(December 20, 2025)Disclaimer Regarding Content Intended for Japanese-to-English Translators

by William Lise

Although some content on this website is directed at translators, please bear in mind the following points.

No content on this website intended for translators should be taken to mean that the author believes that translation is a promising career path; it certainly is not.
While there is potential value in learning a foreign language such as Japanese, the author does not encourage readers to learn a foreign language for the purpose of becoming a translator. The function of translation is quickly being taken from human professionals by entities using AI to replace them.
Given this situation, although a small number of human professionals will survive for some time, just being an excellent translator is totally insufficient, and very few freelancers bring to the task of survival what is required, which is the ability to acquire clients that are not yet using AI to replace humans. This is reasonably attributed to the two-tier structure of freelance translation, in which translators don't have access to and most are not capable of selling to the client demographic they need, which is made up of entities not in the translation business themselves.
The sometimes-heard notion that translators can survive by using AI themselves as a tool is not informed by the reality that translators will still need to acquire non-AI using clients, meaning they will need to network and sell in real life (not online), in ways they have enjoyed not doing by freelancing.
The idea that translators can survive by taking on the task of post-editing AI-generated translations is equally flawed; such work pays only a fraction of what a professional translator could have earned before the appearance of AI
The comforting predication of schadenfreude-inducing disasters such as deaths and litigation caused by AI translation are not supported by evidence; all we here are hopeful predictions and an occasional unverified anecdote.