and sign language interpreters, the ranking cites interpreting, translation, and consecutive interpretation as the typical skills required for these professionals. Interpreters are most in demand in translation and localization, museums, historical sites, zoos, and interestingly, transportation equipment manufacturing.
The LinkedIn data points to London, Manchester, and Glasgow as the top UK locations where interpreters are being hired. The average experience required is 2.2 years, with most interpreters working remotely (73%) or in hybrid positions (8%). The rest can be assumed to work on-site, but this figure is not included in the list.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT has already revolutionised our interactions with the written and spoken word, but what about the uniquely visual medium of sign language? Liam O’Dell finds out more about ‘SignGPT’, an initiative which plans to use artificial intelligence (AI) to solve the “complex translation problem” with British Sign Language (BSL) and English.
This may sound familiar. A new project involving academics from Surrey, Oxford and University College London’s Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL) is looking to translate BSL into spoken English, and vice versa. Tech – including wearable devices – has long sought to tackle this particular language barrier, producing little success, and a lot of consternation from the Deaf community.
So what’s the main stumbling block which has impacted previous translation technology?
“Fundamentally, people try and solve a problem that they don’t understand, right,” explains Professor Bowden, principal investigator of the SignGPT study. “Time and time again, you have hearing people that come along and they go, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be great if we build a system that would allow all these poor Deaf people to be able to communicate.’ But they don’t really understand what the problem is that they’re trying to solve. They know nothing about BSL or sign.
SignGPT – a five-year project with the aim of building ChatGPT-like technology to translate British Sign Language (BSL) into English and vice versa – has received more than £8.4 million of funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, it has been announced.
The team behind the initiative will also look to produce “the largest sign language dataset in the world”, using it to build a language processing programme or ‘large language model’ (LLM) to provide tools for the Deaf community akin to what is currently available for written and spoken languages.
SignGPT involves academics from Oxford and Surrey, as well as researchers from the Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL) and Deaf stakeholders.
Professor Richard Bowden, of the University of Surrey, stressed the artificial intelligence (AI) project is “not about replacing humans”, but is instead “about ensuring the Deaf community is not left behind” in the LLM “revolution”.
“By centring technology that serves the community, we’re enabling equal access to information, working towards seamless communication between the Deaf and hearing worlds, and demonstrating that AI can be a tool for inclusivity and empowerment.”
Shazam will be available for everyone, while you’ll need to be in the Early Access Program for the live AI and live translations.
More AI features are rolling out to the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses.
Meta just announced three new features are rolling out to its Ray-Ban smart glasses: live AI, live translations, and Shazam. Both live AI and live translation are limited to members of Meta’s Early Access Program, while Shazam support is available for all users in the US and Canada.
Both live AI and live translation were first teased at Meta Connect 2024 earlier this year. Live AI allows you to naturally converse with Meta’s AI assistant while it continuously views your surroundings. For example, if you’re perusing the produce section at a grocery store, you’ll theoretically be able to ask Meta’s AI to suggest some recipes based on the ingredients you’re looking at. Meta says users will be able to use the live AI feature for roughly 30 minutes at a time on a full charge.
Meanwhile, live translation allows the glasses to translate speech in real-time between English and Spanish, French, or Italian. You can choose to either hear translations through the glasses themselves, or view transcripts on your phone. You do have to download language pairs beforehand, as well as specify what language you speak versus what your conversation partner speaks.
The European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) has announced a series of competitions for translator positions in eight European Union (EU) languages: Danish, Dutch, English, French, Greek, Italian, Maltese, and Spanish.
The job, for which the announcement says “no professional experience is required,” consists of translation from at least two source languages into a target language, updating translations, editing, performing quality assurance, researching terminology, and contributing to training activities and the development of IT tools.
The source materials are described as often complex texts that usually cover political, legal, economic, financial, scientific, and technical subjects related to the EU’s business. Translators are also expected to translate communications and subtitles using specialized tools.
Who Can Apply and How
Applicants must be citizens of an EU member state, have a university degree, or have completed at least three years of university studies and earn a diploma no later than April 10, 2025.
They should also have outstanding language skills, including knowledge of at least three of the 24 official EU languages. This includes the translator’s mother tongue and two additional languages.
The application period opened on December 3, 2024, and will close on January 14, 2025, at noon, Brussels time. More information can be found in the announcement and in this video. Applications must be submitted online through the EPSO website.
A pioneering Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered model able to understand the sequences and structure patterns that make up the genetic “language” of plants, has been launched by a research collaboration.
Plant RNA-FM, believed to be the first AI model of its kind, has been developed by a collaboration between plant researchers at the John Innes Centre and computer scientists at the University of Exeter.
The model, say its creators, is a smart technological breakthrough that can drive discovery and innovation in plant science and potentially across the study of invertebrates and bacteria.
RNA, like its better-known chemical relative DNA, is an important molecule throughout all organisms, responsible for carrying genetic information in its sequences and structures. In the genome RNA architecture is made up of combinations of building blocks called nucleotides, which are arranged in patterns in the same way that the alphabet combines to make words and phrases in language.
Professor Yiliang Ding’s group at the John Innes Centre studies RNA structure, one of the key languages in RNA molecules where RNAs can fold into complex structures that regulate sophisticated biological functions such as plant growth and stress response.
To better understand the complex language of RNA in its functions, Professor Ding’s group collaborated with Dr Ke Li’s group in the University of Exeter.
The six-title shortlist for this year’s Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize highlights classic and contemporary fiction and nonfiction translated from Japanese into English.
The shortlist for the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize was announced on December 2, highlighting classic and contemporary fiction and nonfiction translated from Japanese into English. The prize, launched last year by the foundation in association with the Society of Authors, considers books published in Britain between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024. The results are due to be announced on February 12, 2025; the translator of the winning title will receive £3,000 and the runner-up £1,000.
Last year’s winning translator Alison Watts appears on the shortlist again for What You Are Looking for Is in the Library, translated from a novel by Aoyama Michiko about a librarian who transforms a series of visitors’ lives through her perfectly pitched book recommendations. The 2023 runner-up David Boyd is also shortlisted in 2024, again for a translation of a book by Oyamada Hiroko. The Factory zooms in on the absurdity of the workplace via three characters with mundane jobs in a surreal setting.
There will now be 7 languages besides the official Italian, for the Pope’s reflections and the mediation on a biblical text.
“Next week will begin the translation into Chinese, here at the audience,” Pope Francis announced with visible joy, at the general audience on November 27, 2024. The first translation into Chinese will therefore take place on December 4, the beginning of the liturgical year and first Sunday of Advent.
Every Wednesday, the Pontiff meditates on a biblical text during the general audience, an event open to the public. The audience takes place either in St. Peter’s Square or in the Paul VI Hall inside the Vatican.
Before he speaks, a short extract from the Bible is read out in several languages. After his catechesis, a summary of his speech and the translation of his messages addressed to the faithful in a specific language are also translated.
These translations, carried out by Vatican employees, are currently available in six languages in addition to the official Italian: French, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Arabic.
Arabic is the latest language to be permanently added by Benedict XVI on October 10, 2012.
Occasionally, languages may be added in response to a special occasion, such as the presence of a group of pilgrims speaking another language – Ukrainian and Slovakian translations were heard recently.
The award will be the biggest of its kind in Europe and aims to celebrate the work of an overlooked and underpaid profession facing an existential threat from AI
Norway is launching a new translation price that is one of the most highly endowed of its kind in Europe, in an attempt to boost a “partly invisible” and often poorly paid profession increasingly under threat from machine translation.
Named after the Norwegian novelist and playwright who won the 2023 Nobel prize in literature, Jon Fosse, the Fosse prize for translators will reward one author every year with 500,000 NOK (£36,000) for making “a particularly significant contribution to translating Norwegian literature into another language”.
Funded by the Norwegian government and managed by the National Library in Oslo, the prize is exclusive to those translating from Bokmål and Nynorsk, the two official written standards of the Norwegian language.
“For a small language like Norwegian, the work of dedicated translators are crucial,” said Aslak Sira Myhre, director of the National Library of Norway. “It is a strenuous, creative and partly invisible work that brings literature to people and cultures closer together.”
Lin King ’22 has won the 2024 National Book Award in Translated Literature for her work translating Yáng Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogueto Englishfrom its original Mandarin Chinese.
Competing in an original pool of 141 entrants in the category, King’s translation was named to the longlist in September, a finalist in October, and finally the winner on Wednesday night at the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony in New York City.
The novel follows the unlikely relationship of two women in 1930s Taiwan, a Japanese writer and her Taiwanese interpreter, as they tour the island nation under Japanese rule. The Translated Literature prize is particularly fitting for the book’s exploration of language, culture, and interpretation.
King accepted the award with Shuang-zi, who delivered remarks in Mandarin, which King then translated for the audience. “Some people ask me why I write about things from a hundred years ago,” King translated. “I always tell them, writing about the past is a means of moving toward the future.
“More than a century ago, some Taiwanese people began making the assertion, ‘Taiwan belongs to the Taiwanese,’” she continued. “Today, many Taiwanese continue to assert this, but now we are addressing it to a different audience. Before, we were saying it to the Japanese. Now, we are saying it to the Chinese.”
On November 14, 2024, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) announced an updated version of a previous agreement that covers the localization of video game projects produced in a non-English language.
With approximately 160,000 members, SAG-AFTRA calls itself the “world’s largest union representing performers and broadcasters.” The union also represents voiceover artists, including those who provide dubbing.
As comics and gaming website Bleeding Cool reported, the new Independent Interactive Localization Agreement is essentially an updated version of the base terms from the union’s Tiered Budget Independent Interactive Media Agreement, plus AI protections.
The new agreement is signed on a project-by-project basis by employers whose project was originally scripted in a language other than English, and whose intellectual property owner is based outside of the United States.
“Many brilliant, beloved games come to market in the U.S. from other countries, projects which need highly skilled localizing performers,” Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee Chair Sarah Elmaleh was quoted as saying in the press release. Elmaleh added that “[m]any such companies have already signed Interim Localization Agreements”.
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s timeless masterpiece, has reached a historic milestone by becoming the world’s most translated book of fiction, with 600 translations to date!
On June 25, 2024, as part of the project “The Little Prince at the Bedside of the World’s Languages”, the 600th translation of this masterpiece was presented to the National Library of Panama, in Dulegaya, the language of the Indigenous Guna people of Northeastern Panama and Colombia. This event reinforces the role of the Little Prince as a universal work that unites peoples and contributes to the preservation of endangered languages.
Since its first publication in 1943 in New York, this philosophical tale, illustrated by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, has touched readers of all generations and cultures, offering a universal message of love, kindness, and humanity.
Today, with many languages on the brink of extinction, The Little Prince uniquely preserves languages and transmits cultures. Thanks to the passion of translators, this work has been translated into rare languages and endangered dialects, thus contributing to the preservation of the world’s linguistic heritage.
The 600th translation confirms the cultural and social impact of the Little Prince, which transcends borders and becomes a link between peoples. This story is more than a story: it is a celebration of cultural diversity. 1,500 copies of this Dulegaya edition, entitled Sagla Massi Bibbi, were printed in the spring of 2024 by the Panamanian publishing house El Hombre de la Mancha. They will be distributed in schools and libraries in the Guna Yala region as of 2025.
NEW YORK, NY, November 18, 2024 (EZ Newswire) — Pronto Translations, a leading translation service in New York, has been integrating generative AI technology such as ChatGPT into its workflows for the past 18 months to support its translation processes.
Following the initial report issued last April, which detailed common AI errors, continuous enhancements in deploying AI have necessitated an update due to the emergence of further drawbacks that impact AI translation processes. Despite ongoing improvements to AI engines, experiences at Pronto Translations confirm that while AI technologies like ChatGPT can assist with translation efforts, they are not capable of replacing human translators. Effective translation requires a collaborative approach between AI tools and skilled linguists. Below are the 10 most critical reasons identified by Pronto Translations:
Mistranslation Risks: ChatGPT generally excels more than many other machine translation tools in identifying the correct contexts for meanings. However, significant errors have been observed, such as confusing “nuts” meant for vehicle assembly with edible nuts, or misidentifying a washer as a laundry appliance in a car maintenance manual. These errors underscore the risks involved in relying solely on AI for translation.
Fabrication of Information: ChatGPT can occasionally generate inaccurate content, especially when dealing with less familiar or obscure terms and concepts. While it handles well-known information from its training data competently, it struggles in areas where the data is scant or the terms are not widely recognized. In such instances, ChatGPT may make educated guesses, leading to translations that are not only imprecise but also potentially misleading. This is particularly problematic in technical or specialized texts where each term has specific and significant implications.
On the first weekend of November, dozens of poets, novelists, translators and other literary aspirants descended on Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, bringing an international presence to a quiet coastal town on the rebound.
This year marked the 18th edition of the Japan Writers Conference (JWC) and only the second fully in-person event since the COVID-19 pandemic. Across more than two dozen sessions over a day and a half, presenters and attendees grappled with a range of professional and aesthetic concerns in the domain of English-language writing.
Held in partnership with the Futaba Area Tourism Research Association, this year’s program took place in a town still vying to reinvent itself in the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. (The Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is located between Futaba and neighboring Okuma and is still in the lengthy process of decommissioning.)
JWC sessions are notably brisk, typically consisting of single presentations followed by a Q&A within 50-minute blocks of time. C.E.J. Simons, a British Canadian senior associate professor of British literature and creative writing at International Christian University, helmed an early morning session on poetry and photography inspired by the post-disaster landscapes of Fukushima, interrogating the ethical stakes of such observation and engagement. The role of climate change in literary world-building and speculative fiction was the focus for Sara Ellis, 57, an American senior assistant professor at Meiji University, who concluded her session with a writing prompt for participants to consider the impact of environmental degradation on cultural memory.
Google has announced that it has extended AI voice capabilities to over a dozen new African languages across a range of Google services.
Google — which already supports typing with a custom keyboard in Gboard for approximately 200 African languages, and machine translations for over 60 African languages in Google Translate — now supports voice search, talk-to-type on Gboard, and dictation on Google Translate for 15 regional languages.
The development means that the company has more than doubled the number of African languages that enable speech-to-text in Google Translate and has doubled existing voice input support for Gboard and voice search in the region.
Daan van Esch, Technical Program Manager at Google, said that the update “will enable around 300 million more Africans to use their voice to interact with the web.”
Speaking recently to Slator about the challenges and opportunities of the language services market in Africa, Christian Elongue, Managing Director of Kabod Group said, “there is limited training data that many African languages are facing, [and there are multiple initiatives] contributing to creating data sets for various low-resource African languages.”
Simultaneous machine translation (SiMT) aims to deliver real-time translations as a source language, spoken or written. Traditionally, this requires models that control when to “read” more of the source and when to “write” the translation — decisions that rely on intensive model training, complex model designs, and significant computing power.
Now, researchers Libo Zhao, Jing Li, and Ziqian Zeng from Hong Kong Polytechnic University and South China University of Technology have introduced PsFuture, a zero-shot, adaptable read/write policy that enables SiMT models to make real-time translation decisions without additional training.
The researchers said they drew inspiration from human interpreters, who dynamically decide when to listen and when to speak based on evolving contexts. “Interpreters shift from listening to translating upon anticipating that further future words would not impact their current decisions,” they explained.
PsFuture allows translation models to make similar, context-aware decisions, leveraging “the model’s inherent linguistic comprehension and translation proficiency” and eliminating the need for further training.
Simulated Look-Ahead
Rather than relying on a fixed number of source words to determine the right time to start translating, PsFuture allows a model to anticipate what’s coming next. By using pseudo-future information — a simulated, brief “look-ahead” similar to how interpreters anticipate what might come next in a sentence — the model assesses if additional context would change its next translation output. If not, the model proceeds with translating. If more context is needed, it waits to “read” further.
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Amerika Birleşik Devletleri
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