Lost in Translation: Unveiling Structural Injustice in Algorithmic Language Technologies

The project explores how translation errors are not just technical glitches but reflect deeper issues of cultural erasure and systemic oppression. It seeks to combat structural injustice in the online spaces by showing how injustice operates within digital social institutions and technologies that perpetuate harm. To do this, we foreground lived experiences by conducting on-the-ground surveys among professional translators based in Ghana which closely interrogate how these technologies work. Early results show frustrations with inconsistency, mistranslation errors, inability to understand and translate cultural elements, and inaccuracies in results. While seemingly niche and isolated, underscore the “coded gaze,” where the biases and preferences of technology designers lead to the erasure and misrepresentation of non-Western cultures. We thus make the case that translation technologies, which are part of the social organization, fail to accurately represent non-Western languages and cultures and propagate linguistic and cultural oppression. Fundamentally, this study calls for a socially-just design of translation technologies to prevent harm to marginalized communities. It emphasizes the need for designers to reflect on how their technologies can ex-code cultural practices and ensure accurate representation, address systemic injustices embedded in existing translation technologies and to respect and preserve the lingua-cultural practices of all communities.