The text cited below, regarding translation, but in a post by ATA on LinkedIn introducing an article on AI use for visual dubbing, is perhaps the most recklessly irresponsible thing that I’ve seen ATA say, albeit backhandedly, about the currently ongoing demise of human translators.
“Many believe that translation will be one of the first ones to go”? Yes, and they are correct. But the implication of the ATA statement is that translation will not go, and the ATA goes on to chant the commonly heard mantra of “it will just change the way we work.” Really? The reality is that the work is mostly gone for countless freelance translators already.
Is it just arrogance on the part of the ATA to think that people will believe this nonsense?
Is it that the people running the organization are so desperate to maintain their own relevance that they’re willing to deceive members with this batshit crazy take on the current existential crisis? Shame on the ATA and the people running it.
Translation has already gone away for most freelancers. It’s not something that will happen in the future, and it’s not a prediction. It’s gone for almost all freelance translators, and organizations like the ATA need to stop their irresponsible statements like this.
“Changing the way we work” is a cute way of not actually recognizing that human professionals are mostly now only being asked to perform tasks that pay so little that such work is in no way a replacement for the earnings that translation work brought professionals before translation-brokering agencies migrated to AI to eliminate the need to pay humans for translating.
The reasons that the translation-brokering agencies are able to succeed as they are succeeding in replacing humans for translation might be too painful for the ATA and many of its members to discuss. But those reasons need to be discussed and understood.
I can certainly imagine the desire on the part of the ATA directors must feel to maintain their relevance even as the relevance of their members slips rapidly away, but this aspirational delusion of the work just changing is simply disingenuous at best. It’s arguably deception by implication. Knock it off.
Many believe automation and AI will fully take over a wide array of professions, and that translation will be one of the first to go. While companies are definitely deploying AI for many tasks, more often it isn’t replacing jobs so much as changing the way we work—and what is possible.
