I don’t run a freelance translator coaching business and certainly not one that tells freelancers that AI is just a tool and that humans are always going to be needed, thereby implying that they will survive as translators. Very few freelancers will. Unlike freelance translator coaches, I don’t lose any earning potential by telling the truth. That gives me the freedom to say this:
Freelance translating, which for most translators means translating for translation-brokering agencies, is coming to an end; it has already come to an end for many freelancers.
It’s over, and very few freelancers will survive by continuing to translate. The ones who have no other options and remain to post-edit and enable the MTPE business models of agencies will learn how to live on a fraction of their former earnings, perhaps with post-editing as a side job to a main job they take to make a living.
No amount of coaching is going to change that outcome, and I couldn’t be so deceitful as to lead freelance translators to think that they can survive the AI transformation of the only type of client available to the vast majority of freelancers, when I know the hollowness and futility of believing that. More honesty and courage are called for.
