(Blog post made originally on December 24, 2024)Groom & DoomReplacement of professional translators by AI was inevitable
Both freelance translators and translation-consuming clients of agencies were groomed to accept the migration to AI, but by different aspects of the translation business as it has been practiced for decades.
The Grooming of Translation Consumers for the Migration to AI
Most translation that is purchased by translation consumers is sold by translation brokers who purchase and resell translations, and they have also purchased and resold editing when thought necessary. Ordering translations from a black-box broker has been internalized as a given by most of the consumers of translation.
Isolation between translation practitioners and translation consumers is an imperative for brokers.
Translation clients almost never have any contact or even know the name of the translator who translated their documents. The migration of agencies from purchasing translation from professionals to using AI and then having the results post-edited changes nothing in the relationship between the client and the agency except the price and speed of the translations that consumers purchase. Clients very rarely knew the translators before the introduction of AI, and that will continue as an increasing portion of translation is done by AI and then post-edited.
You might think that the post-editor would now become the focus of accountability and should be visible, but it is even less likely that clients will be allowed to know the post-editors, for the same—but more critical—reasons that clients have almost never been permitted to know the translators up until now.
It boils down to brokers avoiding the risk of losing their business, but for two quite different reasons.
Fear of Client Theft
The first, which is quite imaginable, is that the translation brokering business is fearful that the translator will take the client away from the broker. This stems from the correct realization that the broker is just that, purchasing translation (and, when thought necessary, purchasing editing as well) and reselling same, with very often little value added by the broker in the process. That situation makes isolating the clients from the translators important to the brokers.
Unsuitability of Client-Translator Interaction
The second reason—somewhat contrary to the first—is that many capable translators are not "presentable" to a client. This doesn't mean they have messy hair, holes in their shoes, or body odor, but rather that they could not be convincing to a translation consumer for a number of reasons that can be correctly imagined.
Non-convincing field-specific knowledge. When translation consumers interact with a broker's sales person, they are led to believe that the broker "has" a huge "team" of expert translators with a high level of field-specific knowledge. Since the translation consumer is almost never allowed to interface with a translator, they will never know for sure, and often won't know even after they receive a translation. Some translators with shaky field-specific knowledge can manage to provide an acceptable translation by doing "research," the trendy cover term for frantic Googling. But if such translators are allowed to interact with a translation consumer having domain expertise, they will be quickly found out.
Non-convincing source-language speaking ability. This comes into play heavily when a translator is doing a translation that is to be resold to a client who is a native speaker of the source language. It is a particularly serious concern in Japan, where considerable number of translators' self-evaluate their source-language ability as acceptable but is affected by Dunning-Kruger, so that there are not many native English-speaking JA-EN translators who can convince a native Japanese speaking client that they could translate their documents. It doesn't make sense, many would say, but it will not change. If you don't speak Japanese at a level expected by a Japanese client, the client is very likely to wonder how you can translate from their Japanese documents.
The Grooming of Freelance Translators for the Migration to AI
Translators were never a demographic that enjoyed meeting people and selling themselves as professionals, and the disadvantages of this aversion to venturing into the world outside of colleagues and translation brokers are aggravated by a number of other aspects of freelancing life, a number of which stem from technologies that have fostered a docile and agency-dependent translator labor force.
Technology was key to fostering a docile and powerless cohort of translation laborers
Stay-at-home freelancers. Many freelance translators have enjoyed their stay-at-home lives, thanks to global connectivity from anywhere, anytime. This has enabled freelancers to work entirely out-of-sight of their work sources, and this has nurtured a translator population that is singularly ill-equipped to do anything but work for translation-brokering agencies.
Many freelancers are in no position—literally—to change. In addition, even if they suddenly screwed up their courage to start meeting people who could give them higher-paying and more-satisfying work, many translators are in situations and locations that make such adventures difficult or impossible. This applies to translators in Japan as well as those in anglophone cultures and locations, if they live away from urban centers, where the client-meeting sales opportunities are limited.
No lives before translation. Perhaps encouraged by the prospect of working from home and never having to meet people, more translators than in the past enter translation straight from school, without experiencing any non-language, non-translation environments that can provide field-specific knowledge and experience, as well as opportunities to have interpersonal dealings in the real world.
Trapped into surrendering. The above aspects of freelancing place most freelancers in no position to do anything but continue to hope to get translation work from agencies. But that is going away.
All of this is a win for the agencies, and is leading to end of the model of freelancers selling translation services to agencies. Yes, it's ending, and the end was inevitable. Translation consumers won't sense much change, and MTPE-groomed freelance translators can moan all they want, but they won't turn the tide. The AI ship has sailed and the agency work model for translation work is quickly sinking.