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translation is dead as a profession
Thread poster: Daniel Rich
Stephen Emm
Stephen Emm  Identity Verified
Local time: 11:16
French to English
+ ...
What about the wider picture? Sep 2, 2023

Kay Denney wrote:

Translation is not dead. Right now I'm working on a beautiful text about a wind quintet, advertising its new repertoire to festivals for next year. It's poetic yet precise, lyrical and alluring, and the challenge is to produce a text to match its beauty despite translating into pragmatic English out of poetic French. My niche is safe from MT and AI, at least until I retire (French government just added another couple of years for me, but I reckon I'm still good).


Sounds like you are translating interesting material, but you do realise that the bulk of the material that translated does not involve translating poetic or literary texts?

I would imagine that these sort of texts are one of the areas that remain the most resistant to the incursion of MT and AI - but for those translators translating in more "bread and butter" areas such as technical manuals, contracts, business correspondance, etc. the outlook is not very good.

Your personal experience in very niche area does not really say much about the industry as a whole.

Michele Fauble
Christel Zipfel
Susanna Martoni
Matthias Brombach
writeaway
Lefteris Kritikakis
IrinaN
 
Juan Pablo Sans
Juan Pablo Sans  Identity Verified
Mexico
Local time: 06:16
English to Spanish
+ ...
It's unattractive Jan 19

It still is unattractive.

Gerard Barry
 
Quentin NEVEN
Quentin NEVEN  Identity Verified
Belgium
Local time: 12:16
Member (Jan 2024)
English to French
+ ...
Ouch Jan 20

I just started two weeks ago as a translator.

I love this lifestyle, I love to translate, I love working that way... But I won't lie, seeing this thread has left me quite discouraged.

That being said, I will do whatever I can to make it work.

Lieven Malaise
P.L.F. Persio
Tom in London
Beatriz Ramírez de Haro
 
Lieven Malaise
Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 12:16
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
Don't.... Jan 20

Quentin NEVEN wrote:

I just started two weeks ago as a translator.

I love this lifestyle, I love to translate, I love working that way... But I won't lie, seeing this thread has left me quite discouraged.

That being said, I will do whatever I can to make it work.


...let people on this website discourage you. As I mentioned before I'm glad I only learnt to know Proz 4 years ago, and not when I just started. It's full of discouraged people, either because they refuse or don't know how to adapt or because they don't know how to run a business. Or simply can't make it work because they are not good enough.

If you have what it takes, you will succeed.

Dan Lucas
Becca Resnik
Magnus Rubensson
P.L.F. Persio
 
Lefteris Kritikakis
Lefteris Kritikakis
United States
Local time: 05:16
Member (2023)
English to Greek
+ ...
Translators/Interpreters among the top "impacted" Jan 20

Stephen Emm wrote:
Your personal experience in very niche area does not really say much about the industry as a whole.


Agree. Even without AI, we have over-leveraged TMs and MT.
AI will only make things a lot worse within the next few months. In these forums some part-timers will say that typewriters are not dead, because someone somewhere sold one on ebay two weeks ago. People here love to argue as if they are lawyer-bots trying to find niche exceptions. Some translators will still have work for max 1-2 years more than others (certain project managers and team "cliques" in large agencies like them personally), and will take whatever is left.
The attached is only one of many. Other graphs list "Translators/Interpreters" as in the No. 1 category impacted.
Many accountants in the US saw this automation trend years ago. So they raised their prices to create a nest egg and re-purpose their offices before the inevitable. Translators did not.

Capture
 
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translation is dead as a profession






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