Translation Slam
Human versus Machine: AI Translation Slam, 2024

AI Translation Slam (French and German)

Wed, 02.10.2024
7:00 PM - 20:30 Goethe-Institut London

Join us for the sequel to our 2023 AI translation slam, which pitches the creative forces of literary translation by humans against AI translation tools.

Last year, our audience mostly favoured human translations over machine-generated results. Since then, the machines have evolved… but will they cope equally well with texts in German and French? Who will triumph this time? 

You will witness two experienced translators, Joanna Pawulska Saunders and Aubrey Botsford, compete with machine translation systems expertly operated by Daniela Ford. After each round of texts, the audience gets to vote: Who translated it better – the humans or the machines?

The event will be moderated by Christophe Fricker and is supported by our friends at the Institut français.

We're pleased to promote this event within the context of International Translation Day 2024, organised by English PEN.
 

Short Bios:

© D Ford

Daniela Ford has over 20 years' experience as a technical translator (French/English into German) and a localiser. She first encountered machine translation in 1992 during a university degree module on machine translation, and this ignited her life-long passion for learning about technology for translators. She is currently the MSc Translation & Technology Director at the Centre for Translation Studies at University College London where she teaches Translation Memory Tools and Machine Translation.
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© Christophe Fricker

Christophe Fricker is a literary translator and teaches the MA in Translation course at the University of Bristol.

© Aubrey Botsford

Aubrey Botsford is a literary translator from French, German and Italian. His published work includes novels by Mechtild Borrmann, Katia Fox, Yasmina Khadra and Enrico Remmert. His translation of Life: My Story Through History, by Pope Francis, was published in 2024.

© Joanna Saunders

Joanna Pawulska Saunders: Having qualified as a translator and interpreter, Joanna has over two decades of experience as a professional linguist, working as an interpreter, linguistic abstractor, and teacher. She currently focuses on translation from French, German, and Polish into English, specialising in the lifestyle sector: food, wine, art, music, and environmental matters. While Joanna has no formal training in machine translation, she is open to using it and advocates for regarding it as friend rather than foe.