On Wednesday, Oct. 25, from 4-5 pm in the Spanish & Portuguese Library (5125 Dwinelle Hall - Level E), Professor María Labarta Postigo (University of Valencia) will speak about the limitations of translating English to Portuguese and Spanish using machine translation (MT) systems and ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot. MT-systems have improved significantly over the last years, and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have also recently proved to be effective at translating text. Nevertheless, these systems still face challenges in accurately capturing the cultural specificity, nuances, and complexities of different languages.
The study examines specific difficulties encountered in translating English into these two languages and includes the presentation of various examples of translations. It explores the strengths and weaknesses of MT systems and ChatGPT in capturing some culturally specific expressions of these languages. Additionally, the advantages and limitations of MT-translation systems and their implications for the role of human translators will be discussed.
María Labarta Postigo is a professor at the Faculty of Philology, Translation and Communication of the University of Valencia (Spain). She graduated in Hispanic and Germanic Philology at the Free University (FU) Berlin, where she also completed her PhD studies in Linguistics and Computer Science. She has professional experience in graduate and postgraduate courses in Spain, Germany and Brazil. She has carried out research projects in several universities around the world, from Germany (FU), Norway (UiO), New Zealand (UC Christchurch), Argentina (UBA), Brazil (UERJ, UFI, UFBA and UFAL) and USA (UC Berkeley and CUNY). Her main research areas are: Foreign Language Teaching, Culture and Interculturality, Critical Discourse Analysis and Multilingual Translation.