Tag: AI

Not with a bang but a whimper: Relevance is slipping away from translation organizations.

I have written in more detail about the rather bleak output for freelancers elsewhere, but here are a few disturbing observations of what translation organizations are doing lately.

A number of major translation organizations that say they support and look out for the interests of translators—the ones I have in mind are located on three continents are—to varying degrees, but all clearly to a considerable extent—promoting non-productive belief in delusions by their members.

  • They allow and even encourage freelancer members to think that adopting AI themselves is a strategy for survival, carefully avoiding mention that the use of AI won’t attract clients for freelancers as their agency clients replace them with AI, and that only a very small number of freelancers are able to acquire clients other than agencies, which are well on their way out as purchasers of translation from freelancers. Some of the organizations, amazingly, have even taken to running or sponsoring events that sell AI-related products, teach AI use, or (more surprisingly) discuss post-editing.
  • They either themselves fail to recognize or are afraid that their members will recognize that it is not possible to earn a realistic living by doing the non-translation task of post-editing AI output.
  • They continue to promote the idea that human translators will always be needed (correct, of course), but fail to mention (or fear that their members will themselves realize) that, yes, human translators will always be needed, but only 5 to 10 percent of the current population of freelancers will be needed, and that the net number of actually working translators—post-editing is not translation—will reach that level in the very near future.

The above-noted behavior by translation organizations is uniformed at best and arguably irresponsible. It masks unspoken and unspeakable distress, but also surely is aimed at preserving the relevance of the organizations and of the people running them, in spite of most of their members seeing their own relevance slip away at a pace that defies their efforts to survive.

It is time for translation organizations to get real, face what is happening, and level with their members, rather than feeding them comfortable-sounding pap. If they cannot do that, they should think about other potential trajectories for the organizations, the most suitable one at this point being one that reduces the yearly dues needed to be paid by freelancers to organizations to zero.

Three isn’t just an odd number. It’s the only integer between two and four.

In a contrived post about Shibusawa Eiichi on a certain platform not known for user authenticity:

Shibusawa wasn’t just an entrepreneur. He was a system builder.

…

He didn’t try to dominate one industry. He helped create all of them.

…

Japan’s modernization did not happen by accident. It was intentional.

…

[As the reason why he’s on the 10,000-yen note] Not because he was the richest man in Japan, but because he made it possible for others to create wealth.

Wow, that’s four of these AI-smelling constructions in a single post.

Does the person who wrote this using AI realize what it looks like? I doubt it. He identifies as a… drumroll… founder.

Enough said, and I doubt that you even need be told by me where the above was posted—everybody’s favorite hyper-curated phony persona promotion platform.

New LinkedIn-Based Business Plan

This business plan is predicated on a move to a Global South location, from which you can post on LinkedIn to advertise your coaching regarding:

  • how to succeed on LinkedIn (without feeling the need to explain what that might mean);
  • the differences between AI models (using pretty graphics to demonstrate the value you provide by bringing something that is obvious and easy-to-find elsewhere to the forefront in easy-to-understand terms);
  • how to prompt AI models (presented as the essential key to survival and triumphing over your rivals);
  • how translation is not the replacement of words in one language with those of another (a strawman argument presented in the hope that readers won’t realize that people with real money to spend on translation already know that);
  • how human translators are still needed because they understand and can bridge cultures (as if any more than a tiny portion of translation that is paid for has any cultural aspects or concerns);
  • how translators need to transform themselves to take on the new tasks, which it turns out are mostly training AI or fixing AI output at rates that you would only be happy with after you moved to and accustomed yourself to your new home in the Global South);
  • how to translate from any language to any language using AI;
  • how to do “digital marketing;” or
  • any combination of the above, preferably not promoted in the same post.

Then you just need to wait for the engagement and the money to roll in. Ain’t LinkedIn great? For what, you ask?