Might Post-Editing Labor Supply for the Translation Broker MTPE Business Dry Up?

Maybe, but that’s highly unlikely to happen in time to rescue currently working freelance translators, or any translators, for that matter, who are quickly losing work to the translation agency MTPE model.

For the agency MTPE business model to work, it needs a ready supply of former translators who don’t have the option or ability to acquire direct clients (which are later, but also probably eventual users of AI) and are willing to do post-editing for very low rates.

That the labor supply clearly exists and is being used is demonstrated by the freelancers who are leaving translation or doing low-paid post-editing. The supply of former and wannabe (including many who are willneverbe) translators is how the MTPE model is succeeding, and people are leaving translation or agreeing to do low-paid post-editing because of that MTPE success.

I sometimes hear freelance translators make optimistic predictions that translators won’t keep doing post-editing at very low rates, and then where will the agencies be?

Well, might the supply of post-editors dwindle and become insufficient someday when enough former translators decide to leave even post-editing?

The answer is a definite maybe, but if you are an agency-dependent freelancer, please think about where you will be if that someday is ten years or even five or three years from now and you still have no translation work.

Additionally, you need to realize that universities are still churning out wannabe translators to fill the place of freelancers who leave translation. In my language direction, Japanese-to-English, these newcomers will include people who are enamored of Japanese popular culture and think they’re going to get to translate in that sector. It appears that their teachers are not telling them what is waiting for them after graduation.

The competition for translation in those popular demand sectors is fierce, and the rates are commensurately low. When they hit a wall in their career translating that kind of material, these people are going to be prime targets for the MTPE business model that is aimed at translating the mainstream translation demand sectors, which are much larger and which are being taken over by AI with post-editing.

If currently working freelancers can live on post-editing or no income at all for years while they hope that the already successful MTPE business model collapses—something I think is very unlikely—they might want to go for it, but it is a reckless strategy not informed by what has already happened and is accelerating.

It doesn’t matter that post-editing translator supply might dry up, because it won’t dry up fast enough for a large number of currently working translators without other income sources to avoid financial trouble.

It is highly likely that, faced with no translation work and only very low paid post-editing work to replace it for a number of years, most freelance translators who are working now will be in financial trouble. They need to think about that before they get themselves into that trouble.

I would counsel currently working agency-dependent freelancers to seek out other careers (including in-house positions at non-translation companies) or, for the very small number who can do it, to seek out direct translation clients, which can buy them sometime, but not forever.

LinkedIn is becoming just another social media cesspool.

In just a week or so, I have seen a rapid and disturbing increase in the number of posts thrown at me by Microsoft’s LinkedIn that are clearly Facebook-like engagement-harvesting slop.

A typical post describes at length some historical or current event that might have happened or a person, although some are clearly fabrications.

Most of these posts are lengthy (as if someone told ChatGPT to write N hundred words about XYZ) and much of the writing smells strongly of AI.

Many of these posts are from non-anglophone places. Many of them are accompanied by AI-generated images, and sometimes by photographs that the poster is highly unlikely to have obtained permission to use. This turns a post that is merely annoying drivel into an unlawful act that is annoying drivel.

In any event, while Microsoft seems skilled at detecting when posts are in any way negative, particularly with regarding its platform or AI, and effectively shadows ban such posts (as it did to this blog post today when it was uploaded to LinkedIn), it actively promotes the above-noted garbage, which is nothing more than AI-slop aimed at harvesting engagement for someone or something with nothing to say or offer.

This garbage needs to be kept on Facebook or other social media platforms, although an argument can be made that the social media platform called LinkedIn is rapidly coming to resemble the Facebook cesspool, and I’m making that argument.

The Unavoidable Conclusion for Agency-dependent Translators

Executive summary:  Freelance Japanese-to-English translation for agencies shows numerous signs that it is at its end as a realistic way to make a living. In addition to specific cases of colleagues of mine having to leave translation, web searches on JA-EN translation related strings yield almost nothing but hits on countless low-paid MT post-editing jobs, and pages discussing translation or reflecting interaction between translators are extremely rare. Add to that the paucity of daily translator interaction in venues provided by translation organizations, and we can see clearly where things are.

In order to get a grasp on what’s happening in JA-EN freelance translation, I have for months had Google search alerts on about 10 search strings related to JA-EN translation. These strings were in both Japanese and English.

These search alerts presumably would catch not only job offers (which I personally am not interested in) but also webpages discussing translation. So, what’s going on?

It turns out that what’s going on is almost nothing of any interest or value to translators.

The overwhelming majority of hits are job offers, not for translation, but rather for post-editing posted on reverse-auction job platforms, often uploaded by anonymous entities with no location disclosed.

From the ads that disclose their location, it appears that most of these come from translation-brokering agencies in China, India, and even less substantial places in the third world.

There were almost no hits on webpages or blogs that discuss translation or reflected discussions between translators about translation.

Interaction between JA-EN translators is at a very low level in any venue I can see, and must be going on in secret meetings under bridges somewhere, because it certainly isn’t being reflected in a findable digital record.

That’s it, folks. The conclusion to draw is clear. It’s ending.

I’ve deleted the google search alerts, as they produce email alerts from Google that just lead to meaningless things that reflect the bleak state of what was once an attractive professional activity for many people. RIP.

The bar to entry into the translation business has been set to a new low.

[More details of why I bother writing this kind of thing can be found on the parent website.]

A Google search alert for Japanese-to-English translation turned up this very interesting website today.

From its header, it’s apparently a translation company called “Logo.”

They probably contracted out this website to a design studio called Inexplicable Web Solutions, which specializes in mysterious websites with irrelevant AI images.

The only image that appears to be real is the one with a woman with her back to the camera. Most of the Japanese text in that image appears unmangled, which is a clear giveaway that AI didn’t do it.

All the other photos appear to be AI slop, including the lovely red torii gate, which was generated to look like the torii of Itsukushima Shrine, but fails miserably.

It’s not surprising that the website doesn’t indicate anything about the location of “Logo Translations,” nor can I find any hits for its “actual purported name,” given several times elsewhere on the site and in the domain, other than on pages of this “killer website,” which can only be accused of killing the chances of the owner to be taken seriously.

The bar for entering the translation business has been set so low that you need to be careful not to trip over it. If your website is not ready to go live, it might be a still birth.

Have not much to say? Create content instead.

[More details of why I bother writing this kind of thing can be found on the parent website.]

Not so many years ago, before problems were reinvented as issues, services as solutions, and jobs as roles, people who had something to say would sometimes write.

These days, more and more people identify as “content creators,” but some of this trendy content creation strikes me as aiming to obviate the need to have something to say. Just create “content” instead; it’ll make you “stand out.”

Some of the people identifying as content creators don’t seem to have much to say, or to write.

The American Translators Association is currently promoting a webinar aimed at helping translators write translation content. Well, at least their use of the verb write is refreshing. It’s just USD 45 for the hour-long webinar for members.

The webinar is billed as helping translators find what topics to write about. Don’t they know? Is that really necessary? We are often told to write about what we know. Does that mean…?

Perhaps it is aimed at translators who have nothing to say or translators who have so much to say they cannot decide what to write. I’ll let you guess which it is.

And writing this “translation content” will evidently give you visibility and be good for marketing. I guess that’s good, but it sounds like participants are going to be told things they should have been able to figure out on their own. Perhaps more importantly, just who is the “translation content” aimed at?

It’s only USD 45 for the hour, but with no indicated limit on the number of participants, if you get my drift.

Perhaps ATA should run a webinar for USD 45 to teach participants how to run webinars for USD 45. That might be a better strategy than creating…uh, writing content.