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Technology + translation jobs = obsolete? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Languages & Work |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 9 of 10 31 May 2011 at 1:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Just to weigh in with my few pennies. I've done some translation, but it's not something that I enjoy. There are certainly new toys on the market that will make the job of the translator less tedious. Things like online dictionaries, spellcheckers, the massive amount of documentation on the web and even the translation tools like Google Translate. But nothing can replace the human mind for deciphering the meanings of words. I don't see machine translation replacing human translation anytime soon. However, I do see translators becoming more productive and more efficient. Edited by s_allard on 31 May 2011 at 5:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 10 of 10 01 June 2011 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
According to hard AI believers, sentient machines will be possible one day. If that were true, everything a human can do a machine will do, and better, in the future. Meanwhile, what I'm sure will actually happen is that most humans will happily keep doing their jobs, only in much easier fashion with the aid of those 'machines', just like human operators haven't completely disappeared from assembly chains, or construction sites -- they're doing what the machines can't, and use them to do the same as before, and more, in a more efficient way. Being replaced by a machine is anyway a possibility in every labor field, but this possibility gets slimmer as we go up the scale of qualification, because machines replace human workers (and rightfully so) only when human capabilities can be surpassed by machines. The AI problem, an obvious (?) requirement to do meaningful translations, is far more complicated than designing cranes or automated screwdrivers and robot arms, because it is of a very different nature, although that might not be obvious for people outside IT fields. As long as you don't translate DVD instruction manuals (not because GT does it well, but because ignorant manufacturers think it does well enough) you'll be pretty safe for a very long while. I'll stop it here not to repeat myself too much.
Oh well, thank you for your compliment :) I believe that every person should be able to perform at least four or five different jobs decently (which is another eventual solution for the problem under discussion) so I happen to teach English myself part-time, so I'd be ashamed to make too many mistakes. Anyway, of all places, this is one where real excellence at languages should be found, and it is -- I almost fell flat on my *ss upon seeing how good some forum members' Spanish is--, so I'll try not to let it go to my head. I hope I'll hear you some day and I'll have some compliments for you as well :) Edited by mrwarper on 01 June 2011 at 8:06pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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