For the translator in the twenty-first century, one of the most fervently repeated collocations of the times has to be machine and translation, those two suggestive siblings that have gone on to establish their reputations as the acrobats in a traveling circus of technology. As members of the audience, both captivated and unsettled by the performance in the ring and the apparently high-flying stunts of our little siblings, translators have front-row seats that make them the perfect observers of the madness and implicate them in the occasional fatalities. Once the lights have been extinguished in the audience, we might be dazzled, disturbed, cowering, maybe even fearful that one of the…
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In the world of professional translation, it goes without saying that the technological advances of the past few decades and, in particular, those of the rampant additions to the translation market such as ChatGPT and other kinds of artificial intelligence have meant the continuous upheaval of the industry. But this upheaval is nothing new—in fact, these changes should come as no surprise to the more veteran translators on websites and digital watering holes such as ProZ.com, where talk of the industry’s impending doom on its forums has been a viable subject of discussion since the late 1990s. And time and again, the general consensus has been that every panic-stricken pronouncement…
