Acknowledgments
1 The ideas of man in the age of machines: Translation as key
2 Definitions: Demarcating the field
3 Equivalence: Target-orientedness to the rescue
4 Aesthetics: The shrinking shadow of the source text
5 Ethics: Approaching explicit ethical agency?
6 Cross-cultural communication: Implications of non-human mediation
7 Beyond theory, towards history
Index
Biography
Omri Asscher is Associate Professor in the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. His work explores the practical, theoretical, and ethical implications of machine translation for intercultural communication in our time. He also studies the historical roles literary and theological translation play in homeland-diaspora frameworks.
“Machine translation has long been treated mainly as an applied field, but no more! Bringing a fresh perspective, Asscher carefully unpacks the role that this technology can play in informing contemporary translation theory, and in so doing, he re-examines what it means to translate.”
Professor Lynne Bowker, Université Laval, Canada
“When so much translation involves technological assistance, often involving machine translation (MT), it is jarring that MT is rarely mentioned in translation theory. This makes Omri Asscher’s book particularly welcome, testing whether theories of translation, such as Descriptive Translation Studies and Skopos theory, may be applied to the work of machines, logically moving through the aesthetic, ethical, and communicative dimensions of MT. Asscher’s argument for a commonality between translation source texts and artificial intelligence (AI) training data as reference points, even as generative AI output becomes unmoored from both, may well chart a way forward for the place of translation theory when conceptualising multilingual generative AI. Accessible, highly readable, and meticulously referenced, Machine Translation and Translation Theory is a timely and important contribution.”
Professor Joss Moorkens, Dublin City University, Ireland
