The TAC Conference 2019: Translation in China--70 Years of Development, guided by the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration and hosted by Translators Association of China (TAC), took place in Beijing from November 9 to 10, 2019. More than 900 representatives from central or State organs or departments, provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions, Hong Kong, Taiwan and over ten countries and regions in Asia, Europe, North America, and Latin America attended the conference, with the theme of "Seven Decades of Development of China’s Translation Industry since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China." The conference aimed to review the development of translation and language services in the past seven decades since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and gather ideas regarding the development trends and direction of the transaction industry in the new era. As an important participant in the development of translation services in China, GTCOM unveiled its language-technology products at the event, which are achievements in the company's efforts to promote the development of China's translation industry, the establishment of industry standards and the reform of the industry.

▲ The TAC Conference 2019: Translation in China--70 Years of Development takes place

Participant: Serve the Development of China's Translation Industry
Facilitate the Establishment of Industry Standards

As the inheritor of a legacy of excellent language services from the first translation company in the new China, GTCOM assumes the responsibility and mission in leading the establishment of a translation system and industry standards with Chinese characteristics. GTCOM has been deeply involved in the development of 16 group and national standards and industry specifications, including the first national translation standard--Target Text Quality Requirements for Translation Services--published in 2005. Among a number of industry standards and specifications released at the conference, GTCOM fully participated in the drafting of the Guidelines on Procurement of Translation Services--Part 2: Interpretation, and the Requirements for Translator and Interpreter Training. The company, with excellent practical management experience, won the "Best Practice 2019" award from the TAC's Translation Service Committee. At the conference, Wang Gangyi, executive vice president and secretary-general of TAC, Huang Song, general manager of China Translation Corporation, the chairman of GTCOM, director of the TAC's Translation Service Committee, presented awards to the winners.

▲Wang Gangyi, executive vice president and secretary-general of TAC (first from right),

Huang Song (first from left), general manager of China Translation Corporation, the chairman of GTCOM, and director of TAC Translation Service Committee, present awards to the winners.

▲GTCOM participated in the drafting of the Requirements for Translator and Interpreter Training and the Guidelines on Procurement of Translation Services, Part 2: Interpretation

Practitioner: Accelerate the Scenario-Based Application of Language Technology in Vertical Fields

The conference, which is the annual grand event of China's language-services industry, is the best platform for the industry to share industry trends, explore the industry's development prospects and exchange academic ideas. Elisa Chai, vice president of GTCOM, and other delegates attended some forums under the event and shared frontier explorations and practices of GTCOM about topics, which included the application of language-technology products at large events, the application of translation technology in legal translation, the best practices in the operation and management of enterprises devoted to language services, and language-service technology innovation and corporate management in the new era.

▲Elisa Chai, vice president of GTCOM

At the forum held under the banner "Language Services for the Beijing Winter Olympics," Elisa Chai shared the practical experiences in the application of language technology at large events by focusing on the language-service needs at major conferences. She said that, with the more and more breakthroughs in speech recognition, MT, deep learning, semantic analysis and other technologies, the pairing of language services with science and technology has entered a new stage, with the introduction of all kinds of language-technology products. People are provided with more diverse, comprehensive language-service solutions.

Elisa Chai emphasized that helping people with different cultural backgrounds and roles to achieve barrier-free communication in different scenarios is the purpose and goal of language services for large-scale events. By giving GTCOM's practices of serving large-scale events such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Qingdao as examples, she concluded that intelligent translators, intelligent simultaneous interpretation system, multilingual call platform, comprehensive app, intelligent translation tools and platforms, and other language-technology products can satisfy the language-service needs in different scenarios and effectively counter the deficiencies inherent in manual services. She stressed that technology is a tool with which to enhance the efficiency of communication, while the deep integration and complementarity of technological products and human services are essential for ensuring safe, stable, barrier-free communication at large-scale events.

▲ Liu Siyuan (from left to right), director of GTCOM's Planning & Coordination Department

Lyu Qian, director of the Language Product Center at GTCOM Qingdao

Yue Ling, assistant chief translator at GTCOM

Liu Siyuan, director of GTCOM Planning & Coordination Department, shared her thoughts about industry development by illustrating a case of the scenario-based application of language technology in the legal translation. She asserted that because legal translation requires specialized knowledge and has higher granular translation and accuracy requirements, translators must have higher capacity with respect to professional business and technical application. Thus, the production mode featuring translator leadership and human-computer interaction will become the mainstream. Yue Ling, assistant chief translator of GTCOM, shared her key ideas and views about Chinese-English MT post-editing at the parallel session titled "Language Service Technological Innovation and Corporate Management in the New Era." She believes that post-editing should focus on the deficiencies in MT. She also specified five strategies for improving the quality and efficiency of MTPE in the context of MT case histories. Lyu Qian, director of Language Product Center of GTCOM Qingdao, stressed the use of technology and Internet thinking for language services. She shared the company's explorations and achievements in applying language technology to facilitate the industry transformation and upgrading, using as an example the case of crowd-sourcing model-based remote translation services.

Explorer: Build the Language Technology Ecology

Work for a Better Future for Language Services

The purpose of reviewing the past is to build a better future. As Du Zhanyuan, director of the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration, said in his speech at the opening ceremony of the conference, we should use innovative technical means to build a new platform for translation services. With deeper integration of the new-generation information technologies such as big data and AI with language services, new development opportunities and challenges have been presented for the translation industry.

▲ GTCOM's language-technology product unveiled at the event

As a staunch pathfinder in the translation industry, GTCOM stays true to its founding mission and makes active efforts to explore new technologies. The company has released excellent AI-based solutions, such as LanguageBox (smart conference solution), JoveTrans Mix (intelligent simultaneous interpretation earphones), MerCube (enterprise-level machine translation), YEEKIT (intelligent language technology tool platform), as part of its real actions to build the language technology ecology, facilitate the industry development, and better serve China's opening-up strategy.