{"id":1692,"date":"2026-04-25T12:47:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T03:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/?p=1692"},"modified":"2026-04-25T15:54:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T06:54:33","slug":"not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper-relevance-is-slipping-away-from-translation-organizations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/?p=1692","title":{"rendered":"Not with a bang but a whimper: Relevance is slipping away from translation organizations."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I have written in more detail about the rather <a href=\"http:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/xloutlook.html\">bleak output<\/a> for freelancers elsewhere, but here are a few disturbing observations of what translation organizations are doing lately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A number of major translation organizations that say they support and look out for the interests of translators\u2014the ones I have in mind are located on three continents are\u2014to varying degrees, but all clearly to a considerable extent\u2014promoting non-productive belief in delusions by their members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>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\u2019t 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.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>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.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>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\u2014post-editing is not translation\u2014will reach that level in the very near future.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2014the ones I have in mind are located on three &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/?p=1692\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Not with a bang but a whimper: Relevance is slipping away from translation organizations.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[59,22,178,93,163,126,6],"class_list":["post-1692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-colleague-professionals","tag-agency","tag-ai","tag-ata","tag-freelance","tag-iti","tag-japan-association-of-translators-2","tag-translation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1692"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1704,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692\/revisions\/1704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}