The changing art of language

By René Prioux, former Head of Translation, OECD. Translators are at the forefront of global communications and knowledge. Yet their work has not always been helped by the information revolution. Here are the challenges.
If you are reading this article in English, you should bear in mind that it was originally drafted in French. But such is the art of the translator, to do their job in such a masterly yet invisible way, that you would probably never have noticed had I not pointed it out. Yet translation is a highly-skilled and difficult job. Has the work of the translator been improved by innovations in technology in recent years?
When the OECD was established just over 50 years ago, information and communication technologies were in their infancy. The term “computer” had been coined just a few years earlier and neither the Internet nor microprocessors had been invented. And televisions were just beginning to appear in people’s living rooms. Read more...