(October 9, 2025)I will no longer act as an indirect accomplice to the merchants of idiocy in freelance translation or attempt to educate freelance translators.For most freelancers, the end of freelance translation is on the very near horizon, and it has already arrived for many. I will no longer—indirectly, or unintentionally by writing for translators—allow freelancers to believe the idiocy that has infested some corners of their world, in the form of "AI will not replace us," "AI is just a tool and we should use it," and other such nonsense. Trying to educate such people that this is nonsense is a futile waste of time.
Why You Landed Here
Unless you clicked on a rare link leading directly to this page, you were likely redirected here when you attempted to access a page I had written intended for translators. That page is gone, as is everything else I have written for translators. That includes seven IJET conference presentations I have made and previously preserved on this website after they were deleted or lost by Japan Association of Translators from their website, along with countless other presentations and articles by others, dating from the time when JAT was actually publishing the words of translators. That content is highly unlikely to ever return to the JAT website, and you won't see any of it here. It is history best to be forgotten.
The Reasons for Removal of Pages
There are good reasons for this action, not the least of which is my feeling of responsibility to colleague translators and my conviction that writing about survival and even writing about the art of translation itself allows people to continue incorrectly to believe comforting delusions and arguably constitutes unethical complicity in the ongoing nonsense regarding the non-existing future of freelance translating. In the case of both universities and translators' organizations like JAT, such behavior is self-serving and disingenuous.
The Delusions
The "AI toolists" who claim in their panic survival mode that AI is just a tool and should be used by translators in their workflow do not realize or purposefully ignore the painful truth that, if your only client demographic is agencies using AI themselves to replace you (meaning essentially, if you are an agency-dependent freelancer in 2025), you can use AI yourself all you want, but you will need to find non-AI using clients to replace your agency clients, and that is impossible for all but a tiny portion of freelancers.
Extreme hubris inhibits many freelancers from coming to grips with this aspect of their existential crisis.
Translation organizations are also guilty. JAT has been putting up a good show, but has been running on fumes for quite some time, suffering reduced membership and a chronic lack of volunteers for activities. They announce and hold events that are increasingly irrelevant to translators working in large-demand fields that are being rapidly taken over by AI-using agencies that no longer need humans to translate, and focus on small-demand fields and peripheral issues, ignoring the existential crisis that is at the doorstep of most freelancers.
The Culture Mantra Chanters
In thinly veiled desperation, many translators repeat the mantra that claims that, because humans are necessary to lend to translations an understanding of culture and nuance, AI will not replace humans for translation.
That is total nonsense, because almost no translation in the main demand fields has anything to do with culture or culturally related nuance. Not understanding that demonstrates a serious lack of awareness of what the actual business of translation is and does.
I understand the pain and pressure suffered by freelancers as things quickly wind down, but they look more and more desperate as they chant this essentially inapplicable culture mantra.
These people also need to understand that post-editing of AI output is not translation. And when translation-brokering agencies order post-editing, they know that they need not provide their captive translator labor supply an earning potential that is more than a fraction of what they previously earned, for the very reason that they know the translators are incapable of replacing them as work sources. The translators depending on them are trapped, and the agencies are acting accordingly. It will only get worse.
Because of their agency dependence, very few freelancers will survive. They cannot be saved, and many cannot be or refuse to be educated.
Accordingly, I'm finished trying. It is futile, unproductive, and gains neither me nor the target audience anything of value.
The time for some tough life decisions has arrived for most agency-dependent translators. I hope that something wakes them up before things get worse (and they will); things are already beyond repair if we consider the overall existential crisis facing most freelancers and their clear inability to respond meaningfully to survive.
But you will no longer see me trying to do anything about that. I'm done with efforts to turn things around for freelancers being rapidly replaced by the only clients most can deal with.