{"id":2308,"date":"2026-11-04T15:16:49","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T06:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/?p=2308"},"modified":"2026-11-05T15:17:29","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T06:17:29","slug":"there-are-two-opposing-views-of-ai-in-translation-but-neither-of-them-inform-decisions-that-need-to-be-made-by-freelancers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/?p=2308","title":{"rendered":"There are two opposing views of AI in translation, but neither of them inform decisions that need to be made by freelancers."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[I wrote this almost precisely as presented here for JAT’s Translator Perspectives (2024), and much of it remains valid, although the situation for freelance translators has gotten much worse since then, and the end is basically on the very near horizon.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a growing polarization between AI deniers claiming that AI is not\u2014and will never be\u2014good enough and AI “adoptionists” suggesting that translators should adopt AI. Both positions have a grain of truth, but because both ignore the reality that translation is a business, neither view serves to inform useful decisions that must be made by translators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI deniers need to realize that, although there are numerous professional translators who are better than AI, most of the commercial and technical JA-EN translation work that has for decades been successfully sold to and accepted by clients in the real world has been done by humans who now cannot compete with AI, which has largely replaced them for the task of translation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be fair to AI adoptionists, some translators might benefit from using AI, but adoptionists generally avoid the issue of where they will find clients who will purchase their AI-created translations when almost all their clients (agencies) are using AI themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI has changed the structure of the translation business. By agencies adopting AI, the model of registering with agencies and sitting back and waiting for translation work is crumbling. It has already crumbled for numerous capable translators I know and who are no longer in translation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, the result of AI technology is that some of the human skills and activities that other, even less-sophisticated technologies obviated decades ago are now again important, much to the dismay of translators sitting at their computers waiting for work. In a sense, the survival rules and requirements are reverting to a time before technology made things so convenient for translators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a translator to do? For many, the answer to that depends greatly on age, experience, and personal decisions that might have been made decades ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prognosis for most translators who started out translating a decade or two ago is not bright. Access to clients still not using AI requires skills and activities many of them probably think are just so 1990.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meeting non-translation<\/em> people and building networks is more important now. That is not easy for translators living at a distance from translation consumers and an activity not attractive to many translators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Specialization that is convincing to clients who understand the subject matter themselves is much more important now. When your contact was a project manager at an agency, that wasn’t important. Google is not your friend, however, if you need to meet a client knowledgeable in the subject matter face-to-face, and that need will arise, particularly for translators in Japan. Having a life before translation is valuable, but time travel has not yet been invented; and you just cannot go back and start over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For NES translators in Japan, unless you can acquire some of the relatively rare anglophone clients, sales-ready spoken Japanese is pretty much essential. My observations tell me that few translators who have been here for a decade or longer and have not yet acquired that level of spoken Japanese will find it easy; for many, it will be unreachable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For beginners, the outlook is somewhat brighter, but some former common-sense expectations are no longer valid. Just learning Japanese and becoming a good translator will not assure you of a successful career doing translation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early building of human networks is important. Acquisition of field-specific expertise is very important, and one way to achieve that is to take a non-translation job in your proposed field of specialization; again, it’s having a life before translation. The particular way I did it is neither something I recommend nor something others should aspire to imitate, but I described it in an article in my parent website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[I wrote this almost precisely as presented here for JAT’s Translator Perspectives (2024), and much of it remains valid, although the situation for freelance translators has gotten much worse since then, and the end is basically on the very near horizon.] There is a growing polarization between AI deniers claiming that AI is not\u2014and will … Continue reading “There are two opposing views of AI in translation, but neither of them inform decisions that need to be made by freelancers.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[279],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translation-and-interpreting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308","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=2308"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2313,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308\/revisions\/2313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirameki-translation.co.jp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}