However, the underground city of workers
has a very different story to tell. Caught in a proletarian underground
world of mechanical torture, working class slaves away, day after day,
alienated, inside the bellies of demonic machines that keep the city in high
without problems for the upper classes. Without breaks or one gram of
compassion, workers are struggling to make 10-hour shifts at the same time
until they collapse the depletion and they are replaced by the next wave of
worker bees with the sleepy brain.
"There can be no understanding between
the hands and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator".
This was the basic moral of the story of
Lang. Workers represent hands, tirelessly pulling levers and turning knobs
so that the rest of the civilized society can meet its own highest standards,
keeping that power into their own hands, but incapable of make it
completely. Jon Fredersen, the creator and ruler of the city, represents
the brain: frivolous and completely rational in his vision of the exploitation
of the lower class. If it is efficient, it complies with its technological
purpose. But at what price? What dangers does it lead?
Only his son Freder, which is exposed to
the horrors of life in the underworld when one day he scuttles in search of
Mary (the woman that falls in love), is able to feel compassion for their
brothers and sisters underground. And it is he who will fight so that both
parties join in a civilized agreement to play the role of mediator (the heart
connecting the hands and brain).
The basic myth on which stands Translation
is the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, in which men have struggled the
divinity through progress, trying to build the highest tower that exists to
reach the Kingdom of heaven. A project so ambitious and divine that would
end up collapsing on them.
Then, what should we do with this and have
to do all this with the increased growth of the technology of Automatic
translation (or machine translation, MT)
on the translation industry?
First, the language itself played a
significant role in the collapse of the Tower of Babel.Apparently, Dios felt
offended by the audacity of humanity trying to overcome struggling to achieve
divinity. Thus, by way of punishment for his vanity, the Lord confused
their languages so that none of them could communicate, unleashing such chaos
and confusion over the city the same tower and the whole project collapsed
under their feet as a direct result of his divine wrath . Workers,
still unable to communicate among themselves, expanded later by land, founding
their own cultures and civilizations. This would explain our global
cultural and linguistic diversity. Babel was the beginning, but it also
could have been the end.
As humans strive for perfection through
technology, sometimes we get lost in the frenzy of playing God. Why isn't
the automatic translation (or AI) a simplified simulation of human intelligence
in action? Not we will be striving to recreate a sensitive being, a kind
of automat, you might think as a linguist living while can process information
in a few seconds? A be or humanized contraption that could work for hours
and hours without any nutrition or salary? That sounds very similar to Translation.
Then, are we reissuing the myth of the
Tower of Babel, by the way? Would not has it taught us anything the
history of Lang (or Bible)?
Even if those days seem still far in the
future, we are still living on the edge. Because we are already mediators
today, leading the way among linguists who work hard and the spoiled children
of the garden of Eden.
