| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Poll: Translation in the year 2049: Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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| It will not exist | Jul 15, 2020 |
Aliens will have taken over the planet and programmed all humans to speak one universal language.
| | | | Liena Vijupe 
Latvia
Local time: 19:49
Member (2014)
French to Latvian
+ ...
| I don't know | Jul 15, 2020 |
My only prediction is that EVERYTHING will be greatly different in 2049 and there is absolutely no reason to see translation as an exception.
P.S. For those who are convinced that they (or somebody else) won't be around anymore:
In 1965 Jeanne Calment, aged 90, sold her apartment to her lawyer, Andre-Francois Raffray – a man half her age who agreed to pay her 2,500 francs (about $500) per month on condition he would acquire the apartment after her death. But Calment went ... See more My only prediction is that EVERYTHING will be greatly different in 2049 and there is absolutely no reason to see translation as an exception.
P.S. For those who are convinced that they (or somebody else) won't be around anymore:
In 1965 Jeanne Calment, aged 90, sold her apartment to her lawyer, Andre-Francois Raffray – a man half her age who agreed to pay her 2,500 francs (about $500) per month on condition he would acquire the apartment after her death. But Calment went on to become the world's oldest living person, dying 32 years later at the age of 122. Raffray himself died two years before her, never having lived in the apartment he had paid for. ▲ Collapse
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Liena Vijupe wrote:
In 1965 Jeanne Calment, aged 90, sold her apartment to her lawyer, Andre-Francois Raffray – a man half her age who agreed to pay her 2,500 francs (about $500) per month on condition he would acquire the apartment after her death. But Calment went on to become the world's oldest living person, dying 32 years later at the age of 122. Raffray himself died two years before her, never having lived in the apartment he had paid for.
| | | | Rita Utt
France
Local time: 18:49
English to German
+ ...
[quote]Justin Peterson wrote:
MT is getting so good ... people will be needed more to proofread rather than translate. Actually, I'm surprised rates have generally not dropped, or output increased - not much - since I started 15 years ago. My output has doubled...and my rate is about the same, but this can't last forever. JRP
Maybe rates have not dropped, because they haven't risen in the 15 years before you started)
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| Long Lives And Literary Translation | Jul 15, 2020 |
Many years ago, someone posted a news story on one of the proz forums about a nursing home resident in her 90s who was still working as a literary translator (which is what I am).
My mother will be 96 next month, and mostly has a good memory (which I believe is indispensable for a translator), so maybe I will still be plugging away at it in 2049 (hope my computer, etc., won't be stolen by anybody who happens to work at any nursing home I might end up in).
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:49
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| I hate having to think of a title every time I post something | Jul 15, 2020 |
Barbara Cochran, MFA wrote:
..... maybe I will still be plugging away at it in 2049 (hope my computer, etc., won't be stolen by anybody who happens to work at any nursing home I might end up in).
We won't be using computers in 2049. We'll have tiny computers under our scalps that will control our every thought.
| | | | | Are we out of questions? | Jul 15, 2020 |
What kind of question is this? If this nonsense is the best you can come up with, I would suggest to skip the Polls all together and do something usefull. Hope there are clearvoiyants among us.
[Edited at 2020-07-15 20:15 GMT]
| | | | | There are roughly 6000 languages in the world... | Jul 16, 2020 |
Give or take, depending on how many languages have actually died out by 2049, and what you count as dialects... there are thousands that machines cannot cope with.
But for real, hard-core language lovers, there will still be plenty of work reaching out to the 'smaller' languages. Just keeping the minority languages of Europe alive is a challenge, so go around the rest of the world and see what is going on there!
I don´t really believe the machines are going to take ove... See more Give or take, depending on how many languages have actually died out by 2049, and what you count as dialects... there are thousands that machines cannot cope with.
But for real, hard-core language lovers, there will still be plenty of work reaching out to the 'smaller' languages. Just keeping the minority languages of Europe alive is a challenge, so go around the rest of the world and see what is going on there!
I don´t really believe the machines are going to take over entirely, even in the more widespread languages. They change. The English I speak is not the same as the English my grandchild will speak when she learns it... And the Danish I learned 40 years ago, which my parents-in-law spoke, is not the same as the language the younger generations speak today. My other languages are hopelessly dated, because I have not kept them up, and they were literary in the first place.
Machines will have trouble with issues like that, I am sure.
But I would never dare go into detail with predictions. I may or may not be around in 2049 - if so, I will be older than any of my close relations lived to be, but who knows? At the age of 90 my father was still bellyaching about only one alphabet on his computer... I will be trouble to the end of my days, that´s for sure!  ▲ Collapse
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Kay Denney
France
Local time: 18:49
French to English
Well we thought 25 years ago that we'd have hoverboards and flying cars by now, and 40 years ago we thought we'd be colonising Mars by now, yet here we are learning to wash our hands, so....
| | | | Becca Resnik
United States
Local time: 12:49
Member
German to English
+ ...
| That's what I'm banking on | Jul 16, 2020 |
Mario Freitas wrote:
But it will be greatly different in the number of professional translators in the market. The "peanut" market will become a giant, offering only MTPE, and may ensure continuity of translation courses in college. But the "A" market will be strongly reduced, with few very competent translators with an experience far beyond these courses. These will be highly-remunerated specialists.
What happened to clothes and shoes with the Industrial Revolution was pretty similar. Today we have machines producing 90% of the clothes and shoes, but we still have millions of non-specialized people working in the clothing industry. And we still have specialized designers, tailors, etc. who are very well remunerated, despite being responsible for less than 10% of the clothing in the market.
[Edited at 2020-07-14 16:07 GMT]
I think this is a likely scenario, and it's the one I'm banking on. I certainly hope to be one of the high-end pros long before that point, and if this is how it plays out, I'll be able to say I even got in while you could still make a good living as a typical translator. And on this note, I also look at it as a form of job security that kids will likely be told to stray away from pursuing translation as a career.
| | | | Becca Resnik
United States
Local time: 12:49
Member
German to English
+ ...
| Differing confidence levels | Jul 16, 2020 |
Kay Denney wrote:
Well we thought 25 years ago that we'd have hoverboards and flying cars by now, and 40 years ago we thought we'd be colonising Mars by now, yet here we are learning to wash our hands, so....
Exactly. Computer science/engineering is notoriously a field where laypeople have much, much more confidence than the experts do as far as knowledge and capability go.
https://xkcd.com/2030/
| | | | Becca Resnik
United States
Local time: 12:49
Member
German to English
+ ...
| The scariest part | Jul 16, 2020 |
In my opinion, the scariest part is not knowing when it's truly the beginning of the end. I think all I'll be able to do is see after the fact - after I've gone a year or two not making enough income - that it's all over. It's the nature of being a freelancer online, I think. If we could talk to someone who was, say, a Computer in the 60s, I wonder what they would say about seeing (or not seeing) the end coming. But it would have been different, because their company would have up and said "this... See more In my opinion, the scariest part is not knowing when it's truly the beginning of the end. I think all I'll be able to do is see after the fact - after I've gone a year or two not making enough income - that it's all over. It's the nature of being a freelancer online, I think. If we could talk to someone who was, say, a Computer in the 60s, I wonder what they would say about seeing (or not seeing) the end coming. But it would have been different, because their company would have up and said "this whole department: pack your things and go." For us, we'll just have to gauge the dwindling quantity and paycheck of jobs. And even then, with the natural ebb and flow of translation, it'll be tough to tell when it's truly an overall decline. Personally, I don't think AI will become so advanced even in my lifetime that it'll wipe out translation completely. And even if it does...my friends, the world won't be a shadow of what it is today, well beyond our profession. All I can say is that that's why I have plans in place in case translation doesn't pan out over the long term. ▲ Collapse
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Paul Dixon
Brazil
Local time: 13:49
Portuguese to English
+ ...
If I am not pushing up the daisies by then, I will be 90 years old, probably working in what's left of the translation business after machines and technology have taken away our jobs (or maybe in another profession where at least we make money). Even without covid, the situation has got much worse over the last ten years.
The translation business is nearing its end. Work is very rare, especially in Brazil. And as the translation market is not yet regulated and there are millions of ... See more If I am not pushing up the daisies by then, I will be 90 years old, probably working in what's left of the translation business after machines and technology have taken away our jobs (or maybe in another profession where at least we make money). Even without covid, the situation has got much worse over the last ten years.
The translation business is nearing its end. Work is very rare, especially in Brazil. And as the translation market is not yet regulated and there are millions of unemployed, many people turn to translation to make a few 'bob' (that's shillings, by the way. 12 old pence = 1 shilling, 20 shillings, 1 pound), pushing prices down. ▲ Collapse
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