Do translators have a future?

[Magnet952]

Any translators out there? Would you advise an interested 20-something to do a translation MA in the hope of working as a freelance translator (German / French / Spanish to English) or is AI translation advancing so rapidly that you don't see much call for human translators in the future?
Thank you for any insights.

@Magnet952 I do know someone who still translates academic papers for publication. I also know someone who owned a translation company. DD did MFL degree and she said don’t look at translation. It’s computer programmes. That was 10 plus years ago. I’ve no doubt some people love it and spoken translation might be ok but my DD felt it was very narrow. It’s someone else’s words after all. DD had to do some translation as part of her degree when abroad and wasn’t keen on it for a job. None of her friends did it. Pay? Would you get the fees back?

Definitely not. It’s a small field that is getting smaller and smaller due to advances in tech, processing speeds, AI, text and handwriting recognition, voice recognition etc, more and more can be done in real time or almost real time.

Does AI translate nuance correctly though? Can it pick up sarcasm and jokes? My friend who was a translator at the UN said it was vital to explain what was a joke to his clients, or they wouldn't be understanding the speeches properly.

I think there are some more niche areas where technology will take time to catch up - court translators, for example. I'm not sure I'd want to base my career prospects on that, though. If she loves the language and would be interested in using it for other things (teaching? Living abroad?) then of course doing a degree in that language would still be a good idea.

What about translating for medical appointments. I do appreciate sometimes I need to use a language line but it is so much better to have a F2F. . Though telephone is better than nothing

I've been translating (technical) documents where I work for the last 7 years. In that time Google Translate has gone from producing utter gibberish to pieces where I only have to correct the odd word here and there. Now my colleagues use Google and then send me the results to proof read and I've been moved onto other admin related tasks.

We use them in psychiatric wards. An actual person is essential and luckily we have some really lovely translators come in. I think even with AI a lot of essential information could be misunderstood or lost.

If you have the cost of a masters though, is it worth it? Other native speakers pop into hospitals. Why pay for the masters?

Would not advise no. Sadly.

I did a translation MA in my 20s and have been translating full-time for nearly 30 years. I'm freelance, I'm the main earner and I love it. Last year my turnover halved.

Reliable clients who I have been working for for decades now want me to post-edit AI for a fraction of the price. By the time I've looked at it, thought how I would have translated it if I hadn't seen it, worked out what's wrong with it, whether it will kind of do the job, and corrected it if necessary, it's taken me twice as long as if I'd translated it myself and I'm paid less. It's also bloody tedious. I turned it down but then my earnings fell off a cliff. I thought I'd future-proofed myself against machine translation by moving more to the creative end of the industry but colleagues who do more literary work than I do are being asked to edit AI-translated drafts too.

I think new people coming into the job will be trained to edit AI and there probably is work in that but it won't be as well-paid as my profession used to be.

Former freelance translator in a common European language combination here. I wouldn't recommend it. The people I know who are still working as translators are trying to diversify into things like content creation and copy writing - already crowded fields. I also noticed a huge increase in people trying to become experts in the "how to market your freelance translation business" field.

There are some people who make a great living in very specialised fields but they are few and far between. I'd say that working for organisations like the UN, EU institutions (if you're lucky enough to have an EU passport) etc is still worth doing, but competitive to get into. Being at the mercy of translation agencies is no way to make a decent living, but if you can find your own clients who will send you regular work, it's a bit easier. Likewise getting into scientific/ technical areas which most translation graduates instinctively avoid, being from an arts and humanities background.

Those of you who work in hospitals etc - the language professionals you work with are interpreters, not translators (although many of them will also offer translation too). They are not being pushed out by AI, but by huge agencies like The Big Word paying pisstaking rates and expenses and making it barely worth turning up.

Sorry OP, it's grim out there but I wish you luck.

I used to work in translation 15years ago (russian to english), and even then, companies were ditching translation services in favour of bad Google translate documents. With AI, I suspect this is even more of a problem now. If you really wanted to work in this field, you could look at interpreting instead? As some pp have said, I think AI will take longer to catch up with spoken language interpretation, especially in live environments. But freelance would be very hard work to keep the work coming in and big international organisations are very competitive to get into to.

...and what @alldoomedalas says! What they call PEMT (post editing of machine translation) is what finally made up my mind to jack it all in. It's tedious, soul destroying work and definitely the way things are going.

My friend worked translating company documents.
In a very short amount of time her clients have switched to using AI translation.
At first they had her check the translation, which she found to be excellent (they are technical documents not dialogue) and now she only gets the odd thing which are bundles of old documents with handwritten scrawled notes, anything a computer can read is gone, so that's 99.9% of her work.

I imagine in person translation would still be a thing but written translation is dead in the water.

Is current AI translation good enough for medical and legal documents?
I’d imagine that there will be a market for interpreting as some people will prefer a human but that it will be a shrinking market as people opt for AI for cost reasons.

Not European languages.... it's really not where the future is it?

No. Deep-L is BETTER than human translation. Interpreting, on the other hand, has a couple of years.

Yes. For now, they will still get a human to check, but that will go soon.

Doesn't matter which languages, automatic translation is as near perfect as human.

There would still be a need but it would be much more niche. I don't think you could rely on it as a career. If they're into languages or other cultures or secretarial type skills, there must be something else a bit more suitable for today's skills market?

Translation AI etc are not local Translation. They arent accurate enough.

What about sign language? Is that as far along? Just curious.

I've worked with Deep L output and I'm not sure that's true. I guess it depends on the subject area, though.

If translating for websites, being a translator is definitely worth it. Google penalises websites for using AI. Natural use of language is essential for Search Engine Optimisation. AI used for content can cause all manner of problems including unnatural language, duplication, and keyword stuffing. SEO Content translators are in short supply in the UK and are in demand.