Israel’s Flawed Translation Technologies Treat the Palestinian Body Like a Glitch - Failed Architecture
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As it analyses your voice and not your spoken word, the software transforms the human voice into a hostile witness, capable of testifying against the very subject from which the vocalisations came. It supposedly allows the state to determine a person’s guilt or innocence without understanding what they are saying, rendering the spoken word negligible and mere collateral.
However, through his exhibition, Abu Hamdan argues that voices are not pure articulations of sonic data that can be collected, quantified, and identified. Rather, the vocalisations that voices produce are extremely unique to each individual and are further obscured by the diversity of languages and dialects that the individual speaks. Therefore, the voice cannot and should not be separated from speech and language. Recent research has made the imperative role that language plays on the body evident. They conclude that when speaking a second language, the brain attempts to inhibit your native tongue and your instinctive emotions while activating your decision-making skills and prioritising rational over intuitive thought. By suppressing your natural expressions and personality, wouldn’t this, according to LVA 6.50, therefore be visible in your voice? In this context, the language clearly affects the outcome the software generates, potentially misclassifying innocent, non-native speakers as guilty. Deploying LVA 6.50 militarily in a multilingual context such as East Jerusalem, where the Arabic speaker must use their second or third language to communicate with interrogation officers, police, and security officials is bound to fail.
Used at border crossings across the West Bank, the increased usage of rudimentary and flawed speech-operated software such as LVA makes the already intrusive digital surveillance systems even more prejudiced against native Arabic speakers. These have great repercussions when placed within citizens’ daily journeys, as the software’s determination of your guilt can lead to interrogations, detainments, house arrests and imprisonments. These acts of physically disturbing innocent bodies and denying them the ability to reach their destinations, whether it be school, work, medical care, or loved ones, infringes on significant freedoms: their freedom of movement, time, and spatial liberty. Therefore, the application of speech-translation software in this context not only affects Palestinians’ digital privacy but form an additional layer to the existing infrastructures developed to control and constraint an entire population.