Ethical Issues of Neural Machine Translation

Abstract

The paper is focused on the issues of machine translation ethics. The goal of the present study is to discuss the role of neural machine translation tools from an ethical point of view and their impact on humans. Although traditionally ethics of translation is viewed in terms of sameness and difference, it is human translator who is a party to ethics of translation. It is discussed that translators should rely on technology as a helpful leverage in their job, since it allows them to be faster and more productive. On the other hand, we take an interest in examining the extent to which translation technology tools are given power. Neural machine translators can be unsupervised by humans, therefore viewed as a party to ethics of translation.

Exploring Bohdan Lepky’s Translation Ethics Using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count

“…There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance of studying translation ethics in all acts of intercultural verbal communication (Baixauli-Olmos, 2020;Baker & Meier, 2011). This study is a part of our broader research on translation universals (Zasiekin, 2020) and ethics (Zasiekin & Vakuliuk, 2020;Taraban et al, 2020). Historically, the term 'ethics of translation' has been used to describe moral principles accepted by translators in their interlingual activity.…”