25 April 2022
Offering a European perspective through AI-driven translation
EBU, the European Broadcasting Union, which is Europe’s largest newsroom, invests 5,5 billion Euros per year and employs over 40.000 journalists to deliver independent, trusted news. They recently decided to overcome language barriers and share diverse content from across the continent. With this in mind, they have developed a collaborative news service that provides them all with curated feeds, using innovative tools and workflows. Among them EuroVOX, an open toolbox that does automatic transcription and translation.
Through this initiative, EBU Members from Belgium (RTBF), Finland (YLE), France (France Télévisions), Germany (BR/ARD), Ireland (RTÉ), Italy (RAI), Portugal (RTP), Spain (RTVE) and Switzerland (SWI swissinfo.ch) as well as ARTE, the Franco-German broadcaster, are intent on reshaping the European digital sphere by offering their online readers access to stories that “explore the many facets of the European identity”.
Following a successful pilot phase which saw 14 broadcasters share more than 120,000 articles over a period of eight months, the project has been awarded an EU grant which will enable the technical tools to be fully developed and the editorial collaboration between newsrooms to be strengthened.
The novelty about EuroVOX is that it provides a single API to allow access to multiple language tools from multiple vendors, selecting dynamically among them depending on which one best fits the particularly situation. It comes with all kinds of capabilities: transcribing and translating clips for use on social media networks, sifting through archive materials, creating subtitles, collating and translating news feeds, re-voicing content into various languages…
EBU pursues lofty aims. They want to take a stance against fake news and uphold the highest ethical standards, “deeply rooted in core European values, such as respect for human dignity, equality, inclusion and the rule of law”.
Since the launch of the initiative in July 2021, the news organizations have been able to sort, select and publish each other’s content through a digital hub that uses AI technology to translate all their news, interviews and reports into a range of European languages. That means that readers in France were able to find out from the horse’s mouth how the Portuguese or the Finns are coping with rising Covid infections, and over the last weeks, the Germans were getting an insider view of the French elections.
The idealistic aim behind it is to bring Europeans closer together, giving them insights into how their fellow Europeans are perceiving development. The “European perspective” is a means to cross and transcend borders and maintain common values, and engender solidarity amongst their audiences.
Noel Curran, Director General of the EBU, put it like this: “Trustworthy, fact-based news and information are even more important at a time when disinformation and populism are threatening democracies. It is exciting that we will work with cutting-edge technology to open up this wealth of high-quality content to our audiences, breaking geographic and language barriers. This initiative will revolutionise news sharing in Europe.”** He believes it will allow cross-checking across borders, thus making news more trustworthy.
Sounds good?
Well, yes. But just as professional translators are afraid of MT doing them out of a job, the same fear is now spreading among journalist. After all, why would you post a German reporter in a far-away country, say Ukraine or Rwanda, when there is already an excellent colleague there, from the UK, or from France? No need for 5 or 6 nationals to start from scratch, researching the stories, interviewing locals, when one guy can do the work, write up the reports. Thank you, one is quite enough, and the rest can then take the EuroVOX translation as their starting point, perhaps fine-tuning it somewhat (“post-editing”, as well call it). That seems to be the way we’re going.
Prof. Dr. Alexandra Borchardt* is an expert who voices some concern. Even though she agrees that the AI tools are opening up new possibilities, she mentions that Reuters, for example, no longer sends a German and an English journalist to the same press conference. Instead they send just one, while despatching the other one to a different location, where they can add value. Their contributions are then simply machine translated. But, she cautions that reported content is always conditioned by language and culture. The same facts or events might read completely differently – depending on who wrote it. As an example, she mentions that when star conductor Simon Rattle recently announced his move to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra this was greeted with huge enthusiasm by the German press. But if you read what the Guardian had to say about the same piece of news, the emphasis was on Rattle having extended his contract with the London Symphony Orchestra until 2022 (the fact that he was going to move to Munich was mentioned only as an aside). Clearly, the perception, and hence the emphasis, was totally different in each case.
Seen in this light one might start to wonder whether all these lofty aims about providing European understanding and curating values is actually largely owed to financial considerations. Thinking about it, perhaps we come to realize that this use of AI translation technology might lead to (undesirable) cultural homogenization – and therefore constitute an impoverishment of what makes Europe into such a fascinating continent: its incredible diversity.
Instead, we are in danger of making news into what Germans call “Einheitsbrei” – a monotonous, non-distinctive “soup” that does not allow for distinctive voices, but is a “one-fits-all” solution.
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