Tag: translation

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.

Denial, Delusion, Diversion, and Desperation

From everything I can see of posts and comments from translators on LinkedIn and elsewhere, I fully expect that great numbers freelance translators and their organizations will continue to deny, delude, and divert attention away from the impending demise of freelance translating as a realistic career.

I fully understand the pain involved in contemplating the end, but the end is here already. To deny it is simply delusional.

Almost all freelance translators are stuck in this position because they are unable to acquire translation-consuming clients. Most are stuck working for agencies that simply act as brokers for their services.

Translators who think they will attract or somehow acquire direct clients to replace agencies should go out and try it. It will become apparent to almost all translators that direct clients are out of their reach.

And the agencies freelancers have relied on are not going to come back. The belief that they’ll come back is a delusion. The agency translation work model has all but ended.

Only a very small number of freelancers will survive, because very few freelancers are capable of acquiring direct clients (later adopters of AI), which at this point, other than getting in-house work at a non-translation entity, is one of the few paths for survival, at least for a while, doing language-related work.

And translators need to stop telling themselves and others that post-editing AI output is the new task for translators and that it is translation. Post-editing is not translation, and it does not offer earning potential at anywhere near a level that would make it a realistic career, the mind-numbing work of that deadend activity aside.

People need to get real, set the pain aside, and think about what to do next.

Translation organizations try to save their members from the painful truth facing them.

The ITI in the UK just posted on LinkedIn a link to a report of a webinar participated in by translation academics and industry leaders, purporting to answer the question of “Is translation still a worthwhile profession to enter in the age of AI?”

The ITI response to the challenge presented by translation consumers bypassing professionals in favor of AI is to emphasize the hallmarks of professionalism, as exemplified by (quoted verbatim from the ITI report):

  • holding specialist knowledge
  • holding recognised credentials
  • adhering to a code of professional conduct
  • keeping skills up to date
  • exercising independent judgement
  • placing client and public interest first
  • taking responsibility for their work

These are all laudable tenets, but stating them does not provide an answer to the question of whether translation is still a worthwhile profession to enter.

The problem faced by almost all translators, and particularly by freelancers, is that even adhering to all of the above is totally insufficient to survive. The above list makes it look like these are the keys to survival. That is totally uninformed by the real world.

This approach speaks of an attitude that is held not just by the ITI but by other translation organizations as well, including Japan Association of Translators here in Japan.

Little or no attention is given to—and they arguably actively avoid—the real-world situation in which translation is not an academic or lofty professional activity, but rather a business. Freelance translators in particular, since they are almost all dependent upon translation-brokering agencies and must operate in a two-tier food chain, will find that the above tenets are totally inadequate, since they must also move away from agencies, which have historically proven and continue to demonstrate that they are moving away from human professionals.

Acquiring direct clients is a survival strategy, but is something that translation organizations appear to want to play down or totally ignore, perhaps because they correctly realize that such a strategy is out of reach for all but a small portion of their members.

That said, I strongly believe organizations should stop pretending that all you need to do is “be professional,” and start counseling members on more realistic strategies. Those strategies do not include continuing to believe that the future lies in working for translation agencies. That business model is nearing its end.