Mobile translation applications On the verge of a post-Babel world 2.0?

移动翻译应用程序对翻译活动和翻译研究有什么影响？这是如何影响用户对翻译的看法的？这是翻译被弱化和贬低为低自主性职业趋势的又一步吗？（O’hagan 2016, Kenny 2016）我们是否正处在一个语言障碍不复存在的世界的风口上？该项目将通过调查最受欢迎的应用程序（如谷歌Translate和Microsoft Translator）中使用的不同类型的机器翻译（MT）来探索这些问题。然后，它将通过调查和焦点小组来研究用户如何实际参与这些应用程序以及他们的期望，以发现它们是否促进了更大的跨文化交流，并改变了我们与其他语言和文化的关系。最后，它将探讨4G/5G移动网络的普及、离线翻译和手机漫游使用的增加如何使人们更多地参与这些应用程序，以及翻译研究如何应对这一现象。

What effects are mobile translation applications having on translation as an activity and translation studies? How is this affecting users' perceptions of translation? Is this another step in the trend of deskilling and devaluing translation into a low autonomy profession? (O'Hagan 2016, Kenny 2016) Are we on the cusp of a world where the language barrier is no more? The project will explore these questions by investigating the different types of machine translation (MT) used in the most popular of these apps, such as Google Translate and Microsoft Translator. It will then examine how users are actually engaging with these apps and their expectations through a survey and focus groups to discover whether they are enabling greater cross-cultural communication and changing our relationship with other languages and cultures. Finally, it will explore how the spread of 4G/5G mobile networks, offline translations and the increased use of mobile phones while roaming are allowing people to engage more with these apps and how translation studies is responding to this phenomenon.