Is 2025 a good time to become a translator – an auguring tale

 

[ruins of Greek temple]

Many linguists, young and old, are considering whether it is a good time to begin a translating career in 2025 with AI shaking the foundations of the linguistic world, among others. It is clear that nobody can see the future but in ancient Greece, there was a special group of priests, augurs, whose task was to answer vital questions about the future. The responses were often vague and sometimes not encouraging. For example,  the parents of Oedipus asked and didn’t enjoy the answer, i.e., that he would kill his father and marry his mother. (Apparently, they did occasionally get it right.) It is said that these priests would take these questions and go into a deep cave and then breath in radon gas or take a hallucinogen to sharpen their vision. As modern methods for predicting the future are no more effective than the old way, let’s imagine the answers a hesitant linguist would receive if s/he would ask the augurs whether to start a career in translating in 2025.

The first augur would enter the cave and become quite euphoric. He sees a future filled with work booked in advance for two weeks and a large positive balance in the bank account. His/her answer might be:

a.   I see endless growth in the language service sector.

b.   I see the world becoming more and more connected.

c.    I see masses of disappointed AI users seeking you.

In short, our augur with pink glasses would say: go study translation and start a business.

 

The second augur is a dourer type and had a bad morning. Upon entering the cave of seeing, his/her visions becomes dark, stating:

a.   I see AI taking over each and every sphere of translation.

b.   I see masses of translators slaving over machine-translation versions trying to justify their existence.

c.   I see translators joining the ranks of blacksmiths on the extinction list of professions in six years.

This bringer of dark omens would say: he who approaches the island of the Sirens [possibly the island of Capri] should not be surprised if his ship crashes into the rocks.

The third augur takes some natural version of Ritalin instead of the usual mushrooms and tries to analyze all of the facts. After a while (no computers at the time), a confusing set of statements would emerge:

a.   I see that AI is fundamentally shaking up the language service market, which was already being transformed by neural translation and other forms of machine translation.

b.   I cannot predict the long-term viability of AI translation, i.e., to quote a certain translator, whether people will learn to accept lower quality in exchange for lower price or return to human translators.

c.   I see that translators with the appropriate skills will find fruitful islands in the technological storm.

In short, this non-committal augur paints a foggy picture and tells the linguist: beware of the storm but listen to your heart. Prepare for but do not fear the future.

As an experienced translator and not a fortune teller, my “reading” is that the world will continue to need translators but their role and skills are changing, just as they it has in the past. What is constant is the need to attain skills beyond linguistic ones. These additional anchors include deep familiarity with a specific field of knowledge such as law or medicine, solid computer skills (including but not limited to AI), digital marketing experience and knowledge of business management. We all learn some of these skills “on the job” but just knowing two languages is not sufficient, especially now. The more skills a person has before starting, the greater chance of success there is.

As I look at the grounds of my Turkish coffee (as there are no augurs in my neck of the woods), I see a future with many shades of grey, with some intense black where the coffee grounds are thicker and off-white where the bottom of the cup  is visible. I imagine the augurs would give a similar answer with equal confidence. The one certainty is uncertainty. Physics even has a law for that. Thus, I would advise uncertain translators to follow their ambition if their heart says to become a translator but also their head by gaining expertise in some if not all of the required skills. Time will tell what will happen even if the augurs generally did not. Whatever the result, I hope the decisions of the these future translators augur well.