Translators have and are continuing to lose their jobs. Generative AI-based translations don’t have to be better than human ones for this to happen, they only need to be good enough to cheapen the overall translation process. For example, via post-editing, where AI does the initial translation for a translator to vet. Sure, human translators are still part of the process, but on an industry level the need for human translators has decreased.
Sadly, I see the same logic as above applying to many other industries. So our critique of AI must not be predicated on its ability to perform better than humans, but instead on its ability to cheapen the overall cost of tasks performed by humans. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if translators were properly supported in career transitioning, or if AI-induced cost savings were directed to something like a universal basic income, but that is not the economic reality we live in under capitalism.
So does journalist, because their job isn’t only writing article but to go out there to find stories to write, even on the frontline of war. It’s the slob tabloid and “based on source by another press” article getting replaced.
Artist though, their income is gonna get cut because ai plagiarism mean they’re getting less and less commission.
The problem journalists have is that investigative work and going outside the office is expensive, and with the collapse of print media, most of their jobs have been replace by this slob tabloid/journalism by press release.
Fucking YouTube trying to translate everything into shitty French for me.
‘The Honey scam’ becomes ‘The honey scam’ in French (L’arnaque du miel), as in honey from bees. The “AI” can’t even make the difference between a common and proper noun.
Reddit does the same through my Google searches. The original post is in English but Google and Reddit shows it to me in dubious French. It’s quite obvious that it has been machine translated.
However bad translations unfortunately doesn’t seem to bother a lot of people, nor stop the big corps to push them as much as possible.
I saw a similar issue on a product where the Spanish wording obviously came from a computer translation.
“Made in Turkey” was written as “Hecho en pavo.”
Pavo is Spanish for turkey, the animal. Turquía is Spanish for Turkey, the country. A human, even a non-fluent speaker such as myself, would never make that mistake.
It depends on how the management cares about the result or\and specifically needs someone responsible and with a certain reputation. International communications, e.g. UN sessions or the likes where highly trained humans do parallel translation, wouldn’t be replaced at all, because a slight tonal shift in how they translate political stuff can cause a disasterous misunderstanding. Technical translation in industrial stuff shouldn’t be too, for each sphere has it’s specific bunch of therminology on each side, but here we are. And with arts\media, reputable companies with big money would still hire translators, but some would default to AI-unless-we-called-out mode.
Translators are never going to be replaced. The quality of a translation made by humans is much better
Translators have and are continuing to lose their jobs. Generative AI-based translations don’t have to be better than human ones for this to happen, they only need to be good enough to cheapen the overall translation process. For example, via post-editing, where AI does the initial translation for a translator to vet. Sure, human translators are still part of the process, but on an industry level the need for human translators has decreased.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/16/survey-finds-generative-ai-proving-major-threat-to-the-work-of-translators
Sadly, I see the same logic as above applying to many other industries. So our critique of AI must not be predicated on its ability to perform better than humans, but instead on its ability to cheapen the overall cost of tasks performed by humans. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if translators were properly supported in career transitioning, or if AI-induced cost savings were directed to something like a universal basic income, but that is not the economic reality we live in under capitalism.
So does journalist, because their job isn’t only writing article but to go out there to find stories to write, even on the frontline of war. It’s the slob tabloid and “based on source by another press” article getting replaced.
Artist though, their income is gonna get cut because ai plagiarism mean they’re getting less and less commission.
That’s half true.
The problem journalists have is that investigative work and going outside the office is expensive, and with the collapse of print media, most of their jobs have been replace by this slob tabloid/journalism by press release.
So that’s all at risk.
Fucking YouTube trying to translate everything into shitty French for me.
‘The Honey scam’ becomes ‘The honey scam’ in French (L’arnaque du miel), as in honey from bees. The “AI” can’t even make the difference between a common and proper noun.
Reddit does the same through my Google searches. The original post is in English but Google and Reddit shows it to me in dubious French. It’s quite obvious that it has been machine translated.
However bad translations unfortunately doesn’t seem to bother a lot of people, nor stop the big corps to push them as much as possible.
I saw a similar issue on a product where the Spanish wording obviously came from a computer translation.
“Made in Turkey” was written as “Hecho en pavo.”
Pavo is Spanish for turkey, the animal. Turquía is Spanish for Turkey, the country. A human, even a non-fluent speaker such as myself, would never make that mistake.
It depends on how the management cares about the result or\and specifically needs someone responsible and with a certain reputation. International communications, e.g. UN sessions or the likes where highly trained humans do parallel translation, wouldn’t be replaced at all, because a slight tonal shift in how they translate political stuff can cause a disasterous misunderstanding. Technical translation in industrial stuff shouldn’t be too, for each sphere has it’s specific bunch of therminology on each side, but here we are. And with arts\media, reputable companies with big money would still hire translators, but some would default to AI-unless-we-called-out mode.