Executive Summary: Translating as a freelancer for agencies is no longer a realistic career choice, and many translators have already left, no longer able to make a living translating. Unwarranted optimism, diversionary activities of translators’ organizations and universities, and the commercialization of “expert advice” from translator coaches make it difficult for translators to recognize what is actually happening.
I get it. If you know the advice you should be giving to translators is impossible for most translators to adopt and you realize that it will cause them to move away from your organization or university or to be lost as customers for webinars and consultations, you might choose to play down the existential crisis facing freelance translators and provide comfortable generalities. But I think more honesty is called for.
As translation-brokering agencies continue to use AI successfully to eliminate the need to pay professional translators to translate, we see the following.
(1) Freelance translators saying that because they are better than AI translation (correct for many of them) they will survive (wrong for almost all of them).
(2) Translation organizations running paid webinars on translation practice (arguably good) and other comfortable themes, but not mentioning that being a good translator is not sufficient to survive.
(3) Individual translators who have built businesses selling advice, publications, consulting, and webinars to tell people the secrets of surviving and thriving as a freelance translator, without mentioning that the prospects for survival are bleak and that only a tiny number of currently agency-dependent freelancers will survive.
Regarding (3), the reason freelancers will not survive is that they do not have the ability to do what is necessary to acquire non-AI using clients. As a group, they have groomed themselves to be totally dependent on agencies and uncapable of selling to direct clients. Even the mention of what is necessary results in distress and defemsive pushback, but that doesn’t change things.
The translation organizations certainly don’t want to bring the bad news to their members, and the same with universities that are taking money to train people for translation careers that are quickly disappearing. It’s in their interest to look away and to have translators looking to them for guidance also look away from what is happening and think that things will be fine. Such behavior is disingenuous and arguably unprofessional.
