| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | Does the old translation industry still exist or has MT and outsourcing taken over? Thread poster: Matthew Held
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Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 11:14
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
Lingua 5B wrote:
While the demand in Dutch may not be super high, the supply is rather low. You don’t have many competitors. Source: I worked as a project manager.
I think you are wise enough to realize that's not a valuable source to draw serious conclusions upon.
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 11:14
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
Lingua 5B wrote:
It’s more like proofreading, not translation.
It can’t be trained when each text is a separate entitity for itself. I may perceive this wrongly, but you make it sound like it’s nuclear physics. The process is not difficult, it’s tedious. There’s a difference.
It’s like grading (bad) students’ papers. When I was a student, all the teachers at the Uni ran away from grading papers like a plague (because it’s time consuming and tedious). Those who would accept it, it would take 6 months for them to get the papers back. Yes, they are trained, nothing to do with training.
[Edited at 2023-11-07 12:03 GMT]
Feel free to believe whatever you want. But unless you invest some serious time in the matter by doing it and doing it again and again, you simply dont't know what you are talking about. It's all assumption.
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 11:14
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
Lingua 5B wrote:
It’s more like proofreading, not translation.
True, but I wasn't saying that post-edting and translation are one and the same or even almost the same. I was comparing the learning process, not the activities as such.
| | | | Dan Lucas 
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:14
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Lieven Malaise wrote:
I think you are wise enough to realize that's not a valuable source to draw serious conclusions upon.
Well, another and more generalized way of looking at it is that a sample of one - whether project managers or, as you noted earlier in the thread, freelancers - is an insufficient source from which to draw serious conclusions.
Dan
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Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 11:14
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
Dan Lucas wrote:
Well, another and more generalized way of looking at it is that a sample of one - whether project managers or, as you noted earlier in the thread, freelancers - is an insufficient source from which to draw serious conclusions.Dan
Agreed, I am just sharing my own experience. But I don't think I am making general claims here ? Someone asked me how you can train yourself in MTPE and I tried to give an answer.
| | | | | Interesting point | Nov 7, 2023 |
Baran Keki wrote:
it's more or less the same people (who declare ChatGPT as the evil incarnate) that heap praises on DeepL,
I've had a little time to play with both in recent times. Just the free ChatGPT (3.5, I think it is). I notice that with French-English, for the type of business material I was using, the translated output is very similar. Sometimes 100% identical. Very often it only differs by a words that are more or less synonyms.
Given that the output (at least in my fields/pair) is similar in quality (which, sadly, is not atrocious!), I suspect the reason for the differing attitudes could be that DeepL is a tool that is little known outside of the community of people that work in languages. People who want translations (er, clients, I guess ) haven't heard of it. Whereas everyone and their dog knows about ChatGPT and some of them are bound to at least experiment with it.
| | | | Peter Motte
Belgium
Local time: 11:14
Member (2009)
English to Dutch
+ ...
| Old translation industry | Nov 7, 2023 |
What do you actually mean by old translation industry? Sofisticated cat tools and MT exist since a very long time.
| | | | Joakim Braun
Sweden
Local time: 11:14
German to Swedish
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Matthew Held wrote:
My question: Have MT and outsourcing taken over the translation industry?
No, but we'll get there.
Matthew Held wrote:
Does anyone get substantial jobs of 500 or 1000 USD/Euros?
Yes, but definitely slower going in the last 6 months. I receive fewer "general interest" inquiries, business is concentrating on stuff that must be very good indeed or else (regulatory, diplomas, legal...).
I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect 80% of the current translation market will be gone in 5 years.
What will be left? Perhaps your-best-rate bottom-feeder MTPE, a few high-value/high-quality segments (marketing, packaging, presentation), and stuff where errors are expensive and human-translation cost is a minimal percentage of total cost (technical, medical, financial).
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Lingua 5B wrote:
While the demand in Dutch may not be super high, the supply is rather low. You don’t have many competitors. Source: I worked as a project manager.
Let me help you out of a dream, IMHO we have (unfortunately) too many competitors! Not all of them equally talented I noticed, but most of them cheaper then me, but that is another discussion.
[Edited at 2023-11-07 20:18 GMT]
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 11:14
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
Robert Rietvelt wrote:
Let me help you out of a dream, IMHO we have (unfortunately) too many competitors! Not all of them equally talented I noticed, but most of them cheaper then me, but that is another discussion.
I think it's safe to say that the translator's market in general is over-saturated. You need next to nothing to get started and there are hardly any qualification restrictions.
| | | | | Yes, it's still there | Nov 8, 2023 |
The global agencies seem to be putting more and more through the machines, but there are still plenty of boutique agencies and direct clients who aren't.
I imagine you're right about there being fewer large jobs, as these are more likely to be put through MT to save time.
But it's a huge market and each of us is just one person, so there's still plenty of work out there, somewhere.
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Peter Motte wrote:
What do you actually mean by old translation industry? Sofisticated cat tools and MT exist since a very long time.
Maybe as old as when I started out in the late 1970s/early 1980s? I used to write my first draft by hand, and then type it up very carefully on a manual typewriter. Those were the days when correcting the slightest mistake seemed like an almost insuperable task: re-typing all over again (before the age of the correction tape and the correcting fluid). What a change we “oldies” have witnessed… and enjoyed!
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Peter Motte
Belgium
Local time: 11:14
Member (2009)
English to Dutch
+ ...
| Supply is hight | Nov 8, 2023 |
Robert Rietvelt wrote: Lingua 5B wrote:
While the demand in Dutch may not be super high, the supply is rather low. You don’t have many competitors. Source: I worked as a project manager. Let me help you out of a dream, IMHO we have (unfortunately) too many competitors! Not all of them equally talented I noticed, but most of them cheaper then me, but that is another discussion. [Edited at 2023-11-07 20:18 GMT]
Indeed, the supply is rather high. Most native Dutch speakers know more than 1 language, even more than 2. That doesn't mean they're the right stuff for translations, but it does mean the supply is high.
I would never recommend native Dutch speakers to choose a career as a translator, and not even a career in anything having to do with languages, which also means becoming a writer.
[Edited at 2023-11-08 10:32 GMT]
| | | | Peter Motte
Belgium
Local time: 11:14
Member (2009)
English to Dutch
+ ...
| Old and new translation industry | Nov 8, 2023 |
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida wrote: Peter Motte wrote:
What do you actually mean by old translation industry? Sofisticated cat tools and MT exist since a very long time. Maybe as old as when I started out in the late 1970s/early 1980s? I used to write my first draft by hand, and then type it up very carefully on a manual typewriter. Those were the days when correcting the slightest mistake seemed like an almost insuperable task: re-typing all over again (before the age of the correction tape and the correcting fluid). What a change we “oldies” have witnessed… and enjoyed!
When I started, I was already working on a pc. CAT tools came later. Then MT. Speach recognition did never do it for me, although I have it.
That's why I think that AI won't have a big impact, because the development of CAT and MT already entails AI. Some CAT tools replace words in target sentences by words found in teminology databases. What more do you want? Maybe AI would put those words in the correct form, but I don't see us gaining much time with that: you still have to read and check everything to be sure it's right.
Nevertheless, lots of people will believe AI will all make it faster and cheaper, and that will be used by managers to enforce lower prices, although the time gained won't compensate for lower prices.
Ai will be the same thing as self driving cars. Remember Elon Musk saying we will have self driving cars in ten years time? He said that more then 10 years ago. We still don't have them.
AI for translation will be the same. But some people will believe it, some managers will believe it, and they will invest in it. And waste money and time.
| | | | | One difference in my view | Nov 8, 2023 |
Peter Motte wrote:
That's why I think that AI won't have a big impact, because the development of CAT and MT already entails AI.
That is all true. I think the difference now is that the reach of those technology developments was largely restricted to the language services industry - translators, agencies, in-house translation depts. The changes felt were all inside the industry (some would say particularly by us 'umble translators).
In contrast, AI and especially ChatGPT is very much in the public domain, as it were, and end clients are in a position to use it directly. They can by-pass the whole lot of us - and at the moment, they appear to be doing so, to some extent at least.
I expect there is an element of faddishness involved, and some will hopefully return to us, but it might take a while.
I definitely take your point about self-driving cars and technology cheerleaders have always over-promoted their products, but at the same time, I wouldn't advise a 20-year-old to plan on a lifelong career as a taxi driver. No more I would as a translator. Not in the sense we know those jobs now. Some kind of oversight of the actions of AI - sure, maybe. But 100% hands on the wheel driving and 100% hands on the keyboard typing will both, eventually, disappear.
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