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Poll: What worries you the most as a freelance translator?
Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
Colleen Roach, PhD
Colleen Roach, PhD  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 04:11
French to English
+ ...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Jun 20, 2019

AI worries me partly because, like most people here, I feel that machine translations will affect all translators sooner rather than later. Also: 1) I think it's moving much more quickly than some of us may realize. (I include myself in this category). 2) Partly this is due to the sheer numbers of people working in AI; it's truly a "growth area." If I had to sum up how I feel about it in 3 words, I'd say: kind of scary.

Milad Fatemi
 
DZiW (X)
DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
AI-hard Jun 20, 2019

Colleen, first of all, as far as you specialize in the field, you should feel really comfortable and be confident that no "AI"--coded by humans!--will flawlessly imitate natural human language and communications comprehending for human with human irrationality and exceptions--at least not in the near future.

Second, such a know-how will be very limited, narrow-specialized, and patented--not for the masses, demeaning its value anyway.

Third, in many sensitive area
... See more
Colleen, first of all, as far as you specialize in the field, you should feel really comfortable and be confident that no "AI"--coded by humans!--will flawlessly imitate natural human language and communications comprehending for human with human irrationality and exceptions--at least not in the near future.

Second, such a know-how will be very limited, narrow-specialized, and patented--not for the masses, demeaning its value anyway.

Third, in many sensitive areas they will still require a human-only translation or a competent human (PEAI?) reviewer/editor.

Furthermore, to be more human the translation should be biased and prejudiced, which will trigger a funny lobby of anti-anti[-anti]-human movements, so don't overrate the overhyped "AI" stuff.

Fifth Have a nice day
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Colleen Roach, PhD
Colleen Roach, PhD  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 04:11
French to English
+ ...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Jun 20, 2019

DZiW wrote:

Colleen, first of all, as far as you specialize in the field, you should feel really comfortable and be confident that no "AI"--coded by humans!--will flawlessly imitate natural human language and communications comprehending for human with human irrationality and exceptions--at least not in the near future.

Second, such a know-how will be very limited, narrow-specialized, and patented--not for the masses, demeaning its value anyway.

Third, in many sensitive areas they will still require a human-only translation or a competent human (PEAI?) reviewer/editor.

Furthermore, to be more human the translation should be biased and prejudiced, which will trigger a funny lobby of anti-anti[-anti]-human movements, so don't overrate the overhyped "AI" stuff.

Fifth Have a nice day


DZIW: Thanks for taking the time to reply. I always enjoy reading your comments. I hope your "take" on the situation is correct. I worry, though, that "flawlessly" imitating natural human language might not matter that much in the future; quality has already been taking quite a hit I would think with all the latest tech "things" many translators must master now just to survive -- and in some cases there isn't even a way of "mastering" these IT tools as they seem full of bugs as we see by the constant queries here on the forums. Algorithms --I think I've grasped more-or-less what they are (good enough for my argument, anyway...) -- are everywhere and they, like what we see with CAT tools, are full of bugs, mistakes, etc. Just read job-review-boards for people in the "gig economy" (Uber, Lyfte, etc.) and you'll see what I'm referring to. But the managers at the top --and the IT Stanford 'schoolboys' who make millions sometimes designing these apps in their dorm rooms (as one frustrated Uber or Lyfte driver put it ) -- really don't care much at all about the consequences of their work. And what I see in the translation world has parallels in other work-worlds, like just plain writing. Job ads for "writers" now want you to be a graphic designer also knowing the most sophisticated and complicated programs to use -- similar to translators now being asked -- often for a minimal wage -- to become DTP specialists. The term "technical writer" now refers (more or less) usually to a developer or programmer who can also write --which is secondary to the IT aspects of the job. Rant over.


Julio Madrid
 
Maxi Schwarz
Maxi Schwarz  Identity Verified
Local time: 06:11
German to English
+ ...
"new improvements" to software Jun 21, 2019

You're working along merrily, and suddenly you have to hunt for things, just when you're busiest, because some "app" your using has decided to improve things. Or you have to go through five steps what you used to be able to do with one click - or circumvent "friendly suggestions".
MS Word has been announcing that its "improvements" are coming soon, and I'm quite worried about that.


Colleen Roach, PhD
 
DZiW (X)
DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
Crux Jun 22, 2019

It appears the essence of all worries--substantiated or not--is a lie: about 'standards', 'discounts', practices, responsibilities, duties, liabilities, prospects, technologies, promises, and so on. Why, so many people are consciously infantile to prefer Beautiful lies to shocking Medusa the Truth.

As far as no False can tolerate hard numbers and verifiable specifics, a clever man should be able to tell them apart without wasting the time on nonsense...


 
Mario Freitas
Mario Freitas  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 08:11
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Other (unstableness) Jun 23, 2019

Not having enough job is not quite the issue. The issue is unstableness. This year, for example, I had very little jobs in January and April. In May and June, I'm refusing jobs regularly, because I can't fit them all. And it goes on and on like that forever.

 
S_G_C
S_G_C
Romania
Local time: 13:11
English to Romanian
Lack of work Jun 25, 2019

The lack of work. I don't really understand some agencies.

The still unstable business climate in my country - the share covered by the freelance translators, that is.

The poor understanding of my country's institutions concerning the status of a freelance translator - the local Tax Offices, the national Tax Authority...


 
Ching-Fai
Ching-Fai
Australia
English to Chinese
Technology Jun 26, 2019

With the advanced technology, I feel there are more stressed coming down to all translators.
Google translate had improved significantly in the past couple of years.
With my translation languages direction from English to Mandarin, it's quite competitive and sometimes you see some of the translators offer ridiculously low price just in order to get the job.
That made me feel quite struggle when compete with other translator.
Also most of client doesn't really know how to
... See more
With the advanced technology, I feel there are more stressed coming down to all translators.
Google translate had improved significantly in the past couple of years.
With my translation languages direction from English to Mandarin, it's quite competitive and sometimes you see some of the translators offer ridiculously low price just in order to get the job.
That made me feel quite struggle when compete with other translator.
Also most of client doesn't really know how to tell the quality of a translation as it's not their native language and if they have budget they will have second people to do review. if they don't have budget for the review then it's no way to tell.
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Poll: What worries you the most as a freelance translator?






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