Turbulence in Translation
The business seems to be changing a lot. The people – yeah, what about the people?
I know, it isn’t anything new, really: times are changing. They always do, have always done.
Translators who were in the business 20 years ago or more, remember how the work was completely different then, with better payment and longer deadlines, more time to spend with dictionaries and other reference material, most often with a focus on making the best possible translation. Now, on the contrary, payments are low, deadlines are short, and there’s no time to fiddle with books and other slow media, at most a few searches on the Internet through the whole task, or otherwise it will impossible to deliver within the time and price constraints.
But some more disruptive elements have appeared: First, the translation software that evolved into online services, and then the machine translation, now integrated everywhere, in almost every translation process out there. But lately, even machine translation has been pushed aside by AI, which is providing more fluent and seemingly creative target texts, and often without any linguistically inclined people taking part in the process.
Things are moving fast. Very fast! Just within the last two years, I have personally seen a situation in the market going from having enough of work to fill out my time, even if some of it was paid below a reasonable minimum, to now seeing several weeks pass without any tasks at all. This means, realistically, that I am no longer living from translating, and soon I will have to give it up completely, taking on some other work instead of reserving time for the translation tasks.
During those last two years, prices have been at a standstill, at best, or been reduced. Most often, they are simply frozen at the levels I agreed on with the clients (mostly translation agencies) about eight years ago, when I started doing this for a living. Attempts to increase the prices along the way have mostly failed, as any request for a change is met with silence, followed by fewer tasks than before.
There was an agency recently, who agreed to increase the rates. They even had some new kinds of tasks, a new language pair for me to work with, and it sounded good and prosperous, since they had a new client with this need, and I was so far the only translator who could do it.
But since we agreed on the new rate and the extra language pair, I have seen close to no tasks from them.
Another agency went too far, in my opinion, with their demand for free afterwork, when I had delivered the fifth round of additional “corrections”, including the implementation of some new preferred translations for common phrases, they had found and decided upon after I had initially done the work – plus several other new elements of work that were not in the original contract. As they came back with the sixth round of “QA”, as they called it, even though it had nothing to do with fixing errors, and as I had already spent at least three times as many hours as I had been paid for, I said stop. My claim was that they had already got much more than they had paid for, and if they wanted anything further, it would cost extra.
I haven’t heard from them since. It was several months ago. That is, a task was offered, I said yes, and then I heard nothing more. And later, again the same. A couple of weeks ago, they offered me a larger task, with work every day during a period, to start “in two days” – but no purchase order appeared, and when I asked them after the two days, by email, what happened to the task – I got no response.
And this is a pattern I see more often now, also from other agencies. More demands for less money, and fewer tasks altogether.
I do get emails with requests, and I do send estimates, prices, CVs, etc., as they ask for, but then I hear nothing more. One agency sent me a general collaboration contract, not long ago, after we had talked about a specific task, and I signed it and sent it back. I still haven’t heard from them, never got a copy with their signature.
One more significant change is, as mentioned, that AI has entered. Two years ago, I don’t think it was mentioned by the translation agencies at all. Now, at least half of them have announced some kind of activity in the area, and several tasks for correcting AI output has been offered (but without follow-up when I say yes).
It has long been a common topic on social media, amongst translators, that the business is in a decline. Some have blamed the cheap workforce of the East, now available through the online translation tools, and others have blamed the loss of quality sense, or the focus on price rather than quality, or something else. Many have declared the translation business, as we have known it so far, for dead. But now, honestly, it looks like it is close to being dead.
Most translators I know see similar problems as those I have described, plus, a more and more common phenomenon: the request for work to be done for free. Not many translators ever experience any appreciation of their skills and enthusiasm, their wish and will to make every translation perfect and work with it until it is.
In fact, most translators seem to see the same as I do: that it is impossible to live from it anymore. It can, at best, be a hobby that is being exercised a couple of times per month, perhaps for a symbolic payment.
So, while the society is moving towards letting AI do everything that has to do with words, skipping all human activities, the humans – the translators – will just have to move somewhere else.
We no longer fit into the society. We have reached the end of our journey.