Keynote speakers
Mr. Stephen Sekel
Following his retirement from United Nations Headquarters as Director of the Documentation Division at the end of 2008, Stephen Sekel has been active as a consultant on the provision of translation services for a wide range of clients, including the United Nations offices in New York, Geneva, Vienna and Bangkok; the African Development Bank; the International Civil Aviation Organization; the World Bank; the International Monetary Fund; the International Renewable Energy Agency; and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. During his 33-year career in translation at the United Nations, he served as an English translator and reviser, Chief of the English Translation Service, and Deputy Director and later Director of the Documentation Division. He holds a bachelor’s degree (cum laude) from Fordham University in New York City, a licence in modern languages from the Sorbonne Nouvelle and a certificate in legal translation and terminology from the Institut de droit comparé in Paris. He has also studied at the Moscow State Linguistic University, the Centre international d'études pédagogiques in Sèvres, France, and Harvard University.
Keynote outline
The keynote address will compare the skills profile of successful professional translators in a variety of settings – international and multilateral organizations, commercial language service providers, and independent contractors – with the promises being made by the developers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine translation based on systems using Deep Neural Networks. The curricula for existing translator and interpreter training programmes will be examined in the light of these new challenges and claims. Special attention will be paid to such factors as decision-making, cognition, emotion and creativity. The analysis will focus on the medium- to long-term impact of these developments on language service providers (LSP), and will suggest a tentative strategy for repositioning the LSP sector going forward.
