The Week in Review: March, 31, 2023

Over the last few months, it’s really beginning to seem like there’s a new generative AI popping up on every corner — there’s OpenAI’s ChatGPT, GPT-4, Google’s Bard, Canva’s new text-to-image feature, and dozens more out there.

And this week, Lilt introduced its own version of that: the Contextual AI Engine, the language service provider’s very own model, which specializes in enterprise-grade translation. Read on below for more info on that.

Plus, we’ve got some stories on language access and education, press releases from XL8, GLOBO, and more in this week’s recap.

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Lilt introduces Contextual AI Engine for Translation; Outperforms Google Translate and GPT-4 on accuracy, latency and cost (via Lilt)

Lilt claims to have developed a tool that outdoes Google Translate and GPT-4 in some of the areas that matter the most: accuracy, latency, and cost. With a significantly smaller set of parameters than GPT-4, Lilt’s Contextual AI Engine offers lower computation costs — but its COMET score is higher than both GPT-4 and Google Translate.

“Worldwide consumer interest in generative AI has inspired businesses to rapidly integrate AI into their competitive strategies. We spoke to executives whose perceptions of AI changed, seemingly overnight, from too-risky to must-have,” Spence Green, the company’s CEO said in a press release.

‘The lack of translation is a problem’: Non-English speakers are scrambling for information about the city’s water supply (via The Philadelphia Inquirer)

After a nearby chemical spill left the city’s water supply insecure, Philadelphians received some conflicting messages about whether or not they could use their tap water.

For those with limited English proficiency, the debacle may have been even more confounding. Although the city translated “several” of its communications into Spanish, Chinese, and Korean, many non-English-speakers throughout the city resorted to amateur translations that “mangled” the information a bit.

Hundreds protest over ‘broken’ education policy on Irish language (via The Irish Times)

On Wednesday, protesters in Ireland called on the nation’s minister for education, Norma Foley, to improve the country’s education policy for the Irish language. The protest attracted hundreds of individuals who are dissatisfied with what they see as a lax approach to Irish-language education that does not provide a “satisfactory learning experience.”

“The biggest problem is that there is no overarching comprehensive policy for Irish in the education system,” one activist told the Times. “All these problems arise but there is no proper planning, there is no direction. We are jumping from crisis to crisis.”

Why some people lose their accents but others don’t – linguistic expert (via The Conversation)

“Given the personal and social importance of how someone speaks, why would anyone’s accent change?” That’s the question that kicks off Jane Setter’s most recent essay in The Conversation. If you’ve ever wondered how or why some of your peers lose their regional accents in their native language, take a look at this enlightening read.