Usbek & Rica – Three journalists talk about how AI helps them in their work

« The World has always published articles in English. In the 1960s, there was already a Monde in English. It was a weekly based on a selection of articles from Monde translated into English. Subsequently, we translated large investigations which we thought had a strong international resonance. What changes today, with this English-speaking edition, is that it involves creating a mirror site of the site of the Monde in French, where around a hundred articles are published every day. If it had not been for the progress of AI in translation, we would not have been able to do The World in English as it exists today. Above all, it saves time and money.

We use translation software DeepLwhich offers a very good level of translation. But it’s far from perfect, especially for the type of news we deal with. We work on living matter. Between the time of publication in French and that in English, even if it occurs an hour later, the content may change slightly between the French and English publications. There may be small things to update.

There is also a whole style guide for Monde in English which must be applied to translations, and which DeepL does not necessarily do, or only in a limited way. We plugged a glossary into DeepL to tell it how we spell specific terms (for example, “Benyamin Netanyahu”), but it’s more complicated when it goes beyond a single word. This customization of the translation is taken care of by the translators and the editorial staff. The same goes for the adaptation (contextual, editor’s note) of certain papers, notably those relating to French politics, and which goes beyond translation.