Tag: AI

Facing Reality

At the risk of accusations of having gone over to the dark side, I need to say that translators should accept the reality that the Japanese-to-English translation work that has supplied livelihoods to the great majority of freelance translators is now being handled quite satisfactorily (as determined by the paying clients, of course, not translators) by AI translation combined with editing done by former translators at very low rates.

The resulting cost is just a fraction of what it used to be, and this business model will succeed for at least a decade or two as is, with the help of currently idle translators, because a sufficient number thereof have no other career paths, but still have bills to pay.

Even after that, of course, there will be a continuing influx of Japanophilic language learners who are not aware of the real world of translation before they reach that real world and might not accept the reality of it even after they arrive there. That labor supply will continue to enable the above-noted business model. There won’t be a return to the old paradigm.

But even before the Japanophilic beginners take over post-editing from the dwindling supply of professional translators formerly working in mainstream demand fields, many translation consumers will themselves be doing AI translation and editing in-house.

That next stage of the transformation is already underway, as numerous translators continue to believe that things will work out, claimng that humans will always be needed to provide “cultural nuances.” The reality, however, is that only a tiny portion of translation that is paid for has anything to do with culture, and the parts that do can be fixed by very low-paid post-editors, at this stage meaning former translators who have no choice but to bite the low-paid post-editing bullet.

Denials, delusions, and occasional counter-indicative success stories aside, an evidence-based evaluation of where things actually already are points to exactly the above picture. The evidence?

  • Specific known translators forced to leave;
  • laughable rates paid to be the “human in the loop;”
  • the major translation sellers that control most clients and countless new translation-selling startups offering “human-in-the-loop” AI translation as their main service;
  • a paucity of translation work offered on even sleazy click-work reverse-auction platforms, which are now filled with very low-paid post-editing work;
  • no evidence of either a return to human professionals or dire AI translation-caused consequences, other than unverifiable anecdotes and aspirational, wishful-thinking predictions; and
  • a significant reduction and demographic transformation of the membership of the formerly most active group of JA/EN translation practitioners in Japan.

And there’s much more evidence from the real world, divorced from the aspirational predictions of survival made by people who hang out at the Denial & Delusion Café.

The above is not a pretty picture, but it is real, and you don’t have to wait for it to come to your neighborhood; it’s at your doorstep, if it’s not already in your kitchen eating your lunch.

Let’s get real.

Every day in every way it’s getting sillier and sillier to think that learning Japanese with the goal of earning a living by translating is a good strategy.

Universities are surely not teaching Japanese students aiming at translating for a living what’s waiting for them when they get out of school, because it’s not very much, and it’s very unlikely to be anything approaching what could be called translation. It would, naturally, not be in the interest of universities to turn off students with the grim truth.

Post-editing AI-generated translation—most of what “linguists” are being offered to do for peanuts—is as much translating as tightening bolts on a car before final delivery is “manufacturing cars.” And the idea that it will be faster and therefore compensate for the drastic reduction in rates is simply not informed by the reality. That reality is that translation sellers know they can get away with offering very low earning potential for post-editing, thanks to a ready and essentially captive labor supply of former translators with few other options and bills to pay.

Translators’ organizations appear to be at least tacitly going along with the delusion that things might get better for translators or at least won’t totally collapse, because “humans will always be needed” (loose bolts remain for low-paid labor to tighten).

The reality, however, is that things are already collapsing for large numbers of agency-dependent freelance translators.

People need to discard aspirational rationalizations and delusions, recognize what is actually happening, and act accordingly. And that does not realistically involve continuing to chase after a career that exists for only a tiny portion of extremely fortunate people. Freelance translating has essentially ended. Let’s get real about it.

More AI Snake Oil

In a recent BBC report of an interview with Google (Alphabet) boss Sundar Pichai, we see Pichai repeating the nonsense spewed by numerous AI tech bros in attempts to allay fears of AI disruption.

Pichai says that AI will also affect work as we know it, calling it “the most profound technology” humankind had worked on. Well, perhaps that part of his comments is correct.

“We will have to work through societal disruptions,” he said, adding that it would also “create new opportunities”.

One person’s manageable disruption is another’s total disastrous loss of earning power.

There are people who have been successful in a number of specific careers who will not be offered or be able to take those “new opportunities.” Many are already being deprived of work and income, by being replaced by AI. Opportunities will be provided to others, perhaps, but certain careers will simply disappear; translation is one of them. Change is coming much too fast for some groups to keep up. The notion that translation will continue as a career is clearly delusional.

“It will evolve and transition certain jobs, and people will need to adapt,” he said. Those who do adapt to AI “will do better”.

Transition? Adapt? What do translators transition to and how do they adapt? By accepting post-editing work at one-fifth the word rate (and certainly not anywhere near a compensating five-fold increase in throughput)? And that doesn’t even address the issue of mind-numbing post-editing work. Most translators will not be able to survive by adapting to AI or even adopting AI themselves, because they have been habitualized by their clients to working only for a client demographic one tier above them on the food chain, and that client demographic is currently using AI to replace them. Freelancers have arguably allowed themselves to be isolated from translation consumers that have not yet adopted AI. AI will be of no avail without clients that are not using AI, and that includes acting as the “human in the loop,” the snake oil sold by the major translation brokers that control most of the translation market.

“It doesn’t matter whether you want to be a teacher [or] a doctor. All those professions will be around, but the people who will do well in each of those professions are people who learn how to use these tools.”

This could very well be true for some professions. As noted above, however, freelance translating is not one of them, as is already being demonstrated to be the case, with large numbers of translators trapped into non-translation functions that pay extremely poorly, if they even have that left as their clients replace them with AI.

The outlook is bleak. More and more translators are coming to realize that, but numerous translation organizations appear to hang onto the delusion that this storm can be ridden out; it cannot. When it passes, it will leave a barren wasteland in its path, with very few translators left standing.