Conference Quotations - the White Heat of Technology

Britain's labour Prime Minister of the 1960's, Harold Wilson, is often credited with coining the phrase 'the white heat of technology." Actually what he said in 1963 was: "The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or for outdated methods on either side of industry." Nearly 50 years ago but a familiar feeling - which rather brings to mind a biblical quotation: "There is nothing new under the sun" (Eccl. 1:9.) What was true for industrial unions and bosses then is true for translations companies and their clients and suppliers today. Things are changing fast - as usual.

The conference of the Association of Translation Companies was this year a fascinating day with a recurring theme. The technology of machine translation is developing and becoming a useful tool for business in some situations. To summarise in a sentence: machine translation will increasingly be used for commercial but rough translations of non-business critical text, whilst human translators - albeit supported by both translation memory technology and machine translation technologies - will continue to be needed for the growing volume of business critical text.

It was a pleasure to co-present a seminar at the conference with our technology partner SDL. Through the use of SDL technology, we can offer our clients the advantages of the latest language technologies.

Plus ça change...