As translation-brokering agencies continue to use AI to move away from purchasing translation services from carbon-based professionals, I see some translators bragging about their academic qualifications and bemoaning the fact that these are not valued in the market and don’t provide protection from the AI translation tsunami.
This should be a wake-up call to people learning Japanese or translation in formal learning environments. Such efforts are highly unlikely to be sufficient protection from AI or assurance of success as a translator. The skills you need to survive are not what you could learn getting an advanced degree in Japanese or translation.
The career prospects for a new graduate with even an advanced degree in language or translation are very bleak, unless the graduate has another non-language, non-translation qualification, skill, or expertise that could be used to build a career without language or translation. Language and translation alone are totally insufficient, unless you want to remain in academia and continue the disingenuous activity of educating people for careers that will be gone well before they graduate.
I know numerous JA-EN translators who have diverse backgrounds beyond in addition to formal education, and some who do not have formal education in language or translation. I am one of that latter group, as I have described in a separate article.
If you don’t want to stay in academia or take a job in a non-translation company (translation agencies have very few or no translator employees), another option is pursuing translation as a business, competing with existing agencies for direct clients. But you will need the ability to sell (definitely not meaning building a website or posting on LinkedIn), and you should also understand beforehand where the translation business is going.
Because AI making inroads within translation consumers as well, even agencies will likely be hard-pressed to provide value to translation consumers that would sustain their business. As the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield often said, “Things are tough all over.” And they’re getting tougher.