ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines some of the key challenges and decision-making involved in the adoption of progressively available technical aids to translation by a medium-sized Language Service Provider (LSP) founded in 1985 in New Zealand. Taking a historical approach, the chapter traces the development of the translation industry in New Zealand from the first contacts between the indigenous Māori population through to the extraordinarily rapid technological advances of the late 20th century. The major developments in technology and the impact they have had on both private- and public-sector Translation and Interpreting activities are placed within the context of global economic changes, with the added dimension of the need to deal with the ‘tyranny of distance’ associated with the country’s remote geographical location. More recent aspects of increasingly sophisticated and challenging translation technologies, including neural machine translation (NMT), are covered on the basis of pragmatic observations, rather than academic research, drawing on the actual experiences of in-house translation staff elicited through a questionnaire. It is hoped that New Zealand LSP experiences are applicable to counterparts in many other countries and that the shared insights prove useful in moving forward in this continuously technologizing field.
