| Strani v okviru teme: [1 2 3] > | finding work in 2025 Sledi avtorju: edward o loughlin
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Having sent out numerous cvs , in german and english, over the past 5 months I have not received a single reply , not to mention any job offers. I am based in Vienna Austria. Could it be that the reputed xenophobia of Austria is at work here ? Or perhaps it is AI replacing human translations...
Last year I received offers not only from Proz adverts but also by cold calling agencies. I believe my work is of high quality so I don't see why things are different now.
Can anyone enl... See more Having sent out numerous cvs , in german and english, over the past 5 months I have not received a single reply , not to mention any job offers. I am based in Vienna Austria. Could it be that the reputed xenophobia of Austria is at work here ? Or perhaps it is AI replacing human translations...
Last year I received offers not only from Proz adverts but also by cold calling agencies. I believe my work is of high quality so I don't see why things are different now.
Can anyone enlighten me please....
thanks
e o loughlin. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas 
Združeno kraljestvo
Local time: 03:02
Član (2014)
japonščina - angleščina
| I can't comment on Austria... | Apr 30 |
edward o loughlin wrote:
I believe my work is of high quality so I don't see why things are different now.
... but regardless of your own ability, the level of global economic uncertainty is much higher than it was a year ago.
When private-sector companies feel that the future has become unpredictable, they rein in spending.
Translation is an expense, so that too will be subject to tighter control.
You translate business documents so you are probably aware of this?
The macro picture cannot be ignored.
Regards,
Dan
[Edited at 2025-04-30 08:47 GMT]
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I have been translating for over 40 years and although I got used to the ups and downs that are an inevitable part of freelancing, I must say that this April was even worse than some Covid months. The culprits? USA tariffs, political uncertainty, economic instability, higher inflation, AI? You name it…
| | | | Nicholas Isard
Združeno kraljestvo
Local time: 03:02
španščina - angleščina
+ ...
I've been translating for over 12 years. Up until the end of last year, I was very busy. However, this year things have definetely slowed down a lot. For the very first time in 12 years, last month I received zero jobs. This is partly due to the fact that a few of my big clients have switched entirely to AI.
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| In-house translators get laid off due to the deployment of AI-based translation solutions | May 1 |
Nicholas Isard wrote:
However, this year things have definitely slowed down a lot... Last month I received zero jobs. This is partly due to the fact that a few of my big clients have switched entirely to AI.
Two days ago, I learned that one of my direct clients (a nonprofit organization) laid off a project manager I had been working with. They made redundant the entire in-house translation team and decided that their field offices would use AI instead.
Also, from my experience, backed up by a couple of colleagues, the UN agencies face serious financial problems because of the drastic cuts in their funding. No assignments this year so far.
| | | | Richard Jacobs
Nizozemska
Local time: 04:02
Član (2020)
angleščina - nizozemščina, flamščina
+ ...
| Political uncertainty | May 1 |
Political uncertainty, especially around Trump's tariffs, always leads to less work. I haven't been without work at all this year—yes, things have slowed down a bit, but I've been doing this for over 20 years, and the economy hates instability, meaning companies are taking a more wait-and-see approach. That always hits our sector. Having dealt with AI quite a bit, I'm not so worried it will replace us, not in the near future anyway. The quality is just not there (yet anyway).
| | | | | Do people still care about quality? | May 1 |
Richard Jacobs wrote:
Having dealt with AI quite a bit, I'm not so worried it will replace us, not in the near future anyway. The quality is just not there (yet anyway).
I'm afraid people have been conditioned to no longer care about quality. Fast food, fast fashion, cheap plastic products with poor durability... Everyone seems to be in a hurry, frantically switching from one fad to the next, consuming the trash that greedy corporations sell them. People have been trained to be content with slop, and that's exactly what AI serves them.
[Edited at 2025-05-01 15:40 GMT]
| | | | Zea_Mays
Italija
Local time: 04:02
Član (2009)
angleščina - nemščina
+ ...
| what is AI used for? | May 1 |
Nicholas Isard wrote:
For the very first time in 12 years, last month I received zero jobs. This is partly due to the fact that a few of my big clients have switched entirely to AI.
What type of content are they using AI for? And is there no AI output checking step?
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Lieven Malaise
Belgija
Local time: 04:02
Član (2020)
francoščina - nizozemščina, flamščina
+ ...
Epameinondas Soufleros wrote:
Fast food, fast fashion, cheap plastic products with poor durability...
Fast food has been around for decades. Yet there is a whole market for fine dining and quality dining in general (most certainly in Belgium), a zillion websites and social media pages with quality cooking tutorials and a never ending stream of cookbooks by professional and non-professional cooks being published.
The existence of cheap low-quality options doesn't necessarily mean that more expensive quality options aren't bought anymore. The same goes for translation. If people say that almost nobody cares about quality anymore, then I call bull***t.
It's quite simple: a company that cares about the quality of its communication (which would be basically every serious company) will never rely solely on AI. I call that a myth until proven otherwise.
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgija
Local time: 04:02
Član (2020)
francoščina - nizozemščina, flamščina
+ ...
Nicholas Isard wrote:
This is partly due to the fact that a few of my big clients have switched entirely to AI.
Define "switching entirely to AI".
| | | | | AI + MT post-editors | May 1 |
Lieven Malaise wrote:
Epameinondas Soufleros wrote:
Fast food, fast fashion, cheap plastic products with poor durability...
The existence of cheap low-quality options doesn't necessarily mean that more expensive quality options aren't bought anymore. The same goes for translation...
It's quite simple: a company that cares about the quality of its communication (which would be basically every serious company) will never rely solely on AI. I call that a myth until proven otherwise.
However, companies that care about the quality of their communications will rely on AI translation edited/polished by humans (MTPE/PEMT, whichever acronym you prefer). Translators will have to become MT post-editors, or leave the stage.
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgija
Local time: 04:02
Član (2020)
francoščina - nizozemščina, flamščina
+ ...
Vladimir Pochinov wrote:
However, companies that care about the quality of their communications will rely on AI translation edited/polished by humans (MTPE/PEMT, whichever acronym you prefer). Translators will have to become MT post-editors, or leave the stage.
Absolutely. Work-wise I've still got nothing to complain about, but I don't think that would have been the case if I would still be refusing to do MTPE. It is without a doubt the future (if not already the present), while I do believe that there will always remain some conventional translation work to do.
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Lingua 5B
Bosna in Hercegovina
Local time: 04:02
Član (2009)
angleščina - hrvaščina
+ ...
In one post you are talking about fine dining, in the next one about MTPE. Isn't that contradictory? Fast food is the precise analogy for MTPE - half-done and frozen ingredients, unqualified staff, nothing is done from scratch, low quality ingredients sourced from who knows where and full of questionable additives, etc. If your work is almost 100% MTPE (your words), you shouldn't be using fine dining as analogies.
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgija
Local time: 04:02
Član (2020)
francoščina - nizozemščina, flamščina
+ ...
Lingua 5B wrote:
In one post you are talking about fine dining, in the next one about MTPE. Isn't that contradictory? Fast food is the precise analogy for MTPE - half-done and frozen ingredients, unqualified staff, nothing is done from scratch, low quality ingredients sourced from who knows where and full of questionable additives, etc. If your work is almost 100% MTPE (your words), you shouldn't be using fine dining as analogies.
If that analogy is "precise" according to you, then I don't want to know how "precise" your translations are. MTPE has nothing to do with fast food, since the end result of full MTPE are quality translations, at least in my case. I don't think the end result of the food preparation in a fastfood restaurant's kitchen is fine dining. It's always a bad idea to formulate an opinion about something you clearly know nothing about.
And could you quote my exact words where I say that my work is almost 100% MTPE? I think I still get offered at least 40% conventional translation work (could even be much more, but I don't keep records of it because I don't care what I'm offered, so I'll keep it conservative).
| | | | Dan Lucas
Združeno kraljestvo
Local time: 03:02
Član (2014)
japonščina - angleščina
A few months ago Jensen Huang made a statement along the lines "AI won't take your job, but somebody using AI will" (he is not the first person to make this observation). A lot of people got excited and wrote a lot of text about how this was simplistic and so on, but I think he is essentially correct. In many applications AI is a force multiplier, and those applications undoubtedly include some types of translation.
Ultimately I guess that translators who don't use MTPE will be like... See more A few months ago Jensen Huang made a statement along the lines "AI won't take your job, but somebody using AI will" (he is not the first person to make this observation). A lot of people got excited and wrote a lot of text about how this was simplistic and so on, but I think he is essentially correct. In many applications AI is a force multiplier, and those applications undoubtedly include some types of translation.
Ultimately I guess that translators who don't use MTPE will be like those who don't use CAT - the work will dry up to a trickle except in very specific niches. I have not been asked to do MTPE by my main clients but I am prepared to give it a go.
Regards,
Dan ▲ Collapse
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