Invasion of the Memory Snatchers
"They're here already! You're next!" screams a desperate Dr Bennell in the final scene of the 1956 film that suggested the title for this presentation. The Conference opening question will be addressed by warning all translators and interpreters that unless we take the threat of such an "invasion" seriously and act decisively, this may well be the century when the "memory snatchers" will take over the worlds of translation and interpreting.
We will look into why they chose TM (translation memory) over MT (machine translation) to turn the intellectual activities of translation and interpreting into an industrial process. We will travel into the century and into the world of corporate industrial translation and interpreting to come face to face with a "new breed" of translators, -interpreters as such having become extinct by then. We will reflect upon the wider reaching effects on both source and target languages and cultures of translation becoming simply part of the process of localization of "la pensée unique" (single thought).
In Don Siegel's film, the "snatchers" strike while humans are asleep so we will devise a counter-attack strategy to stay awake and strike back!
Click here to download a transcript of Francisco Aviñó's speech.