With the recent discussion around AI translation of anime (relevant post), it reminded me of this article/interview I read a little while back in which the topic was brought up with actual, professional translators.

If the topic interests you, check out the full article; it’s great. It has lots more info and analysis that what I have put below. I simply picked out a quote from each of the professional translators they spoke to. The full article has much more and great analysis by the author as well.

Zack Davisson (professional translator):

I would say that, like it or not, AI is coming. That genie is not going back in the bottle. And it is improving. The days of Google Translate being a joke are gone. Who knows what AI translation will be like ten years from now? Twenty? Something people need to think about. Hating it is not going to make it go away.

Matthias Hirsh (professional translator):

Machine translations (MT) nearly always need to be proofread or edited by a human, so in many cases, you might as well have hired a human translator. Additionally, having to compete with AI and MT devalues our work. Rates are stagnant among translation agencies as it is. More importantly, however, MT is cutting corners and ultimately leaves the end user with a worse outcome than they would have with a qualified human translator.

Kim Morrissy (professional translator):

Corporations should definitely be more aware of the current limitations of MTL/AI and not see them as a shortcut to reducing labour costs. It’s not just purely a matter of ethics but making people aware that current applications will either see a big drop in quality or require more human labour than they were led to believe. As for the consumers, I don’t necessarily think they should be expected to vote with their wallets purely over this issue, and it would be naive to expect them to do so, honestly. In the future, as AI improves, we may see the debate take on new forms. Personally, I like being optimistic about technological progress. I welcome the tech, just not the way business culture works around it. People have to argue for their rights as workers, otherwise those rights will get eroded over time. That’s just unfortunately how the world works.

  • Kuinox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    82·
    8 months ago

    The first and last of your quote is the reason I often comments on the subject.
    Spreading lies on the subject like “it’s stealing”, “it’s garbage” is just making everyone loose time and not discuss solution that we can push together to politics, like workers protections.

    • wjs018@ani.socialOPMEnglish
      51·
      8 months ago

      The translators have some additional things to say about corporate behavior in this regard:

      (Morrissy) In practice, machine translation and AI are used as ways to devalue the work of human translators. A lot of companies are in a race to the bottom to turn the role of “translator” into “machine translation editor”, which always pays much worse. It’s tough because the tech genuinely is useful in speeding up the process, when used intelligently. But at the moment, let’s just say that the suits really overestimate the contributions of the machines when a “machine translation editor” often needs to retranslate entire sections to ensure basic quality.

      (Hirsh) The only reason agencies and companies want to use AI is to save money. And even if someone is hired to check (or redo) the AI’s work, that person will not be offered the same rate as if they were translating it themselves and they will not be given the time to do a thorough job. I can tell you from experience checking MT work (which I no longer do) that I never had enough time to fix everything to my standard of quality, between the time I was given and rate I was offered. They want you to work as fast as possible so long as the result is okay enough to not raise eyebrows or be incomprehensible to end users. Mediocrity is the norm.

      There is also a recognition that this technology, if given time to develop, has potential:

      (Davisson) Technology has replaced many careers across time. “Computer” used to be a profession where people did calculations all day. Now, the word refers to a machine. Many don’t realize “computer” was ever a job title. I can imagine “translator” becoming the same in the future. If AI continues to improve, I can foresee a time when “translator” is only a device in the Star Trek sense, and not a person.