News
INTERACT Crisis Translation Training in Sierra Leone
In November 2020, the INTERACT Crisis Translation training caught the attention of Jonas Knauerhase and Pious Mannah of YMCA Sierra Leone when running risk reduction events with young people across Sierra Leone. They decided to use the INTERACT training as an opportunity of building translation capacity, while working with experienced local linguists and multilingual disaster managers. They organized a group of bilinguals to translate the UN Disaster Risk Reduction terminology into Kono, Krio, Limba, Mende, and Themne. Chloe Franklin, a freelance translator and UCL graduate, delivered a version of the INTERACT Crisis Translator training to the group between March and July 2021. She shares her experience in the October 2021 INTERACT blog.
INTERACT project recognised by the EU’s Innovation Radar
We are happy to announce that the INTERACT project has been recognised by the EU’s Innovation Radar for the following outputs:
(1) Policy recommendations for translation-enabled crisis communication (Dublin City University, University College London, and The University of Aukland)
(2) Ethics recommendations for translation-enabled crisis communication (Dublin City University, Translators without Borders and University College London)
(3) Online, free course content for training volunteer citizen translators for translation and post-editing in crisis settings (Dublin City University, Translators without Borders and University College London)
Research on crisis translation presented at DCU Open Day event
Dr Alessandra Rossetti (DCU) presented INTERACT research at the DCU Open Day event as one of the many practical applications of studying translation and foreign languages. High school students and their parents could hear and ask questions about INTERACT research, as well as take the leaflets and watch a video on earthquake preparedness.
INTERACT materials presented alongside promotial materials from the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (DCU)
INTERACT research at Translating Europe Forum 2019
The INTERACT team was well represented at the Translating Europe Forum 2019, where Professor Sharon O'Brien (DCU) and Ellie Kemp (Translators without Borders) delivered talks during the session "Helping the helpers". The session focused on the role of translation and interpreting in the context of crises and disaters.
Professor O'Brien (left) during her presentation at the Translating Europe Forum
Research on crisis translation presented at Swansea Science Festival
Dr Federico Federici (UCL), his Masters student Jessica Colavecchia, and Dr Alessandra Rossetti (DCU) presented INTERACT research at the Swansea Science Festival, which took place at the National Waterfront Museum on October 26 and 27, 2019. Interested attendes could ask questions about research on crisis translation and check out the posters (available here and here), while kids could try the eye tracking and its application to a video on earthquake preparedness. At the event, about 200 people showed interest in the INTERACT project.
INTERACT at Fourth Disaster Risk Reduction Conference
Dr Patrick Cadwell (DCU) presented the work of INTERACT and INTERACT partner Translators without Borders at the 4th Disaster Risk Reduction Conference held at the University of Warsaw on October 23-25, 2019. A theme of the conference focused on using natural systems to protect people from hazards or provide them with resources like water or energy. Pictured on the left is one such solution—the green roof of the University of Warsaw’s new library building. The slides presented by Dr Cadwell can be seen on our Publications page.
Project on training citizen translators recognised as disruptive
INTERACT research on training citizen translators, led by Dr Federico Federici (UCL) and Dr Patrick Cadwell (DCU) in collaboration with New Zealand Red Cross, has been shortlisted for #MadeAtUCL’s top 100 disruptive research projects. Further information is available here, while the full article outling this project can be accessed here.
INTERACT at Probe 2019 European Researcher Night
Prof Sharon O'Brien and Dr Ryoko Sasamoto (both DCU) participated in the Probe 2019 European Researcher Night in Trinity College Dublin on 27 September 2019. Jessica Colavecchia, a Masters student from Centras at UCL, also visited Dublin to participate in the event on behalf of UCL. Interested audience could watch a video on earthquake preparedness (in Japanese and in English) while their eyes were being monitored with an eye tracker. The event aimed at highlighting the role of translation in preparing for and responding to crises.
INTERACT at Translating Europe Workshop 2019
Dr Patrick Cadwell (DCU) was invited to give a talk at the Translating Europe Workshop held in Athens, Greece, on 21 June. The event revolved around translation and community interpreting in crisis settings. Dr Cadwell's talk was titled "Crisis Translation and Interpreting: Reasons and Methods for Training". The slides are available here.
Dr Patrick Cadwell (left) during his talk at the Translating Europe Workshop
INTERACT coordinator at the Nida School of Translation Studies 2019
INTERACT coordinator, Dr Sharon O'Brien, gave three lectures at the Nida School of Translation Studies (NIST 2019), held at Misano Adriatico, Italy, from May 20 to May 31. The theme of this year's event was "Translating and Interpreting in Contexts of Conflict and Crisis". Dr O'Brien's lectures dealt with crisis translation, technologies in crisis translation, and ethics.
Professor Sharon O'Brien (right) talking to attendees of NIST 2019
Collaboration between INTERACT and New Zealand Red Cross
New Zealand Red Cross has recently released a Disaster Resiliance Case Study based on their recent collaboration with INTERACT researchers. A description of the case study is available here.
INTERACT Citizen Translators training
On 30 April 2019, while on secondment in New Zealand, Dr Federico Federici (UCL) delivered the INTERACT Citizen Translators training to over 25 perspective translators from linguistically diverse communities in the Auckland region. The flier of this training event can be seen here.
Alessandra Rossetti (left) and Sharon O'Brien (right) after the viva.
Successful PhD thesis defense
INTERACT member Alessandra Rossetti successfully defended her PhD thesis titled "Simplifying, Reading, and Machine Translating Health Content: An Empirical Investigation of Usability". Alessandra was supervised by Dr Sharon O'Brien. Her examiners were Dr Maeve Olohan and Dr Mary Phelan, and her chair was Dr Padraig Murphy.
Alessandra's research was conducted as part of INTERACT's Work Package 3, dealing with simplification of health content. Further details and practical recommendations emerging from this PhD research can be found here.
Lecture from Sharon O'Brien (INTERACT coordinator)
Dr Sharon O’Brien from DCU was invited to give a lecture at the University of Graz and the University of Vienna on the INTERACT project in March/April 2019. Slides available here.
Eric DeLuca during his presentation in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at DCU
Translators without Borders secondment to DCU
Mr Eric DeLuca, from Translators without Borders, spent two weeks on secondment at Dublin City University in February 2019. Eric collaborated with the INTERACT team on MT evaluation, ethics, and simplification of content.
Lunch hour lecture at UCL
Dr Federico Federici delivered a lunch hour lecture at UCL titled "We don't need no translator: Risk communication in multilingual societies". You can check the lecture here.
Announcing the publication of the report “The International Humanitarian Sector and Language Translation in Crisis Situations"
INTERACT team members from UCL, ASU and DCU jointly conducted interviews at the end of 2018 with 20 representatives of international intergovernmental organisations, and non-governmental organisations on the degree to which the service efforts of such organisations are informed by commitment to multilingual communication and language translation. Our goal was to understand how these organisations contribute to risk reduction and improved community resilience via translation. This short report provides an assessment of the current state of practice and key language access issues in the humanitarian sector. Download the report here.
Dr Patrick Cadwell (right) and Paul Warambo (left) at the Translators without Borders centre in Nairobi.
DCU secondment to Translators without Borders (TWB) in Kenya
Dr Patrick Cadwell of DCU was seconded recently to the Nairobi offices of INTERACT network member TWB. Patrick worked with Paul Warambo of TWB in Kenya and Eric DeLuca of TWB in the USA on a series of evaluations of machine translations of emergency messaging from French to Swahili. Patrick and Eric are currently analysing the data generated in the evaluations as part of Eric's secondment to DCU.
DCU Campus choir sings a song that commemorates the victims of the Tohuku area earthquake and tsunami
The DCU Campus choir performs “A Flower Remembered”, a song composed by John Rutter in memory of the victims of the Tohuku area earthquake and tsunami, March 2011. Listen here (MP3 format or M4A format).
The DCU Campus Choir is an amateur choir of staff and post-graduate students and is directed by Ms. Christina Whyte. In this recording the choir is accompanied by Mr. Eoin Tierney.
The lyrics of this beautiful song go as follows:
"A flower remembered can never witherForever blooming as bright as dayIt's fragrance ling-ring like music softly playingA gentle voice that sayingI'll never fade awayI hear the echoes of many voicesSometimes they're distant sometimes so clearThrough all the sounds of life they seem to whisperWill you remember, Will you rememberWill you remember"
Jamie (NZRC) during her presentation at the ISCRAM conference.
NZRC paper awarded best insight paper award at the ISCRAM Conference
INTERACT collaborator Jamie Shackleton (New Zealand Red Cross) was awarded the best insight paper award at the ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience for her paper "Preparedness in diverse communities: Citizen translation for community engagement". The conference took place on 4-7 November 2018 in Wellington (New Zealand).
This publication is a result of a project that commenced with the secondments from DCU and UCL to the University of Auckland (NZ) in the summer of 2017 and is available through our Publications page.
Catarina Cruz Silva (Unbabel) presenting the INTERACT poster at WMT 2018
INTERACT present at the 4th Conference on Machine Translation (WMT18)
INTERACT ESR researcher Catarina Cruz Silva (Unbabel) attended the 3rd Conference on Machine Translation (WMT18) held in Brussels on October, 31st and November 1st. There, she presented her joint work with INTERACT Researchers Dr Chao-Hong Liu and Prof Andy Way entitled "Extracting In-domain Training Corpora for Neural Machine Translation Using Data Selection Methods".
You can find a link to the publication in our Publications page.
INTERACT present at the 14th China Workshop on Machine Translation (CWMT 2018)
INTERACT ER researcher Dr Chao-Hong Liu attended the 14th China Workshop on Machine Translation (CWMT 2018) organised by the Chinese Information Processing Society of China and held at Wuyi University the 25 and 26 October 2018. There, he presented joint work with INTERACT researchers Catarina Cruz Silva (Unbabel) and Prof Andy Way in a paper entitled "Pivot Machine Translation Using Chinese as a Pivot Language".
You can find the publication in our Publications page.
From left to right, INTERACT researchers at Unbabel premises: Catarina Silva (Unbabel), Helena Moniz (Unbabel, Khetam Al Sharou (UCL), Chao-Hong Liu (DCU) and André Martins (Unbabel).
2018 UCL and DCU Secondments at Unbabel finished
The 2018 UCL and DCU secondments to INTERACT's industrial partner Unbabel came to an end in September 2018. Prior to their departure, INTERACT researchers, Ms Khetam Al Sharou (UCL) and Dr Chao-Hong Liu (DCU) shared the work they had done during their respective secondments with Unbabel employees. Their work at Unbabel forms the basis for the development of the Greek <> English <> Arabic Machine Translation system for crisis translation. This work was carried out in collaboration with other INTERACT colleagues.
After a brief introduction to the INTERACT project, Khetam presented her work in Work Package 2, Crisis Translation Policy, which included assessing Arabic NLP tools and preparing data for building a bidirectional Arabic <> English MT system together with Chao-Hong. Chao-Hong then explained the architecture behind the MT engines created and the approach used to develop them. Khetam also gave an overview of the data preparation process and presented the human evaluation of the performance of the created English <> Arabic MT engine. In addition to that, she explored the potential use of MT in disaster settings and talked about the project’s visions for future use of (open source) translation technologies in training volunteer translators for crisis scenarios.
Cochrane Colloquium Edinburgh, 16–18 September 2018
INTERACT ESR Alessandra Rossetti attended the Cochrane Colloquium which took place in Edinburgh in September 2018. There, she presented her contribution, entitled: "Spanish Translations of Cochrane Plain Language Summaries: Assessing the Impact of a Controlled Language Checker on Machine Translation Quality".
Main image of the ISCRAM Conference.
Publication by NZRC at the ISCRAM Conference
INTERACT collaborator Jamie Shackleton (New Zealand Red Cross) presented her paper "Preparedness in diverse communities: Citizen translation for community engagement" at the upcoming ISCRAM Asia Pacific 2018: Innovating for Resilience, which took place on 4-7 November 2018 in Wellington (New Zealand).
This publication is a result of a project that commenced with the secondments from DCU and UCL to the University of Auckland (NZ) in the summer of 2017.
Alessandra Rossetti (DCU) during her presentation at the SIG Writing Conference.
Interact present at the SIG Writing 2018 Conference
29-31 August 2018 the SIG Writing Conference 2018 took place at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). During the Conference, INTERACT ESR Alessandra Rossetti (DCU) presented a contribution based on the work she carried out while on secondment at The Arizona State University in late 2017. She reported on a study carried out to measure the authors' satisfaction and end users' comprehension when using Accrolinx to write Cochrane Plain Language Summaries.
The slides of her presentation are available through our Publications page.
The community translators posing with their certificates.
Community Translation Launch
On 4 August 2018, Wellington Region Emergency Management Office (WREMO) and New Zealand Red Cross organised a launch at the WREMO headquarters in Wellington to mark the successful completion of a community translation project. It involved 45 volunteers who translated the WREMO Earthquake Preparedness Guide into 15 community languages. Representatives of each community were handed a certificate to acknowledge their contribution to the project by the Minister of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, Hon Kris Faafoi (far right in the first picture). The contribution made by the INTERACT team was acknowledged by the Minister as well as by WREMO and NZ Red Cross representatives as instrumental to the successful completion of the project. This contribution included Translation 101 training provided by Drs Federico Federici (UCL) and Patrick Cadwell (DCU). A local member of INTERACT, Dr Minako O’Hagan (UoA), said a few words, marking the occasion as a milestone to pave the way for the long-term needs of community translation. Several translators expressed an interest in being involved in ongoing projects and in receiving formal training. It was an energising event to celebrate citizen engagement in building a better and more resilient multi-cultural society through translation in times of crises.
Ms Khetam Al Sharou (UCL) and Dr Chao-Hong Liu (DCU) at the Unbabel premises.
DCU and UCL Secondments to Unbabel
INTERACT researchers Ms Khetam Al Sharou (University College London) and Dr Chao-Hong Liu (Dublin City University) are currently on secondments at Unbabel.
Khetam is focusing on work for INTERACT's Work Packages 2 (Crisis Translation Policy) and 4 (Crisis Machine Translation), while Chao-Hong is focusing on Work Package 4. The secondment is a great opportunity to collaborate on-site with Unbabel's INTERACT researchers Dr Helena Moniz and Dr André Martin.
Together with Dr Emmanouela Patiniotaki (UCL), Khetam has focused on preparing in-domain data on crisis/disaster policies and health-related issues for training and testing the crisis machine translation (MT) systems. As part of their collaboration, Khetam and Chao-Hong are analysing the quality of various Arabic<>English MT systems, as well as assessing several tools that have been used for the development of Arabic MT systems. Their secondments will come to an end towards the end of the summer, in late September and the beginning of October.
Dr Pat Cadwell (left) and Dr Sharon O'Brien (right)
DCU Secondment to Cochrane
Dr Pat Cadwell and Dr Sharon O’Brien spent two and one month respectively on secondment at INTERACT partner Cochrane in Freiburg over July and August 2018. During their secondments, they worked with various colleagues in Cochrane to investigate citizen translator training and management needs and further developed course materials on translation, machine translation and post-editing.
Dr Sharon O'Brien (DCU)
Article on disaster communication in RTÉ Brainstorm
Dr Sharon O’Brien, DCU, and INTERACT Co-ordinator, writes about Crisis Translation for RTÉ Brainstorm:
https://www.rte.ie/eile/brainstorm/2018/0730/981922-how-to-communicate-in-a-disaster/
Prof. Minako O'Hagan (UoA)
Article in Newsroom (NZ) on the Thai Cave Rescue
Prof Minako O’Hagan, University of Auckland, and INTERACT collaborator draws on her experience in Crisis Translation to highlight how multilingual communication played a crucial role in the Thai cave rescue in a piece published by the New Zealand-based news and current affairs site Newsroom:
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/@future-learning/2018/07/16/154608/importance-of-languages-in-thai-rescue#
Irish National Risk Assessment Strategy
The INTERACT project made a submission to Ireland’s National Risk Assessment Strategy, highlighting the need to consider Ireland’s changing linguistic and cultural demographics and that this needed to be considered when communicating for disasters. The 2018 Risk Assessment Strategy acknowledges that: we have “a need to be responsible to the changing nature of society, for example in terms of the needs of a now multilingual society and the potential for language to become a barrier in accessing Government communications and services.” (p.45)
Emmanouela during her talk at Unbabel.
The audience to the talk during another point of the presentation.
Talk about accessibility at Unbabel
On April, 20th Dr Emmanouela Patiniotaki gave a talk about accessibility at Unbabel. During her talk, she shared her vision on accessibility with the audience: the challenge to include the whole population, rather than simply working on the needs for specific groups. This view gives us a new perspective on accessibility in crisis situations. She reviewed the policies in the EU and several countries in terms of accessible content, which she has studied collectively in order to design a framework for Inclusive Online Education. In her research, she has combined input from a range of fields: Audiovisual Translation, Disability Studies, Web Accessibility, Online Learning, and Assistive Technology, leading a rights-based approach with strong references to emancipatory research based on the principles of equality and inclusion.
Emmanouela also talked to the audience about the importance of including those mostly affected by research in the research process, with examples from social movements in Greece, in which she has participated as an activist in order to build a clear, comprehensive view. The "Movement of Disabled Artists" activists' group, who have been offering accessible experience in theatre, cinema, and other Arts-related scenarios, make reformations in facilities where they aim to provide accessible content, in order to make sure that no one is excluded, regardless of their physical status. She also introduced the "Movement for the Deinstitutionalisation of Disabled People" initiative and conveyed a clear message that disabled groups have meaningful lives and their impairments transform into disability enforced by society. A very good example of involvement in this initiative comes from the "Zero Tolerance Movement", who fight for the rights of disabled people, with a rights-based approach and under the framework of the social model of disability.
Emmanouela is about to conclude her first secondment to Unbabel and will have a second one in mid 2019.
Further insights: The World report on disability (2011) established that disabled people constitute 15% of the world population. In 2015 it was reported that 14% of the European citizens aged between 15 and 64 have some sort of basic activity difficulty.
From left to right: Dr Emmanouela Patiniotaki (UCL), Dr Helena Moniz (Unbabel), Dr Federico Federiciand (UCL) and Dr Chao-Hong Liu (DCU) during their secondments at Unbabel.
From left to right: Dr João Graça, Dr Emmanouela Patiniotaki and Dr Chao-Hong Liu
UCL and DCU secondments to Unbabel
INTERACT researchers Dr Helena Moniz, Ms Catarina Silva and Dr André Martins have welcomed Dr Emmanouela Patiniotaki (UCL), Dr Federico Federici (UCL) and Dr Chao-Hong Liu (DCU) on their secondments to Unbabel. Soon they will also be joined by Ms Khetam Al Sharou (UCL), who will start a 6-month secondment at Unbabel in June. During their time in Lisbon, they are advancing the research in Work Packages 2 (Policies), 4 (Machine Translation) and 5 (Training for citizen translators) interacting with other members of the network:
Federico, Emmanouela and Helena are working with Dr Carla Parra Escartín (DCU) in WP2 on language policies in various countries for crisis situations.
Emmanouela, Khetam and Chao-Hong are also focusing on data curation.
Chao-Hong, Catarina and André are also building machine translation engines (WP4) involving Greek and Arabic with the assistance of Emmanouela and Khetam.
Federico and Emmanouela are also working with Dr Sharon O'Brien (DCU) on the development of training materials for citizen translators (WP5). More concretely, they are developing modules on post-editing, training, and accessibility.
From left to right: Dr Carla Parra Escartín, Dr Minako O'Hagan and Ms Khetam Al Sharou during the final round table.
Translating crisis: Translation in disaster preparedness and relief seminar at the University of Auckland
On 26 March 2018 INTERACT members Minako O'Hagan (UoA), Khetam Al Sharou (UCL) and Carla Parra Escartín (DCU) gave a 2-hour workshop as part of the Disaster Prevention and Management Seminar series focusing on translation in crisis scenarios.
After a short introduction by INTERACT member Jay Marlow, Minako first talked about community translation and the work done in INTERACT related to this topic. Next, Khetam gave a brief introduction to Machine Translation and its potential use in disaster settings, and finally Carla focused on the ethical aspects that should be taken into consideration when dealing with translation in crisis scenarios. The workshop concluded with a round table where the speakers interacted with the audience.
The workshop, open to the general public, was attended mainly by researchers at the University of Auckland and members of NGOs and governmental bodies involved in disaster preparedness and response.
Dr Matthew Hunt during his presentation at DCU.
Ethics at the intersections of Crisis Translation, Humanitarian Innovation and Information as a Humanitarian Good
The INTERACT project and the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies at DCU had the good fortune to host a seminar by Dr Matthew Hunt on 22 March 2018. Matthew Hunt is an Associate Professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. A faculty member in the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, he is also a researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation and associate member of the McGill Biomedical Ethics Unit and Institute for Health and Social Policy. He presented some thought-provoking ideas about humanitarian innovation and how it might relate to translation, in general, and translation technology specifically. The talk was attended by DCU researchers from the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies, the School of Nursing and Human Science, the School of Computing, as well as colleagues from Deaf Studies at TCD. His visit to DCU was funded through the James M Flaherty Research Scholarship from the Ireland Canada University Foundation.
The participants of the AMTA 2018 Workshop on Technologies for MT of Low Resourced Languages (LoResMT).
MT Work for Low Resourced Languages
INTERACT researcher Dr Chao-Hong Liu (DCU) has been involved in the research of machine translation (MT) for low resourced languages. This research is highly relevant to crisis translation, as in the case of a crisis situation low resourced languages could be as much needed as any other major language. As a result of his work, he has co-authored a paper working on MT for a low resourced language pair (Chinese-Portuguese). The paper will be presented in the 11th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2018) in Miyazaki, Japan. Additionally, he has been the main organiser of the AMTA 2018 Workshop on Technologies for MT of Low Resource Languages (LoResMT) held in Boston, USA. The workshop proceedings gather work on Catalan, Finnish, Filipino, Irish, Korean, Latvian, Quechua, Russian, Sami, Tibetan and Turkic languages, among others.
For links to the publications, visit our publications page.
Picture of INTERACT members with researchers on disaster management from the University of Auckland.
Finished secondment from DCU to the University of Auckland
Dr Dónal O’Mathúna’s INTERACT secondment to the University of Auckland took place in two parts: 25 June to 11 July 2017 and 30 January to 9 March 2018.
During this second part of the secondment, a number of meetings took place with Professor Jay Marlowe to plan for and carry out activities related to WP6 on ethics and crisis translation. Dónal also had other meetings with the INTERACT team members in New Zealand at the time, Dr Carla Parra Escartín (DCU) and Ms Khetam Al Sharou (UCL). Part of the work carried out with Jay and Carla has consisted on planning the writing of a journal article on ethics and crisis translation to be submitted in July 2018.
During his stay in New Zealand, Dónal also liased with researchers working on disaster management and research and gave a talk at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch about ethics and disaster management and research.
Catarina and part of the MT team from DCU.
From left to right: Longyue Wang, Dr Chao-Hong Liu, Catarina Silva, Alberto Poncelas and Prof Andy Way.
Unbabel Secondment to Dublin City University
Unbabel researcher Catarina Silva did a 1-month secondment to DCU from late January 2018 til the end of February. During her time in DCU she worked on WP4: Crisis Machine Translation.
During her secondment, she engaged in meetings and discussions with DCU researchers involved in the INTERACT project and particularly with researchers from DCU's MT team and INTERACT members Dr Chao-Hong Liu and Dr Andy Way. Their work focused on exploring the efficiency of using pivoting in MT and also data selection techniques for domain training.
Beginning of Will's talk at DCU, which was well attended.
Microsoft Secondment to DCU
Will Lewis (Microsoft) recently visited DCU to discuss the work in Work Package 4: Crisis Machine Translation. Besides meeting the other INTERACT members at DCU, Will gave a very interesting talk entitled "Challenges and Applications of Machine Translation for Low-Resource Languages".
INTERACT Panel at IATIS Conference, Hong Kong, July 2018
The INTERACT project will host a panel called “Crisis Communication and Translation” at the 2018 International Association for Translation and Interpreting Studies conference in Hong Kong. Presenters include Minako O’Hagan (University of Auckland), Khetam Al Sharou (UCL) and Sharon O’Brien (DCU), among others.
For a list of their presentations have a look at our Publications page.
Europe House in London.
INTERACT Panel at Translating Voices Translating Regions Conference, London, December 2017
The INTERACT project presented a panel at the Vth Translating Voices, Translating Regions Conference, organized by Dr Federico Federici and Dr Christophe Declercq of University College London. The conference took place from 13-15 December, 2017, at Europe House, 32 Smith Square, Westminster, London.
There were six contributions from INTERACT partners focussing on policy issues, training citizen translators, humanitarian translation, and translation and simplification of health content. Further information on these presentations can be found here. You can also read a blog post about the panel and authored by Hayley Hassan (Cochrane) here.
Dr Helena Moniz during her presentation to the Master students at DCU.
Unbabel Secondment to Dublin City University
Unbabel researcher Dr Helena Moniz did a 2-week secondment at DCU in late November 2017. During her time in DCU she engaged in meetings and discussions with DCU researchers involved in the INTERACT project. She focused primarily on Work Packages 4 (Training Citizen Translators) and 5 (Crisis Machine Translation), but also engaged in discussions related to WP6 (Ethical Challenges for Crisis Communication) and the project in general.
During her stay she also had the opportunity to engage in discussions with other researchers in DCU and the ADAPT research Centre. She also gave a talk to the students in the Masters in Translation Technology at DCU about the MT workflow in Unbabel.
Future Out Loud podcast on Machine Translation
During her secondment at Arizona State University (ASU), Sharon O'Brien (DCU) was invited to join Andrew Maynard (Director of the Risk Innovation Lab, ASU) and Heather Ross (Clinical Assistant Professor and Doctor of Nursing Practice, ASU) in their Future Out Loud podcast series to talk about machine translation and the future of language work and technologies. You can listen to them here.
Jamie Shackleton (New Zealand Red Cross) during her talk at the University of Auckland.
Talk from New Zealand Red Cross at the University of Auckland
Jamie Shackleton (New Zealand Red Cross) recently visited the University of Auckland (UoA). During her visit, Jamie shared her experience in organising a community translation project for the Wellington Regional Emergency Management Office (WREMO). Jamie’s talk was wonderfully received by UoA postgraduate students who are taking Community Interpreting and Contextual Studies for which Crisis Translation was taught earlier by the INTERACT team. The students’ final project hypothetically replicated Jamie’s role in the WREMO project with some interesting results. These will be reported by the INTERACT members Patrick Cadwell (DCU) and Minako O'Hagan (UoA) in the forthcoming Translating Voices Translating Regions conference in London.
DCU researchers Sharon O'Brien and Alessandra Rossetti at Arizona State University.
DCU Secondment to Arizona State University
DCU Researchers Alessandra Rossetti and Dr Sharon O'Brien on their secondment at Arizona State University where they are working on simplification of health content.
Among their research activities they are gathering data on comprehension of simplified health content.
From left to right: André Martins (Unbabel), Chao-Hong Liu (DCU), Andy Way (DCU), João Graça (Unbabel) and Helena Moniz (Unbabel)
DCU Secondment to Unbabel
DCU Researchers Dr Chao-Hong Liu and Prof Andy way did their 3-month and 1-month secondments at Unbabel last summer 2017.
During their stay they focused on advancing the work on Work Package 4: Crisis Machine Translation.
From left to right: Sharon O'Brien (DCU), Federico Federici (UCL) and Sally Carlton (CLING, NZ).
Interview on the Plains FM radio station (NZ)
On July 4th, 2017, Sharon O’Brien and Federico Federici were interviewed by Sally Carlton for her human rights radio programme “Speak Up Korerotia” on the Canterbury (New Zealand) Plains FM radio station. Sally is part of the ‘CLING’ group (Community Language Information Network Group) who research the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse communities in crisis scenarios.
You can listen to the interview with Sharon and Federico here. The interview also includes contributions from Jay Marlowe and J.C. Gaillard from the University of Auckland.
From left to right: Minako O’Hagan (University of Auckland), Federico Federici (UCL), Sharon O’Brien (DCU), Pat Cadwell (DCU), Jamie Shackelton (Red Cross NZ).
Workshop at Red Cross New Zealand
The Interact Team on secondment to University of Auckland held a Workshop at Red Cross New Zealand in Wellington on June 30th. This was attended by members of the Red Cross as well as Interpreting New Zealand and a number of Emergency Response organisations from the Wellington area. In the picture (left to right)
Federico Federici (UCL) with Italian Embassador Fabrizio Marcelli.
Visit to the Embassy of Italy in New Zealand
The Italian Ambassador Fabrizio Marcelli welcomed Federico Federici at the Embassy of Italy in Wellington on June 29th. On learning about the project aims, the Embassy agreed to support the Interact team by disseminating, through its mailing lists and social media contacts, information about the project and a link to WP2 survey on needs for multilingual information in crises.
Alessandra Rosetti (DCU) and Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez (DCU) in the Cochrane office in Oxford (UK).
First Interact Secondment: DCU to Cochrane
DCU researchers Alessandra Rossetti and Dr Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez open the INTERACT Secondment Series at Cochrane UK in Oxford
On May 2nd, 2017, only two weeks after INTERACT’s kick-off meeting held at Dublin City University (DCU) on 10-11 April 2017, Alessandra Rossetti and Dr Silvia Rodríguez Vázquez started their secondment at Cochrane UK in Oxford, the city where Cochrane was founded back in 1993. The two DCU researchers are spending there two months and one month respectively, working on a two-stage usability study.
INTERACT project kicks off on April 10th and 11th at Dublin City University
The Interact Crisis Translation project was launched at Dublin City University on April 10th and 11th, 2017. The first day was attended by representatives from Network partners including, Arizona Start University, Cochrane, Dublin City University, Translators without Borders, Microsoft, Unbabel, and University College London. On the second day, Network members received training on Ethics in Crisis Scenarios, Crisis Communication on the Ground, and Cultural Aspects of Crisis Communication.
