The Translation Chain Project

The Translation Chain Project grew out of a question: what would happen if a short, poetic piece of prose were translated again and again, with the previous translation always used as the basis for the next translation? It certainly sounds like a set-up for the kind of distortion you might find in a game of telephone. However, with seven accomplished translators working with English, Mi’kmaw, German, French, Italian, and Scottish Gaelic, the project showed how human minds can keep a text alive and well. But then came a second question: how would machine translation do by comparison?

Logan Kennedy is a translator and writer from Nova Scotia. With her husband Leonhard Unglaub, she has translated plays, poetry, essays on art and architecture, exhibition texts for major museums in Germany and around the world, academic articles and books, and film subtitles. Her creative writing includes poetry and plays.