Fundamentally Human: The Skills of the Future Translator in the Face of the AI Revolution

This article is a runner-up submission for the 2024 Rising Star Scholarship. It explores the impact of AI on education and the global language industry.

Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly competitive in academic and professional spheres, and the field of translation is no exception. In fact, the translation industry has been under threat due to recent developments in AI programs, as they are now offering instantaneous and easily accessible translations with decent accuracy, oftentimes free of charge (Vela, 2022).

However, AI tools are far from replacing human professionals due to fundamentally human skills that cannot be programmed into software. Although artificial intelligence is here to stay and will most likely continue improving, humans will always hold an important role in translation. The most pressing question, then, seems to be which will that role be in the near future. Some fear that they will be relegated to editor or reviewer roles, as companies will implement AI tools to take over the translation proper, causing human translators’ work to be depreciated (Tavares et al., 2023).

This bleak outlook does not need to become a reality, and the steps to prevent it can be taken from the very beginning of translators’ professional careers. I believe that translator training programs ought to emphasize the skills that set human professionals apart from software, namely: their critical judgment rooted in their language competencies, their cultural knowledge and sensibilities, and their ability to create.

Firstly, human translators are already, in a way, filtering machines. This means that the linguistic knowledge and editing skills that are acquired when taking a translation course allows translators to detect incorrect data, and differentiate grammar or language mistakes from deliberate choices, oftentimes stylistic, or distinctive features of the vernacular of a particular community. This also helps them identify texts that have been automatically generated using software that cannot identify and correctly interpret these nuances, or whose author has not undergone the same training that they have, resulting in faulty productions.

This ability to critically examine texts and translations is key and reaffirms the advantage human translators have over software, as the latter can run into the problem of feeding off faulty data, or even utilizing the output of other automated systems as its own input, which causes a decline in the quality of the resulting texts (Stock, 2023, and Shumailov et al., 2023). Human translators, with the help of technology, can completely avoid this problem and only consult the productions of real human language users. Furthermore, performing a contrastive analyses of the grammar of their mother tongue and the language that they specialize in is of vital importance for translators. 

Secondly, the language knowledge that is acquired in translator-training programs is complemented by extralinguistic knowledge of the linguistic context, the situational context, the culture of the target audience and other factors that are needed in order to produce not only a correct but an appropriate translation. Knowledge of the genre and the purpose of a text informs how a translation ought to be carried out. Besides, machines cannot keep track of information throughout longer texts the way that human translators can, resulting in lack of parallelism, consistency and continuity in lengthy productions. What’s more, the register, the degree of formality and specialization, the particular community that the translation targets, among other more particular details that are included in the translation request, are all variables that a translator must keep in mind and that are often difficult to factor in when using AI tools. Instead of obtaining a subpar translation that barely satisfies the requirements of the translation order and having to hire a translator to edit or even completely redo it, it is simpler and more beneficial in the long term to hire a human professional in the first place that is mindful of all these details from the very beginning.

Finally, the human ability to create is the feature that sets them apart from software in the clearest way. In the subfields of translation in which creativity is involved the most, such as in literary, journalistic, and audiovisual translation and other related branches, the human component is of vital importance, as translators can detect the emotional message underlying a text and know how to convey it in the target language, being aware of the nuances of how to express emotion in the different languages, what is most appropriate, what is most effective and what stays truer to the original intent. This sometimes means that translators may choose to disregard the form of the original to better suit the target audience and deliver the same emotional message as the original text, which are not decisions that can be made by AI programs.

Moreover, some writers and translators take more creative liberties in order to produce a loose translation. Jorge Luis Borges is a stellar example of a writer who has turned his translations into new and fresh works of literature. As machines do not currently have the ability to create from scratch, this is an exclusively human capability that serves to further expand and enrich the canon. It would be a disservice to both translators and to the audience to delegate such tasks to software.

 

Taking all of this into consideration, it is safe to say that, contrary to some people’s expectations, not only will there always be a place for human translators in the field, but they are also harder to replace with AI programs than it seems on the surface due to the specific competencies that translators develop throughout their training.

In the cases explained above, it is even advised to hire human beings from the very start of a project to ensure that the resulting translation is of the highest quality. It is necessary for educational institutions to be aware of the advantages that humans hold over AI software, so as to devote time and resources to strengthen such skills in future professionals.

This is only the first step towards securing the place of human translators, so that they are not underestimated and relegated to strictly editor and reviewer roles with the purpose of cutting costs and accelerating the translation process. Although technology can aid human beings as it has for decades now, it is important not to underestimate the value of human professionals, as some of their functions cannot and should not be replaced.