| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21] > | translation is dead as a profession Thread poster: Daniel Rich
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Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 15:57
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
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Daniel Frisano wrote:
Vladimir, you have a machine now doing the work that your brain should do, and indeed has done for several years.
You still need a brain. That is being proven by translators every single day who deliver crap using machine translation.
Apart from that, why 'should your brain do the work' ? It seems to me as silly as saying a translator should use paper dictionaries instead of software versions of it. I mean, there was a time cars were assembled manually by people, before there were robots to take over the work. I've never heard people saying 'Your hands should do the work'.
Daniel Frisano wrote: If you're happy with it, and your clients are happy too – hey, be my guest. Just don't call it translation, because it's not.
In my experience people call it machine translation post-editing or MTPE. So what exactly is your problem here apart from being frustrated a.f. because some people manage to use machine translation in a profitable way while still delivering quality work ?
And the fact you think MTPE has nothing to with translation means you don't know the first thing about it. MTPE is a tool, it sometimes help you a great deal, but other times you need to translate yourself. It's not black and white.
[Edited at 2022-12-28 12:31 GMT]
| | | | | It’s not the same as translation | Dec 28, 2022 |
When you review/edit/proofread/check another translator’s work, you don’t call it translation. So how can you call it translation when you do the exact same thing to MT output?
Even if the end-product is as good (which it won’t be), you’re only doing the second half of the translation process. It is that first intuitive/instinctive use of your language skills to produce a first draft that makes us translators rather than editors. And I believe that’s where the magic happen... See more When you review/edit/proofread/check another translator’s work, you don’t call it translation. So how can you call it translation when you do the exact same thing to MT output?
Even if the end-product is as good (which it won’t be), you’re only doing the second half of the translation process. It is that first intuitive/instinctive use of your language skills to produce a first draft that makes us translators rather than editors. And I believe that’s where the magic happens. With the thinking.
Start with AI and you have to do the thinking later anyway, so what’s the benefit? And human nature will mean that plenty of things will be left as good enough even though they would never have been typed by you in the first place. So the end-product is good enough, but not the same as if it had been thought up by you in the first place.
We’re writers first and foremost, or should be.
PS The whole “you use a computer not a quill” argument is irrelevant. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Anti-MT Luddites... | Dec 28, 2022 |
...will be defeated in the long run. The fact that this issue is raised by the Luddites again and again means it's a sore spot, viewed as a threat to jobs or something. You don't beat the opposition by complaining about it or criticizing others that take advantage. Time will show, or it won't, and everybody will still be happy with their ways of thinking/doing things. Either way, no productive discussion can obviously be generated by arguing either viewpoint. Multiple threads have shown that alr... See more ...will be defeated in the long run. The fact that this issue is raised by the Luddites again and again means it's a sore spot, viewed as a threat to jobs or something. You don't beat the opposition by complaining about it or criticizing others that take advantage. Time will show, or it won't, and everybody will still be happy with their ways of thinking/doing things. Either way, no productive discussion can obviously be generated by arguing either viewpoint. Multiple threads have shown that already. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:57
Member (2008)
Italian to English
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expressisverbis
Portugal
Local time: 14:57
Member (2015)
English to Portuguese
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| Respect is dead, not translation | Dec 28, 2022 |
Evgeny Sidorenko wrote:
Either way, no productive discussion can obviously be generated by arguing either viewpoint. Multiple threads have shown that already.
No discussion can be productive if we do not respect our colleagues.
One thing is to use a tool and talk about the pros and cons, another thing is to claim that anyone who uses MTPE is cheating their clients.
This does not surprise me coming from the same person who said "we are seen like a bunch of clueless inepts" before.
I'm done for now. Someone who doesn't respect me only deserves to be ignored, regardless of whether I use MT, MTPE, or not, even though I use my brain and post-editing for one of my best clients.
There are translators who don't know how to use it and how to set their rates - I believe this is the main problem.
Happy translations for everyone and may 2023 bring us lots of projects with or without MTPE!
| | | | Liviu-Lee Roth
United States
Local time: 09:57
Romanian to English
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| human translators are needed | Dec 29, 2022 |
Hubertus Mueller wrote: According to the graph approximately half down this article: https://translated.com/speed-to-singularity I'm struggling to see how there will still be a lot of human translation work after that date. The article denies this, but it doesn't give a real explanation why human translators would still be needed.
We have to keep in mind that there are may fields (judicial, diplomacy, just to name a few) where MT is strictly forbidden.
Lee.
| | | | expressisverbis
Portugal
Local time: 14:57
Member (2015)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Liviu-Lee Roth wrote:
We have to keep in mind that there are may fields (judicial, diplomacy, just to name a few) where MT is strictly forbidden.
Lee.
Not only because they contain highly confidential information, but there are many handwritten documents whose MT cannot deliver good results and it is not at all feasible and wise to use it.
There are many other fields where post-editing and machine translation cannot outperform human translation, such as literary translation, transcreation, marketing texts and even medical field, especially in medical reports and anything involving the patient's condition... just to mention a few.
| | | | Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:57
Serbian to English
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| What's "the other half" of 90%? | Jan 10, 2023 |
expressisverbis wrote:
Here are the words that defined the week of Proz: dead, dying, die, speed, cost...
Let's look on the bright side! Optimists live longer.
So many things have already changed for better and for worse and yet we are still here.
Optimists live longer - sure!
Preferring to see the glass as being half-full instead of insisting that the glass is half empty is surely a good approach to life in general.
But when the glass gets emptied to 90% empty, you need a lot optimism to keep seeing it as "half-full".
The way translation is evolving, more and more people will find it very hard to find any pretext for optimism.
But the profession will survive for sure, for very long time.
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| @Daryo, I'm optimistic for two reasons | Jan 10, 2023 |
Daryo wrote: expressisverbis wrote:
Here are the words that defined the week of Proz: dead, dying, die, speed, cost...
Let's look on the bright side! Optimists live longer.
So many things have already changed for better and for worse and yet we are still here.
Optimists live longer - sure! Preferring to see the glass as being half-full instead of insisting that the glass is half empty is surely a good approach to life in general. But when the glass gets emptied to 90% empty, you need a lot optimism to keep seeing it as "half-full".
Personally, I'm rather optimistic for two primary reasons:
1. I turned 60 last October, so I'm optimistic that there'll be enough translation requests in the pipeline in the next few years.
2. A combination of a business management platform (e.g. Trados Business Manager) + translation workflow system (e.g. Trados Live Team) + CAT tool (Trados Studio Professional) + NMT engine (choose one) lets you compete with translation agencies for large translation projects with tight deadlines. You can easily set up a project team comprising 3, 4, or 20 project managers, translators, editors, DTP experts who'll be working on the same project, or even on the same document, concurrently while leveraging centralized resources (TMs, TBs, etc.).
| | | | John Fossey 
Canada
Local time: 09:57
Member (2008)
French to English
+ ...
Robert Rietvelt wrote:
Another phenomenon I noticed, is that during a crisis (we had some the last 10 - 15 years!) we are doing good (at least I did). I always had more than enough work (Crisis? What crisis?), but when it was all over and the newspapers were full with the benifits of the growing new economy after such a period, we are being hit. Less jobs. Wonder about the mechanism behind it (????). Am I the only one?
Crises generate paperwork, a certain proportion of which needs translation.
| | | | | Would you advise anyone to go into translation now? | Apr 6, 2023 |
I left the translation industry a few years ago to retrain as a language teacher in a secondary school in the UK. The job is fairly decently paid and I get 13 weeks paid holiday a year.
I worked in-house for 7 years as a translator/project manager and then worked on a freelance basis for 12 years.
Over the last couple of years, it became increasingly difficult to earn a decent living that would pay the bills and the steady increase of post-editing jobs did not help matt... See more I left the translation industry a few years ago to retrain as a language teacher in a secondary school in the UK. The job is fairly decently paid and I get 13 weeks paid holiday a year.
I worked in-house for 7 years as a translator/project manager and then worked on a freelance basis for 12 years.
Over the last couple of years, it became increasingly difficult to earn a decent living that would pay the bills and the steady increase of post-editing jobs did not help matters, there also seemed to be less and less work around.
In the late 00s and early 10s, I was regularly turning down work, but by the latter years of the 10s there was a distinct downturn and work became harder to find.
I am sure that if you are working in a particular niche subject area like pharmaceuticals or law, with rarer languages, like Finnish/Japanese to English, you can make a decent living, but I would not advise anyone to become a full-time translator these days, especially in the more common languages like French and Spanish.
I'm afraid that the industry has been taken over by large translation multi-nationals whose only aim is to reduce their costs and increase their profits. This trend will only continue and soon these companies will be bleating about a shortage of translators, capitalist shorthand for "we can't get translators at the price we want to pay them".
The profession will continue to exist, but it is currently being deskilled to the point that it will not be a profession worth joining for many. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:57
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Stephen Emm wrote:
The profession will continue to exist, but it is currently being deskilled to the point that it will not be a profession worth joining for many.
And good riddance to them. That will leave the good ones.
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Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 15:57
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
| Tunnel vision | Apr 6, 2023 |
I think we all suffer from tunnel vision (myself included): we only see our own tunnel and draw general conclusions based on it.
Proof ? Stephen mentions a decline in work and rates over the past years and a take-over by large multinationals. That's his 'tunnel'.
I on the other hand am drowning in work (18 years of freelancing by now), my rates haven't decreased since I started, but only increased and I have only one client you can call a real multinational (for which I... See more I think we all suffer from tunnel vision (myself included): we only see our own tunnel and draw general conclusions based on it.
Proof ? Stephen mentions a decline in work and rates over the past years and a take-over by large multinationals. That's his 'tunnel'.
I on the other hand am drowning in work (18 years of freelancing by now), my rates haven't decreased since I started, but only increased and I have only one client you can call a real multinational (for which I worked once). That's my 'tunnel'.
So is it still worth-wile to start as a translator ? In my opinion it is as worth-wile now as it was 20 years ago: some will fail, some will succeed. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Increasingly unattractive | Apr 6, 2023 |
True to some extent, but what is the attraction for the younger generation to become translators when you can't really make a decent living off it?
If people don't enter the industry or leave the industry as they are currently doing in droves, what is the future?
It is the large translation companies and new technology that are driving prices down - not poorly-paid translators.
I can imagine that most translators will just become editors in the future, edit... See more True to some extent, but what is the attraction for the younger generation to become translators when you can't really make a decent living off it?
If people don't enter the industry or leave the industry as they are currently doing in droves, what is the future?
It is the large translation companies and new technology that are driving prices down - not poorly-paid translators.
I can imagine that most translators will just become editors in the future, editing output from MT or AI, while a few well-established ones will work in niche sectors, but I'm not sure the future looks that rosy. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | you can't ignore trends in the industry | Apr 6, 2023 |
Lieven Malaise wrote:
I think we all suffer from tunnel vision (myself included): we only see our own tunnel and draw general conclusions based on it.
Proof ? Stephen mentions a decline in work and rates over the past years and a take-over by large multinationals. That's his 'tunnel'.
I on the other hand am drowning in work (18 years of freelancing by now), my rates haven't decreased since I started, but only increased and I have only one client you can call a real multinational (for which I worked once). That's my 'tunnel'.
So is it still worth-wile to start as a translator ? In my opinion it is as worth-wile now as it was 20 years ago: some will fail, some will succeed.
Of course, everyone's situation is different and I imagine it is lot easier to find work in your language pairs in a bi-lingual country than it was for me translating European languages into English.
I never lowered my rates, but I think most translators would agree that there is an increasing prevalence of MT post-editing jobs and downward pressure on rates. These are the facts for most people and the situation is not that great. This is not "tunnel vision" but rather looking at the general developments in the translation industry, rather than just focusing on your own practice.
Sure, some people have lots of direct customers and a rarer language pair which is great for them, but most translators rely on agencies to provide work to a lesser or greater extent and have been impacted by the changes in the industry,
I certainly didn't fail, but got bored with continually looking for jobs and working long-hours for pretty mediocre remuneration.
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