Poll: What's the biggest threat to the future of the profession?
Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
SITE STAFF
Nov 4, 2018

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "What's the biggest threat to the future of the profession?".

This poll was originally submitted by Alan Corbo, CT. View the poll results »



 
Muriel Vasconcellos
Muriel Vasconcellos  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 03:27
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
+ ...
Other Nov 4, 2018

Pressure to lower rates, causing good translators to leave the profession.

Don't worry about the quality of MT improving. MT systems are already as good as they ever will be. The search for new ways to improve them (and keep people's jobs) is causing them to deteriorate, The system I'm most familiar with has gotten worse with each passing year. It was much much better 15 years ago.


Natalia Pedrosa
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Jacek Sierakowski
Xanthippe
Tanja Oresnik
Mariana Borio
Franco Rigoni
 
Michael Harris
Michael Harris  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 11:27
Member (2006)
German to English
Never thought about it Nov 4, 2018

But what are LSPs?

[Edited at 2018-11-05 09:16 GMT]


 
Gianluca Marras
Gianluca Marras  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 11:27
English to Italian
a combination of things Nov 4, 2018

In my opinion the fact that a loto of people think they are translator, while they actually have different job, or they translate because they need extra money left to have poor quality translations, and very low rates.
On the other side this could lead some clients to choose the MT, which, n some cases, has the same (bad) quality of the translation delivered by "bad" translators.


Francisco Merino
 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 10:27
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
LSPs Nov 4, 2018

Michael Harris wrote:

But what are LSPs?

[Edited at 2018-11-04 11:03 GMT]


LSPs = Language Service Providers


Natalia Pedrosa
 
Mario Freitas
Mario Freitas  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 07:27
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
MTs, but not now Nov 4, 2018

MTs will eventually change the market, but not for our generation.
The market will slowly move from translation to post-editing. There isn't much we can do. It's evolution, and technology has never reduced jobs; it has always created new jobs in a number quite higher than the previous technology.
We don't have to worry about it, really. But it wouldn't be very smart to stimulate our children to become translators.


Michael Harris
Eckhard Boehle
 
writeaway
writeaway  Identity Verified
French to English
+ ...
All of the above? Nov 4, 2018

Imo all those factors are slowly (or not so slowly) threatening/destroying the profession.

 
DZiW (X)
DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
natural selection Nov 4, 2018

As for me, I welcome the time when there're no "pure/mere translators", but practical specialists with foreign language skills. Even better, if people develop telepathy skills soon too)

 
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Germany
Local time: 11:27
English to German
In memoriam
Other: an economic downturn Nov 4, 2018

The biggest threat to the profession are economic downturns, because if the world economy suffers, international trade suffers, and when international trade suffers, the need for language services drops. At least when I look at the content I am translating every day, each and every piece deals with a product or service being sold to a German speaking buyer, be it marketing content, technical descriptions, or a localised software app. If, for whatever reason, the economy dwindled to a point that ... See more
The biggest threat to the profession are economic downturns, because if the world economy suffers, international trade suffers, and when international trade suffers, the need for language services drops. At least when I look at the content I am translating every day, each and every piece deals with a product or service being sold to a German speaking buyer, be it marketing content, technical descriptions, or a localised software app. If, for whatever reason, the economy dwindled to a point that the German-speaking market would no longer be attractive for international suppliers, my work would vanish.

MT is, as far as I can judge it in my language pair, still a joke for all professional content, and MT improvements are only incremental, because the problem that MT systems do not understand what they are doing is still not solved, there is not even an approach to do that. And bad translators are only a problem for themselves and their clients, but not for the profession (on the contrary, everything that draws attention to quality issues is actually good for the profession). Price pressure depends, I believe, very much on the language pair: if the demand for translation is higher than the supply in a pair, there can be no price pressure, because you cannot grow translators on trees and translators cannot increase their output infinitely. Merging smaller LSPs into bigger does not change this equation.
Collapse


Christiane Allen
Laura Nagle (X)
Mariana Borio
Gibril Koroma
Muriel Vasconcellos
Vesa Korhonen
Ricki Farn
 
Jennifer Forbes
Jennifer Forbes  Identity Verified
Local time: 10:27
French to English
+ ...
In memoriam
Perception Nov 4, 2018

In my opinion it's the PERCEPTION clients have of the capacities of MT which could threaten the translation market.
So many non-linguists think - and say - that MT enables all translations to be done mechanically without employing a human linguist. The more that perception takes hold, the more frequently we translators will be left to clear up the messes made by MT - a task known as PEMT - and the less actual translation work we will be offered.


Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Ben Gaia
Michele Fauble
Natalia Pedrosa
Eckhard Boehle
 
Maxi Schwarz
Maxi Schwarz  Identity Verified
Local time: 05:27
German to English
+ ...
about economic turn-down (Kay-Victor's) Nov 4, 2018

You could also look at it from the opposite end. During some of the more iffy times, I saw more people making moves to change their situations: folks starting new degrees in new countries, applying for work overseas, emigrating - all of them needing translations. Some years ago before the automotive crisis hit the news, some of us were suddenly inundated with automotive-related translations. Some types of translation work would become less, others more.

 
Ben Gaia
Ben Gaia  Identity Verified
New Zealand
Local time: 23:27
French to English
+ ...
Trade Wars Nov 4, 2018

Trade wars and actual wars are bad for international business and understanding.

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Muriel Vasconcellos
 
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Germany
Local time: 11:27
English to German
In memoriam
Reality will always trump perception in the end Nov 4, 2018

Jennifer Forbes wrote:

In my opinion it's the PERCEPTION clients have of the capacities of MT which could threaten the translation market.
So many non-linguists think - and say - that MT enables all translations to be done mechanically without employing a human linguist. The more that perception takes hold, the more frequently we translators will be left to clear up the messes made by MT - a task known as PEMT - and the less actual translation work we will be offered.


It might be that clients perceive MT as capable. But what use is this? As I said before, many texts are intended for selling something, directly or indirectly. A badly translated text will simply fail to create the expected success. Consequently, clients who go for MT will have less success than clients who go for a natural translation by a professional and native translator.

Apart from that, clients should be able to see the lousy results of MT every day because they are confronted with it in their own language too. The "perception" that MT is capable is just wishful thinking (on the client's side), and anyone who uses this as a basis for their planning will experience a rude awakening soon.

You are right that PEMT will gain a share of the market, and thus change the profession somewhat. But this is not a threat to the profession, just a change. The original question was about threats. The question "what will be the biggest change in the future of the profession" might be worth discussing separately. I think that no one, translator or any other professional, can expect their profession to remain unchanged throughout their working life.


Gibril Koroma
Muriel Vasconcellos
 
Andrea T. Egeresi
Andrea T. Egeresi  Identity Verified
Hungary
Local time: 11:27
Member (2015)
English to Hungarian
Doubts about MT Nov 4, 2018

I really didn't consider MT a real threat up until the moment when my main client started using MT for the most elaborate projects, and as I do not accept post-editing projects, I feel I get less work than usual. Maybe I should get myself up to date and start doing PE.

[Edited at 2018-11-04 20:31 GMT]


Eckhard Boehle
Michael Harris
 


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Poll: What's the biggest threat to the future of the profession?






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