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.