Simultaneous interpreters out of work? BBC launches computer-automated news translation service

According to a report by the BBC Chinese website on December 17, the BBC is trying out a new technology called "virtual simultaneous interpretation" to provide subtitles in different languages ​​and computer-generated commentary for short comprehensive news. This "virtual simultaneous interpretation" tool was developed by the BBC's "News Labs" division. At this stage, all automatically generated content still needs to be checked and edited by BBC bilingual journalists before broadcasting.

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Media experts said that everyone is familiar with online translation services, but simultaneous interpretation has been slow to develop in the past, and the BBC's new attempt will benefit the public.

As media experts say, the public can currently use many free online translation software, including Google Translator and Bing Translator. In addition, Skype is also experimenting with voice translation services for conversations between two people. However, the translation of news reports is currently still basically done manually.

The BBC has decided to first use the new technology for its Japanese news service, followed by Russian news in January next year. Other language news, including Spanish, are planned to be introduced later in 2016, but this is also subject to funding.

At this stage, the technology does not yet have speech recognition capabilities, so journalists are required to provide a transcript for the computer to translate before the entire process begins.