Poll: Would you say competition in your pair(s) or area(s) of expertise has increased in the past 2 years? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Would you say competition in your pair(s) or area(s) of expertise has increased in the past 2 years?".
View the poll results »
| | | | neilmac
Spain
Local time: 22:37
Spanish to English
+ ...
There was already a lot of competition in my ES-EN pair, with many people translating into their L2. The increasing widespread availability of MT and grammar checking software like Grammarly mean that almost anyone with half a brain and a modicum of target language knowledge can have a bash at translating. I believe the situation is worse in the Americas than in Europe, for economic reasons.
| | | | mroed
Local time: 22:37
Italian to German
+ ...
in my field (legal on a high level) there are not too many "real" competitors. Sometimes clients stay away for a while, but finally come back.
But as I already wrote in another posting: The assignments coming in are getting more challenging.
| | | | Thayenga 
Germany
Local time: 22:37
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
Yes in my primary language pair EN GE. No in the area of expertise.
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| I don't know | Oct 24, 2019 |
but there is still enough work to go around as far as I am concerned.
| | | | | Good point, NeilMac | Oct 25, 2019 |
Yes, with the tools available clients can produce translations good enough to get by in many cases. It depends on how much quality they want, or need.
To get a point across, if a primitive way will suffice, we are increasingly expendable.
Thus, the human translator's role is to produce translations that are not just decent (which technology can almost do now, with the exception of the occasional blunder) but rather linguistically perfect, and even elegant, translation... See more Yes, with the tools available clients can produce translations good enough to get by in many cases. It depends on how much quality they want, or need.
To get a point across, if a primitive way will suffice, we are increasingly expendable.
Thus, the human translator's role is to produce translations that are not just decent (which technology can almost do now, with the exception of the occasional blunder) but rather linguistically perfect, and even elegant, translations, thereby delivering an added value that only a trained professional can.
Perhaps there is a silver lining to this trend, which strikes fear into the hearts of many translators: we are becoming writers, to a greater extent. Clients are going to want style, because an MT can give them the general idea.
neilmac wrote:
There was already a lot of competition in my ES-EN pair, with many people translating into their L2. The increasing widespread availability of MT and grammar checking software like Grammarly mean that almost anyone with half a brain and a modicum of target language knowledge can have a bash at translating. I believe the situation is worse in the Americas than in Europe, for economic reasons.
[Edited at 2019-10-25 09:21 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Alexandra Hirsch (X)
Austria
Local time: 22:37
English to German
+ ...
@NeilMac
You paint a very bleak picture when you say that using MT and a grammar checker are the tools of the future!
Shall I show you my collection of beautiful blunders? (Calm down, folks. It's not what you're thinking…) Apart from those in user manuals where you end up turning the wrong knob or opening the wrong panel or whatever, lots occur in literary translation:
a) a black plastic bin liner becomes a body bag (!);
b) a rocket built at site X ... See more @NeilMac
You paint a very bleak picture when you say that using MT and a grammar checker are the tools of the future!
Shall I show you my collection of beautiful blunders? (Calm down, folks. It's not what you're thinking…) Apart from those in user manuals where you end up turning the wrong knob or opening the wrong panel or whatever, lots occur in literary translation:
a) a black plastic bin liner becomes a body bag (!);
b) a rocket built at site X is actually launched (!) from site X;
c) a biker gang sets out to protect the person they are actually aiming to kill (!);
d) a walking stick with an eagle head becomes an eagle head;
e) a group of people becomes one person;
f) someone's eyes wonder rather than wander (due to a spelling error in the source text);
…
Not what you would call 'equivalent', are they? But how would you recognise the errors if you didn't speak the language or had no access to the source text? (I'm stating the obvious. Sorry.)
Source text handed to MT tools have to be uncorrupted, correct and conventional, otherwise the machine spits out garbage. So, pre- and post-editing are quite unavoidable. Plenty of work there. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Mario Freitas
Brazil
Local time: 17:37
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
It has certainly increased in number. But in terms of quality, it's decreasing fast.
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