Poll: Where can human translators offer the most irreplaceable value in the age of AI?
இழை இடுபவர்: ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
இணையத்தள அலுவலர்
Jul 22

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Where can human translators offer the most irreplaceable value in the age of AI?".

This poll was originally submitted by WordAnt. View the poll results »



 
Enrico Zoffoli
Enrico Zoffoli  Identity Verified
இத்தாலி
Local time: 06:13
உறுப்பினர்
ஜெர்மன் - இத்தாலியன்
+ ...
Advanced Source Content Optimization Jul 22

Flagging sustantive errors in the source I would say.

 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
போர்த்துகள்
Local time: 05:13
உறுப்பினர் (2007)
ஆங்கிலம் - போர்சுகீஸ்
+ ...
Other Jul 22

Certified and sworn translations...

expressisverbis
 
Zea_Mays
Zea_Mays  Identity Verified
இத்தாலி
Local time: 06:13
ஆங்கிலம் - ஜெர்மன்
+ ...
QUALITY Jul 22

I'm involved in a project where an agency reverted their experimental AI approach and opted for human translation for quality reasons, a pure QED situation.

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
expressisverbis
 
expressisverbis
expressisverbis
போர்த்துகள்
Local time: 05:13
ஆங்கிலம் - போர்சுகீஸ்
+ ...
In subtitling and transcription. Jul 22

AI may perform well with clear, standard speech, but it still struggles with strong regional accents, dialects, overlapping speakers, poor audio and cultural nuances.
Human professionals bring the listening skills, contextual understanding and editorial judgment needed to produce reliable subtitles and transcripts.
As it happens with translation, subtitling is not simply speech recognition, it is interpretation under constraints.


Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Bruno Veilleux
 
Kamila Perczak
Kamila Perczak  Identity Verified
Local time: 06:13
ஆங்கிலம் - போலிஷ்
+ ...
The question sounds desperate Jul 22

And it's asked from a wrong point of view. Human translators are irreplaceable because they're humans. The problem is that 99,99% people are unable to understand it. They're genuinely convinced that artificial imbecillence is a kind of a divine spirit that can think and understand things, knows all the languages, all the answers and all the questions. They're also unaware of how it works and unable to properly assess the quality of what it displays. The artificial god says so, so it MUST be true... See more
And it's asked from a wrong point of view. Human translators are irreplaceable because they're humans. The problem is that 99,99% people are unable to understand it. They're genuinely convinced that artificial imbecillence is a kind of a divine spirit that can think and understand things, knows all the languages, all the answers and all the questions. They're also unaware of how it works and unable to properly assess the quality of what it displays. The artificial god says so, so it MUST be true, full stop. They even believe it chats with them. The proper question we need to ask ourselves is: is the industry making us compete with a string of electric pulses actually worth it? I said 'no' and chose to give up translating - or, actually, MTPEs as this is what this profession turned into - by the end of this year. It's not easy at my age, but it's the best I can do. Let them feed their contracts, medical records and other confidential writs to servers located hell knows where and accessed by hell knows whom. Good luck, I don't care any more.Collapse


Daryo
 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
போர்த்துகள்
Local time: 05:13
உறுப்பினர் (2007)
ஆங்கிலம் - போர்சுகீஸ்
+ ...
BTW Jul 22

I recently had an unusual experience: an agency that forbids translators from using AI, GT, DeepL and MT, but then mainly sends them MTPE jobs. Is this a paradoxical "circular economy"?

 
Mario Chávez
Mario Chávez
யுனைடட் ஸ்டேத்ஸ்
Local time: 00:13
ஆங்கிலம் - ஸ்பேனிஷ்
+ ...
Excellent writing skills Jul 22

Writing, you ask? Everybody knows how to write. To write superbly in two or three languages, for different kinds of readers and in different specializations, takes many years, decades to master. No LLM (which costs several times what it cost to educate a human being in professional writing) can match that, now or ever.

 
Daryo
Daryo
Local time: 05:13
செர்பியன் - ஆங்கிலம்
+ ...
You could add slang to the list Jul 22

expressisverbis wrote:

AI may perform well with clear, standard speech, but it still struggles with strong regional accents, dialects, overlapping speakers, poor audio and cultural nuances.
Human professionals bring the listening skills, contextual understanding and editorial judgment needed to produce reliable subtitles and transcripts.
As it happens with translation, subtitling is not simply speech recognition, it is interpretation under constraints.


You could add slang [and even le français familier] to the list - the most 'entertaining' translations I've seen came from translators who never lived in the country of the source language and only understand the most formal academic version of the source language. Especially the case with subtitling movie ... From the AI generated subtitles I had to endure few times, AI is about as much useless.

Also, even with 'clear, standard speech' AI can easily the thrown off-balance by the slightest ambiguity, of the kind that wouldn't create any problem for humans with real-life experience. For AI words are most literally 'just words'.


 


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Poll: Where can human translators offer the most irreplaceable value in the age of AI?






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