Equality and inclusion in translation techniques

Luisa Bentivogli, a researcher from the Machine Translation (MT) Unit, has received an Amazon Research Award with a project aimed at advancing research on topics related to equality and inclusion in translation technology. The objective of the project “Bias mitigation and gender neutralization techniques for automatic translation” is to make automatic translation technology more reliable and inclusive when it comes to the notion of gender. This will be achieved following two research directions: on the one hand, by reducing the tendency of current systems to overproduce masculine references and perpetuate gender stereotypes in their outputs, while on the other hand, by going beyond the masculine/feminine dichotomy and developing systems capable of translating into a neutral language that avoids unnecessary and potentially discriminatory gender specifications.

“The time is ripe for an extended definition of translation quality – says Luisa Bentivogli – leading to the development of next-generation MT systems capable of avoiding the harms caused by biased outputs, where women and non-binary people are often misrepresented or diminished. This award is an important recognition of the research path that the MT group started two years ago on a hot topic not only for researchers but also for society at large”.

More info at: https://www.amazon.science/research-awards/recipients/luisa-bentivogli-fall-2021