Using Neural Machine Translation for Multilingual Communication

A new type of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, called Neural Machine Translation (NMT), is quickly earning the attention of multilingual communities. This software is helping to expedite the translation process and has the potential to open government information to more non-English languages. 

In this session, Beth Flaherty will give a high-level overview of machine translation technology. We will discuss the evolution of machine translation (MT), how MT is used in the government, ways to “specialize” a language engine to a specific domain, calculation of return on investment (ROI), and the road ahead.  We’ll also show a live demo of the NMT software so that the audience can see the flexibility of use with this technology.

Beth Flaherty is SYSTRAN Software’s Director of Government Solutions and is based in the Washington D.C. area. In her role, Beth is responsible for account management for current US Government clients and for educating prospective clients on the benefits of machine translation.

For 20+ years, Beth has led business development efforts and program execution teams for government language programs.  She understands the important relationship between language services and human language technology (HLT), having worked for companies such as Berlitz, Lionbridge, SAIC (Language Services), and SDL. She has actively participated in the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) and AMTA - Government Track. Beth holds an MBA in International Business from The George Washington University, a BBA and Spanish minor from Saint Mary’s College (IN), and PMP Certification. 

Related information:

• Robust Neural Machine Translation
• Using AI to match human performance in translating news from Chinese to English
• Neural Machine Translation: How Artificial Intelligence Works When Translating Language
• Systran Translation Tool
• Designing for Translation

Questions about this event or future events? Send them to digitalgov@gsa.gov.

This talk is hosted by the [Multilingual Community of Practice] (https://digital.gov/communities/multilingual/) and Digital.gov.  Our team will send a reminder email prior to the event that includes your link to join the video

This event will be held over Zoom (see the Zoom computer and device requirements, and FAQs). You can download Zoom Client for Meetings to install the Zoom web browser client beforehand.