What is it about?
Amid the rapid rise of Neural Machine Translation and subsequent Large Language Models, what space remains for human agency in translation? In her 2024 work, Robert-Foley explores this question through experimental translation, critically engaging with the well-known seven translation procedures proposed by French linguists Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet. She argues that the established norms underlying these widely adopted procedures can be readily programmed into machines, which execute them with remarkable efficiency. In response, she reinterprets these procedures through cultural, historical, political, social, and economic lenses, reanimating them in their full materiality.
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Why is it important?
The rise of the avant-garde is often linked to the invention of photography, just as the emergence of electronic literature is closely tied to the widespread adoption of personal computers. Materiality has long shaped the development of art and literature—but what about translation? Where are Neural Machine Translation (NMT) and Large Language Models (LLMs) taking the field? Robert-Foley (2024) addresses this question through experimental translation, pushing the boundaries of MT in literary contexts and drawing on her engagement with experimental writing. She critiques normative concepts of fidelity, equivalence, and accuracy, while condemning machine translation as a system of mere tokens and numerical values, detached from the binary signifier/signified model. Whether you are a translator grappling with technological anxiety, a translator trainer frequently confronted with the doubts of disheartened students, or a translation researcher uncertain about the future of the field, Robert-Foley’s (2024) Experimental Translation: The Work of Translation in the Age of Algorithmic Production offers a timely resource to restore confidence in human creativity and the irreplaceable value of human agency.
Perspectives
Adopting an experimental perspective, the author reconsiders the possibilities of translation across both the postcolonial, pre-defined physical world and the posthuman, preprogrammed digital world. Human creativity is explored through poetic borrowings, problematic calques, "lit oral" self-translation, the transposition of language as code, modulation as full human intervention, the critique of equivalence, and the blurred intersections among adaptation, equivalence, and translation. This is a hybrid reflection on the impact of machine translation on the field, drawing illuminating examples from avant-garde art and electronic literature to highlight the irreplaceable value of human agency.
Xichen Sun
University of Auckland
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This page is a summary of: Review of Robert-Foley (2024): Experimental Translation: The Work of Translation in the Age of Algorithmic Production, Digital Translation, July 2025, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/dt.25019.sun.
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