Category: For Colleague Professionals

The use of AI by translation-brokering agencies is quickly bringing to an end the career of freelance translating for agencies. Freelance Japanese-to-English translation is no longer a wise career choice. Only a tiny number of freelancers will survive.

Delude much?

Because almost all freelance translators are dependent on agencies as sources of work, the destruction of freelance translating careers by AI is not a prediction, because it has already happened, but there are two misguided groups of people who delude or consciously pretend that things are going to be fine: Adaptists and adoptists. There is also a third group, which I want to call schadenfreude-seeking aspirationals, but I will deal with that delusion in another post.

The people promoting “adapting” to AI often don’t say what adapting might actually be. It is clear, however, that most of these people are just sugar-coating or mischaracterizing extremely low-paid AI post-editing, which is not only insultingly low-paid work, but also mind-numbing, and it is a dead-end task that won’t lead to translation work from any kind of client.

And then we’ve got the “adoptists,” who promote the use of AI by freelancers to do translations. If that helps you, fine, but do these people actually think that any but a tiny portion of freelancers will be able to acquire clients for their AI translation services, when the only clients they have been historically able to acquire are agencies that have essentially stopped ordering translation from humans? To think adopting under those conditions is either fully delusional or totally uniformed by the numerous obstacles that only a tiny number of freelancers can overcome.

Many translator don’t even have a grasp of what those obstacles are, having lived and worked for years locked on tier two of the translation business without any hope of reaching tier one or knowing how to get there. Some believe the self-proclaimed coaches who tell them they need to engage in “personal branding.” Well, perhaps, but from what I have seen, these coaches leave the difficult parts behind the smoke and mirrors. Bacj ub 2019, before many people, including me, even thought the end would arrive so soon, I discussed some survival solutions in my presentation at IJET-30 in Cairns. Even more needs to be said and can be said now, but few want to listen, and the advice is not usable by most freelancers, who are sadly locked on tier two, which these days is not populated by many freelancers who actually get to earn from translating.

It must be depressing to many freelancers to contemplate their demise, and also further depressing to contemplate the reasons, which underscore the futility for most of even trying to survive by translating.

For me personally, it is sad to watch many highly capable freelancers denying and deluding to avoid facing those depressing realities.

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.