Author: William Lise

Long-term (49-plus years) resident of Japan. Former electrical engineer and have been translating and interpreting for over four decades.

AI Bubble Bursting? It Doesn’t Matter for translators.

Predictions that AI is a bubble that will shortly burst are becoming more common. These predictions appear to be not from investors, but rather mostly from people who stand to lose if AI succeeds.

The bubble for AI investors might indeed burst someday, but it is clear that AI has already succeeded in significantly reducing the need for translation brokers to purchase translations from professional translators, and the brokers are replacing professionals by using AI to create translations in-house, and then have them post-edited, mostly by former translators with no options. The result has been that many professionals have been left with little translation work, have been reduced to doing low-paid post-editing, or have simply left translation as a way of making a living. These outcomes are a measure of AI’s success.

Professional translators, rather than anticipating with joy the bursting of the AI bubble, should think about current ways to survive in their chosen field of endeavor, in which the work sources (translation-brokering agencies) for the majority of freelancers are already rapidly replacing professional translators with AI systems they use themselves.

Neither freelance translators nor their organizations are giving sufficient attention and thought to this situation. Their focus appears to be on pointing out the failings of AI or claiming without evidence that everything will be fine if translators just “adapt” to the new technology. It looks like translation organizations are not able to bring the hard realities to their members. It is clear that things will not be fine and, in fact, it is clear that the model of freelancers getting translation work from agencies has already largely crumbled. But those organizations are struggling to maintain the appearance of relevance as their member are losing actual relevance.

The boiling frogs need to hop out of the AI pot before it is too late.

JA-EN Translation Note 003: 矮 in the world is this happening? All dwarfs are not created (or translated) equally.

In the field of astronomy, the term dwarf star has a long history. That history dates back far before the word police would raise their eyebrows and raise a fuss about dwarf being offensive. Perhaps little person star would be more acceptable.

That history has followed the term into the Japanese language, where the expression 矮星 has long been used and is still used to refer to dwarf stars, including on numerous pages of the website of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

In the age of the word police, however, the demotion of Pluto to the status of dwarf planet presented an opportunity for the authorities (at least here in Japan) to allow the ideology of political correctness to intrude into language. The result is that the term is treated differently between Japanese and English.

Whereas 矮星 is still apparently accepted for dwarf star in Japanese,矮惑星 for dwarf planet is avoided, surely for fear that the word police would coming knocking on the door of the transgressors. The NAOJ website gives a nod to the dwarf planet use in English, but avoids mention of 矮惑星 in Japanese, preferring to use the safer English term dwarf planet in running Japanese text, rather than use the dreaded 矮 character. In English, it is not the fault of the NAOJ.

One example, from a FAQ page of the NAOJ website:

太陽系のdwarf planetとは、「太陽の周りを回り」「十分大きな質量を持つために自己重力が固体としての力よりも勝る結果、重力平衡形状（ほぼ球状）を持ち」「その軌道近くから他の天体が排除されていない」「衛星でない」天体である。

Another method used to avoid 矮 is to call these dwarf planets 準惑星.

I guess the only thing that language realists can be thankful for is that the language revisionists have not yet banned 矮星 for dwarf star, but perhaps the day will come when we will see that character banned in dwarf stars as well. Time will tell. In any event, I would render these planets as dwarf planets in JA-EN translation.

JA-EN Translation Note 002: LRT joins SNS as a Latin-orthography Japanese Logogram

SNS has for years been used as the Japanese logogram for the Japanese word エスエヌエス (ESUENUESU), which is the commonly used Japanese term for social media.

I suspect that few Japanese users of the initialism SNS realize what it stands for, and it should be no surprise that few native English speakers use the initialism, although strictly speaking it does have an origin that can be initialized as SNS. But to everyday walking-around people, it’s social media.

The pronunciation of the Japanese logogram SNS as the Japanese word ESUENUESU is now accepted, is used almost universally, and can even be seen on government websites, without explanation. For example, on a government page aimed at providing guidance to children in using social media, we find “SNS（エスエヌエス）を使うときの注意”.

Enter LRT, which to many in-the-know native English speakers is the initialism for light rail transit. The recent introduction into Japan of this tram-like system has caused LRT to pop up frequently in the news, and accidents involving run-ins with cars have recently boosted its frequency of occurrence in the media.

As far as I can tell, and certainly on various Japanese-language NHK and Nikkei media, the initialism LRT is voiced as エルアールティ(ERUAARUTEI), and is most often followed with a gloss (both in print and orally) of 次世代型路面電車. Well, yes, it could be called that (“next-generation streetcar”), but readers and listeners are not given any hint as to what LRT stands for in its original language. This makes LRT a logogram for the Japanese expression 次世代型路面電車, and there is no chance of any significant number of native Japanese speakers ever learning what LRT actually stands for, nor will they think of anything but 次世代型路面電車 when they see or hear the Japanese logogram LRT. But that’s just fine, because LRT is Japanese.

I would advise English translators to gloss LRT with its expansion in parentheses—at least on the first occurrence—and to never use SNS unless you are addressing or writing for an audience that would recognize it, and that is quite rare outside of Japan.