Universal Translation Research Articles

Forum on Heikki Patomäki’s World Statehood: The Future of World Politics

In this forum, six scholars discuss Heikki Patomäki’s book World Statehood: The Future of World Politics, published in 2023. The editor’s introduction situates it in the discursive contexts of cosmopolitanism, deep history and functional differentiation. Ian Crawford looks at the concept of world statehood from an astrobiologist’s point of view, putting the debate in the context of research on the possibility of life existing beyond Earth. Eva Erman notes that there are methodological issues that primarily derive from a missing distinction between theoretical and practical normativity in Patomäki’s thought. Oliver Kessler offers a critical perspective on underlying, and possibly unrealistic, assumptions about a universal translatability of specialized knowledges and vocabularies that he argues underlines Patomäki’s project. Jens Bartelson argues that the concept of world community has probably accumulated too much conceptual baggage to be useful in building world statehood. Mitja Sienknecht observes that the evolution of artificial intelligence is insufficiently addressed in World Statehood and probes possible implications in this respect. Heikki Patomäki then replies to these contributions.

FEATURES OF PHILOSOPHICAL METHODS IN THE STUDY OF CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND MAN

Philosophical methods, which differ in their universality and focus on the search for fundamental principles, have been studied, which allows to complement scientific methods in the search for root causes and general patterns. It has been proven that philosophy not only intersects with other sciences and fields of knowledge, but also creates new fields of research. The creation of new methods within the framework of philosophy itself is considered. Philosophical methods are justified as more free and flexible compared to scientific methods, which allows philosophers to explore the nuances and complexities of concepts and ideas. The development of the philosophy of language, which gave a powerful impetus to the formation of universal translator programs based on artificial intelligence, is analyzed.

THERE IS SUCH A SCIENCE.A.V. FEDOROV: TRANSLATION THEORY IS A SPECIAL DISCIPLINE

Seventy years after the first publication of the Russian author Andrei V. Fedorov’s book Introduction to Translation Theory, specifically focused on translation studies, the present article makes an attempt to highlight once again Mr Fedorov’s contribution to laying the foundations for a universal translation theory and to observe, in retrospect, the peripeteia of its naming, the identification of its research field, its subject-matter and issues against the backdrop of various social, ideological and research contexts. Special emphasis is put on the functional concept of translation; the connection between linguistic stylistics and the theory of translation is retraced; an interpretation of different mid-twentieth-century scholars’ outlooks on the correlation between language and thinking, as well as the main categories of translation studies, is proposed.

Scaling neural machine translation to 200 languages

The development of neural techniques has opened up new avenues for research in machine translation. Today, neural machine translation (NMT) systems can leverage highly multilingual capacities and even perform zero-shot translation, delivering promising results in terms of language coverage and quality. However, scaling quality NMT requires large volumes of parallel bilingual data, which are not equally available for the 7,000+ languages in the world1. Focusing on improving the translation qualities of a relatively small group of high-resource languages comes at the expense of directing research attention to low-resource languages, exacerbating digital inequities in the long run. To break this pattern, here we introduce No Language Left Behind—a single massively multilingual model that leverages transfer learning across languages. We developed a conditional computational model based on the Sparsely Gated Mixture of Experts architecture2–7, which we trained on data obtained with new mining techniques tailored for low-resource languages. Furthermore, we devised multiple architectural and training improvements to counteract overfitting while training on thousands of tasks. We evaluated the performance of our model over 40,000 translation directions using tools created specifically for this purpose—an automatic benchmark (FLORES-200), a human evaluation metric (XSTS) and a toxicity detector that covers every language in our model. Compared with the previous state-of-the-art models, our model achieves an average of 44% improvement in translation quality as measured by BLEU. By demonstrating how to scale NMT to 200 languages and making all contributions in this effort freely available for non-commercial use, our work lays important groundwork for the development of a universal translation system.

TRANSLATION ACTIVITY AND LINGUISTIC THINKING AS A SYSTEM OF HARMONIOUS METHODS FOR IDENTIFYING THE STRUCTURE AND THE CONTENT OF PSYCHO-LINGUISTIC ELEMENTS OF THE TEXT

The purpose of our research is to display translation activity and linguistic thinking as a system of harmonious methods for identifying the structure and the content of psycho-linguistic elements of the text.
 It was shown, that understanding of translation activity allows us to consider the issues, which were the most important for our research in a different way. What it is important is not the distinction of objects of the translation, but the formation of technology for the purpose of constructing translation objects (events, realities, and images), their semantic (semiotic) specification, the discovery of a universal translation algorithm, and the expansion of the methodological base for translation operations. The detection of such operations, their psycholinguistic analysis and structuring become quite important for the development of translation competence of the individual, which is one of the leading factors of active translation activity. In addition, it allows us to consider the process of translation at the level of diachrony and synchrony the text, as a process of generation, use and forgetting of translation techniques, bringing the translation activity closer to the interpretive theory of translation. Within the limits of the latter, it becomes possible for us to define the content of concepts, which are important for translation activity, such as a point of view, composition, a plot and a fable, connotative repertoire, strong positions (semantic milestones) and key words, meanings, senses and representations, referential and text situations, modal worlds of the author, reader’s and text’s expression from the point of view of their interconnection and interpenetration.
 We define linguistic thinking as a system of methods for purposefully identifying the structure and the content of linguistic elements, analyzing the peculiarities of their relationships, revealing the specifics of phonetic, lexical, grammatical and other phenomena and the laws of the language that are being learned. The formation of linguistic thinking ensures a high-quality solution to professional tasks and becomes a necessary condition for the person’s conscious and systematic mastery of a foreign language. So, from our point of view, linguistic thinking involves a thorough examination and study of the language as a system. As a result, this approach requires a detailed analysis of the structure of the language, its mechanisms and principles of the formation from the side of subjects of learning.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF STYLISTIC DEVICES IN THE GERMAN TRANSLATIONS OF THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTS

The article presents a comparative analysis of stylistic devices in the German translations of the "Books of Ecclesiastes", which is a text of the Old Testament, typical of biblical didactic and prophetic books, and whose purpose is to encourage people to think about the meaning of life. The book raises the issues of transience and futility of human existence especially acutely. The relevance of the study lies in the comparison of modern German translations of the book of Ecclesiastes with the aim of demonstrating translation trends and different approaches to the reproduction of artistic means in these translations. The research material consists of translations of the book of Ecclesiastes from different years, made by translators from the ancient Hebrew language into German. The article examines the stylistic means of the biblical text and their reproduction in modern translations, compares and comments on some problematic fragments of the book of Ecclesiastes, the translation of which, despite a large number of scientific works, still needs clarification. Particular attention is paid to fragments of the text, the interpretation of which has a double meaning. The research material allows analysing the diachronic trends in the translation of the book of Ecclesiastes and drawing conclusions about the possibility and purpose of reproduction by the translator’s content and means of artistic imagery in translations of different years. According to the conducted analysis, the authors came to the conclusion that, despite centuries of discussion, an attempt to make a single universal translation of the book of Ecclesiastes is impossible. From a methodological point of view, we should emphasize that in recent years there has been a negative trend toward a recipient-oriented understanding of the text, which, in turn, pushes the translator to omit stylistic devices and form a translation of the holy book that is more understandable for today, which unfortunately leads to the loss of artistic stylistics of the archaic poetic text.

Digital Twins: Enabling Interoperability in Smart Manufacturing Networks

As Industry 4.0 networks continue to evolve at a rapid pace, they are becoming increasingly complex and distributed. These networks incorporate a range of technologies that are integrated into smart manufacturing systems, requiring adaptability, security, and resilience. However, managing the complexity of Industry 4.0 networks presents significant challenges, particularly in terms of security and the integration of diverse technologies into a functioning and efficient infrastructure. To address these challenges, emerging digital twin standards are enabling the connection of various systems by linking individual digital twins, creating a system of systems. The objective is to develop a “universal translator” that can interpret inputs from both the real and digital worlds, merging them into a seamless cyber-physical reality. It will be demonstrated how the myriad of technologies and systems in Industry 4.0 networks can be connected through the use of digital twins to create a seamless “system of systems”. This will improve interoperability, resilience, and security in smart manufacturing systems. The paper will also outline the potential benefits and limitations of digital twins in addressing the challenges of Industry 4.0 networks.

Трансформация переводческого образования как важный этап его модернизации в условиях новой эпохи Китая

Introduction. This article examined the main tasks of Chinese translation education in the new era, analyzed the problems it faces, put forward ideas about the need to transform translation education for the training of qualified personnel. The relevance of the research was determined by the importance of forming the image of China as a state with a centuries-old history, outstanding culture and science, possessing powerful resources, which could not be done without the development of intercultural communication, which was facilitated by a developed system of translation education.
 Aim. The goal is to analyze the current state of translation education in China and outline ways to develop this industry.
 Methodology and research methods. The authors are based on the analysis and generalization of the experience of teaching foreign languages in China, as well as by the method of included observation and systematic description of methodological processes.
 Results. The authors come to the conclusion that the transformation of translation education should provide for a change in the goals of training translation personnel (it is necessary to move from the model of training universal translators to the model of training specialists of a narrow professional orientation) and requirements for the training of translation personnel (it is advisable to subordinate the requirements to the logic of competence-based training); transformation of the model of teaching translation (it is important to move from teacher orientation to the integrated development of translation technologies and translation education) and the transformation of the teaching staff (it is necessary to develop a system of continuous professional development, more actively introduce technological advances in teaching practice).
 Practical significance. The implementation of the provisions of this study will make it possible to bring translation education in China to a level that meets the challenges of the time and is characterized by close and intensive social interaction in various fields of activity.

Nonlinguistic Presupposition in Literary Translation: A Trend towards Dehistoricising, Deideologising and Depoliticising the Original

This paper explores nonlinguistic (cultural) presupposition in Kilpatrick’s English translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s Arabic novel Men in the Sun. The goal is to see if the English translation (under the impact of global English) shifts the sociocultural knowledge presupposed in the original and thus alters its political and ideological messages. The analysis reveals a trend to lose nonlinguistic presupposition via translation, which is associated with the translator’s tendency to re-contextualize, thus domesticating or neutralise the original message to the Western audience. However, this has come at the expense of dehistoricising, deideologising and depoliticising the original, leading to a more culturally/contextually universal translation that seems to be drifted into the more dominant and valued Anglo-American and European cultures. These changes could be related to Kilpatrick’s lack of information, or interest, in the decades-long struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, so a neutral stance may have sounded a safer option to her. It could also be related to her belief that Kanafani’s novel should not be politicised, instead focusing our attention more on its plot structure and characters. Personally, I am of the opinion that Kilpatrick has created a more contextually homogenised text only to maintain relevance to a widely diverse audience.

Universal translation operator for Laguerre–Gaussian mode sorting

Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) mode is widely adopted in various applications due to carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM). In practice, it is challenging to sort Laguerre–Gaussian mode according to various features. Traditional fork grating and optical geometric transformations are regarded as convenient methods for sorting LG mode. However, these methods have to destroy the OAM carried by the beam during the sorting process. Here, we demonstrate a nondestructive beam sorting mechanism for LG mode carrying orbital angular momentums based on a translation operator. The numerically solved operator can sort the input beams to pre-defined positions with faithful preservation of all the beam features, which shows good agreement with the experimental results. We believe the proposed translation operator will benefit potential applications in information processing, quantum optics, and optical communications.

Universal Speech Translator

In summary, Meta explains that this all-in-one translator is “pushed via way of means of the purpose of breaking down language boundaries on an international scale” the use of system gaining knowledge of technology. Since a mechanical perception, "This is a provisional computational prototype based on the Thinly Gated Mixture of Experts, qualified on data gained using novel and effective data mining methods personalized to low-resource languages. It is a model that forms the basis of universal translation. In the system, BLEU (short for Bilingual Evaluation Understudy).

The History of Translation of Xie He’s First Law of Painting

The article is an attempt to analyze the history of translation of the First Law of painting into Russian and other European languages. The First Law, formulated in 5th century AD by artist and thinker – Xie He, was one of the most important principles in the history of Chinese aesthetic thought. A comprehensive and concise formulation of the Law gave rise to extensive commentaries and made its interpretation fundamentally ambiguous. For centuries, the discussion on understanding the First Law has carried on among Chinese artists and continues up to this day in sinology. Both foreign and Russian researchers have repeatedly addressed this issue and proposed a significant number of translation options. The most fruitful is probably an approach which implies choosing a specific translation in accordance with a deep study of the origin, grammar and interpretation of the First Law. At the same time, the development of a single universal translation is practically impossible due to the constant evolution of rendering the First Law within the Chinese artistic tradition itself. Therefore, it is thought that the descriptive interpretation of Xie He’s First Law of painting is the most suitable.

What The Future Upholds!

As the world is changing with better infrastructure, fiber, clouds, networks, data centers have become a source of providing information around the globe, providing us one of the biggest businesses, with a large amount of spending done over them. By the end of 2021, “Global Information Technology” is calculated to be spending $3.8 trillion over the companies shifting to the cloud. [1] The various networks of the software, hardware, infrastructure, databases: all are highly developed for making the IT to boom up for the incoming eras. Arthur C Clarke, once said, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Everything going to the advanced level, the shared amount of data relies on fast connectivity. There is a lot of talking going on the capabilities provided by the 5G from past few years, which is finally out with its first batch of 5G handsets have been announced hitting the market soon.[2]The market opportunities of various companies are as bigger as they have ever been. Organizations such as DARPA, IBM, Shipchain, Paxful, Circle [3] are few of the companies working on providing number of applications to the technological world. Companies such as Honeywell, Microsoft, AWS, Spunk, Google are actively working in order to update the computing capabilities which we are accessing upon by providing us with quantum world. [4]Quantum computing provides us a redefine form of what the computer is all about. It gives us the computing power which is billions of times more renowned and powerful than the computing environment we are existing in today. Subdermal technologies are overpowered with new rulings neuro link. In today’s world, people working on completely virtual spaces with power assist fabrics (Digital fabrics) [5]. It provides human the evolution of added strength and gaining mobility to another level. United Nations have developed a universal translator, which in turn reduces the requirement of human interpreters and translators

Dissecting the Nucleoside Antibiotics as Universal Translation Inhibitors.

Without question, natural products have provided the lion share of leads, if not drugs themselves, for the treatment of bacterial infections. The bacterial arms race, fueled by selection and survival pressures has delivered a natural arsenal of small molecules targeting the most essential of life processes. Antibiotics that target these critical intracellular processes face the formidable defense of both penetrating a bacterial cell membrane and avoiding efflux to exert their effect. These challenges are especially effective in Gram-negative (Gram-(-)) bacteria, which have a double membrane structure and efficient efflux systems from the combination of outer-membrane porins and inner membrane proton pumps. In this landscape of offense and defense, our clinically used antibiotics have only successfully targeted three intracellular processes for therapeutic intervention in Gram-(-) bacteria: dihydrofolate biosynthesis, transcription, and translation. Not surprisingly, such critical survival machinery is a popular target for bacterial warfare, and eight of our 14 classes of commonly used antibiotics target translation with the bacterial ribosome remaining one the most vetted targets for antimicrobial therapy. On the plus side, its anionic character attracts cationic inhibitors, which are generally more capable of penetrating the bacterial cell wall, and clinical resistance rates are usually manageable as mutation of such a highly evolved machine is difficult. On the down side, this highly evolved machine renders it difficult to inhibit selectively, and the inhibition of prokaryotic translation versus both eukaryotic cellular and mitochondrial translation is critical for clinical development and minimization of undesired toxicities.A class of natural products known as the "nucleoside antibiotics" have historically been recognized as universal inhibitors of the ribosome and can inhibit translation in prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and archaea. While they have served an essential role in dissecting the biochemical underpinnings of the enzymatic functions of the ribosome, they have not proven therapeutically useful as they target the highly conserved rRNA in the P-site and are toxic to mammalian cells. In this Account, we describe our studies on the natural product amicetin, a nucleoside antibiotic that we have demonstrated to break the rule of being a universal translation inhibitor. While the cytosine of amicetin mimics C75 of the 3'-CCA tail of the P-site tRNA akin to other nucleoside antibiotics, we advance a hypothesis that amicetin's unique interaction with the ribosomal protein uL16 exploits an untapped mechanism for selectively targeting the bacterial ribosome. A complex molecule comprised of a nucleoside, carbohydrates and amino acids, amicetin is also chemically unstable. Our initial attempts to stabilize and simplify this scaffold are presented with the ultimate goal of rebuilding the compound with improved penetrance to bacterial cells. If successful, this scaffold would demonstrate a path forward for a new class of antibiotics capable of selectively targeting the ribosomal P-site.

Towards universal translation

State of the art neural network approaches enable massive multilingual translation. How close are we to universal translation between any spoken, written or signed language?

Hibernation factors directly block ribonucleases from entering the ribosome in response to starvation.

Ribosome hibernation is a universal translation stress response found in bacteria as well as plant plastids. The term was coined almost two decades ago and despite recent insights including detailed cryo-EM structures, the physiological role and underlying molecular mechanism of ribosome hibernation has remained unclear. Here, we demonstrate that Escherichia coli hibernation factors RMF, HPF and RaiA (HFs) concurrently confer ribosome hibernation. In response to carbon starvation and resulting growth arrest, we observe that HFs protect ribosomes at the initial stage of starvation. Consistently, a deletion mutant lacking all three factors (ΔHF) is severely inhibited in regrowth from starvation. ΔHF cells increasingly accumulate 70S ribosomes harbouring fragmented rRNA, while rRNA in wild-type 100S dimers is intact. RNA fragmentation is observed to specifically occur at HF-associated sites in 16S rRNA of assembled 70S ribosomes. Surprisingly, degradation of the 16S rRNA 3′-end is decreased in cells lacking conserved endoribonuclease YbeY and exoribonuclease RNase R suggesting that HFs directly block these ribonucleases from accessing target sites in the ribosome.

ГЕОДЕЗІЯ, КАРТОГРАФІЯ І АЕРОФОТОЗНІМАННЯ

Elaboration of the method of creating a web-GIS of Polish burials at the Baikove Cemetery in Kyiv. Achieving this goal involves the following tasks: to develop the structure of the geographic information system, its framework and to fill the file database. For realization of the set tasks the technological scheme consisting of 12 stages of work is offered. The first stage involved the collection of cartographic and descriptive data on the territory of the object of study, as well as the search for possible registers of Polish burials within the object under study. In the second stage, field surveys were performed to determine the coordinates of each grave of the Polish burials at the Baikove Cemetery using a GIS tablet with an RTK antenna LT700H (accuracy up to 0.30 m). The total number of coordinated points was 565, which were concentrated in 7 sections of the cemetery. The third stage included the coordination of reference points and the binding of this support in the GIS MapInfo environment of the fragment of the topographic plan of Kyiv on a scale of 1: 2000 to the territory of the Baikove Cemetery. There were a total of 11 landmarks. The maximum binding error is 0.2 m. In the fourth stage, all point objects were displayed according to their coordinates on the basis of the map and the corresponding symbols were selected. The next step was to develop and populate a relational database for point objects. The database contained the following columns: grave number, name and surname of the buried person, grave coordinates and hyperlinks to burial information in the file database. Next, all map layers were exported to html format, and the point object layer was exported to kml format using a universal translator, which allowed to view burial data in GoogleEarth. At the eighth stage of the technological scheme the structure of layouts of each html-page of the created online GIS was developed. All map data had hyperlinks to the selected AOI objects. In the case of the Baikove Cemetery scheme, plots with Polish burials were marked. Clicking on them opened a topographic plan with marked point objects of burials. In turn, when you click on them, information about the burial appeared from the file database. At the tenth stage, 5 sheets of topographic plans with burials were generated. One sheet of scale 1: 2000 and four sheets of scale 1: 500, for better "spreading" and initialization of burials. The eleventh stage is devoted to the creation and filling of a file database on Polish burials. This database contained the following structure: photo of the burial, coordinates, surname and name, years of life, additional photographs (if available), sex of the buried person, interpreted inscription on the tombstone, as well as, if possible, detailed information and belonging of the buried person to a certain profession, its outstanding achievements and accomplishments. At the last stage, the hyperlinks of the transition between the pages were configured and the system was tested. The scientific novelty lies in the development of the concept of joint use of various applications of geoinformation and non-geoinformation purposes. The technological scheme of creation of WEB-GIS of Polish burials of the Baikove Cemetery in Kyiv is offered. Implemented geographic information system is designed for inventory of burials, analysis of the condition of tombstones and their spatial location in the cemetery. In addition, the created GIS can be used for tourism purposes and in the study of historical figures of Polish origin.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ПЕРЕКЛАДУ АНГЛОМОВНИХ КОМП’ЮТЕРНИХ МУЛЬТИМЕДІЙНИХ ВІДЕОІГОР

The non-equivalent lexis is one of the most common problems arising while translating multimedia video games. The relevance of this study is due to the great popularity of computer video games among contemporaries of different ages and social context. This leads to the need to introduce high-quality and faithful professional translation into Ukrainian, as well as the study, analysis and further development of possible effective models for solving problems in the field of translation and localization of video games. The purpose of the study is to analyze the problems of Ukrainian translation and localization of English-language computer games for the further implementation of universal translation solutions in theoretical and applied aspects at the present stage of development of translation studies. The analysis of the computer multimedia video games translation aimed at distinguishing the prominent translation tactics has allowed to draw the following conclusions. The most common there has proved to be the tactic of the foreign language coloring preservation, realized chiefly by means of the operation of transliteration, employed to render most terms. Loan translation is most uncommon in Ukrainian translations of computer video games. The chief advantage of the translations under analysis there should be considered their lexical, grammatical and stylistic accuracy with the full rendering of the content. The most common translation strategy there turned out to be the strategy of communicative-equal translation. The result of the research will allow avoiding possible difficulties in the future and finding out the ways of their solution. This will result in the optimization of the translation quality which in its turn will cause improvement of the final product’s quality and further popularization of computer video games.

Towards a universal digital chemical space for pure component properties prediction

Computer-aided molecular design requires the ability to predict different molecular properties of interesting from using molecular structure. Traditional quantitative structural property relations were developed by extracting molecular features for predicting various properties. Hence domains of molecular features are different for predictions of different properties. In this work, the concept of a universal translator was used to develop a universal digital chemical space by translating and projecting the chemical representation SMILES to a high-dimensional space that can be collapsed into different molecular fingerprints. We demonstrated different kinds of pure component properties, such as electrical and thermodynamic properties can be predicted by a simple input of molecular structure, SMILES. This method eliminates the need to manually extract different molecular features for predicting different properties. The ability of model to predict sigma profiles also pave the way of prediction phase equilibria of mixtures using molecular structure only.

Translation of small downstream ORFs enhances translation of canonical main open reading frames

In addition to canonical open reading frames (ORFs), thousands of translated small ORFs (containing less than 100 codons) have been identified in untranslated mRNA regions (UTRs) across eukaryotes. Small ORFs in 5′ UTRs (upstream (u)ORFs) often repress translation of the canonical ORF within the same mRNA. However, the function of translated small ORFs in the 3′ UTRs (downstream (d)ORFs) is unknown. Contrary to uORFs, we find that translation of dORFs enhances translation of their corresponding canonical ORFs. This translation stimulatory effect of dORFs depends on the number of dORFs, but not the length or peptide they encode. We propose that dORFs represent a new, strong, and universal translation regulatory mechanism in vertebrates.