Translation in a Corporate Era of Productivity at All Cost – Kenneth Kronenberg

“I think we all know how much it matters to be able to say, ‘This is my work,’ and feel on solid ground. Translators are individuals first, or they are not fully translators. To reassert the fundamental association of language, translation, and humanity is the only way to keep us from being sucked into a corporate vortex where our skills are little more than an instrument for someone else’s profit, and our unique voices are suppressed. It is those unique voices, and what we say with them, that connect us to other people and give life to what we do.”

At the May 2011 New England Translators Association Conference, Kenneth Kronenberg gave this excellent talk on the implications for our profession of the heedless diffusion of CAT and machine translation tools. We’re grateful to him for his kindness in sharing his work with us.

Read the full text here in .pdf format.