The AI Wake-Up Call: Rethinking What It Means to Be a Translator (and Human Being?!) Today
- Ka Yee Meck
- 3 days ago
- 9 min read
Table of Contents
Yes, this is ANOTHER blog post on AI. But no – it’s not your typical “5 Tips for Using ChatGPT” article.
This piece started as a voice memo – me, talking to my laptop mic, just thinking out loud. I wanted to share my unfiltered thoughts on AI, where the translation industry is going, and how I’m trying to find meaning in this rapidly changing world.
What I’m about to share has shaken me deeply and made me rethink what it means to be a translator – and, at the risk of sounding a bit dramatic or even grandiose, a human being – today.
What Prompted This Post: Losing a Client – and a Source of Meaning
Last week, I lost a really valuable client.
More precisely, it was a translation agency I’d worked with for over five years. Together, we handled translations for a whistleblower platform – a space where employees of large multinational companies could leave anonymous messages or recorded voice notes about workplace issues.
I’ve always valued this project for several reasons.
First, it provided semi-stable income – crucial for any freelancer. Second, the work itself felt meaningful. I always saw it as giving a voice to people who didn’t have one.
And to top it off, the agency team was lovely. The PMs feel like human beings with whom I can chat about our weekends, share funny anecdotes or even photos of cakes and other treats we’ve enjoyed (yep, a strictly “professional relationship 🤣) As a freelancer who works alone, at home, ALL of the time, that small bit of friendly chitchat meant more than I realised.
Then, last week, the unexpected news arrived: the end clients – these huge corporations – had decided to switch to an AI translation solution.
That hit me hard. Personally, because I’ll miss working with those people, plus I’ll have to find an alternative source of income to make up for this project.
Professionally, because it was a massive wake-up call that’s made me see the industry – and the world of work more generally – in a very different light.
The Speed of Change Is Frightening – and Surreal
If you don’t know me, you might think I’m one of those dinosaurs who just detest AI and would not contemplate giving ChatGPT a try… But that could NOT be further from the truth. I began using ChatGPT more than 18 months ago and am now even a user of their paid service. I use it extensively for lots of things that increase productivity: improve my emails, crunch numbers, come up with SEO-optimised video titles and descriptions for my YouTube channel (yes, I’m a “YouTuber” – more on that later)…
And in fact, even just three months ago, I was still fairly optimistic.
Like many colleagues, I believed translators could adapt – learn to leverage AI, position ourselves as linguistic experts, and guide clients in using these tools responsibly.
Indeed, that was the message at a CIOL conference in London earlier this year. (I’m a Chartered Linguist and CIOL member.) The consensus was:
If we adapt, we can survive.
AI will create more work, not less – more content to review as translation costs drop.
And honestly, I believed it. Or maybe I – like many colleagues in the field – just desperately wanted to believe it.
But after last week, I’m beginning to think that might have been… wishful thinking?
I can’t help but draw an analogy between our current predicament as language “experts” and that of scribes on the cusp of the European Renaissance. Imagine you were an experienced scribe working in Europe circa 1440. You made a decent living copying the Bible by hand, and you found great meaning in that work, keeping God’s message alive!
And then Gutenberg drops a bombshell on your community of scribes by inventing the printing press – something that makes copying by hand completely redundant.
You and your community of scribes hang onto the belief that you can still add value!
You can position yourselves as elite scribes who add artistry and flair to this business of text-copying!
You try to convince the world and yourself of your value, your unique human touch, but…
The printing press can copy a manuscript at 100× your speed.
And it doesn’t get sleepy.
It doesn’t make human errors.
And it doesn’t get carpal tunnel and need rest time.
You can battle the tide as hard as you want, but you will not – cannot – push it back and resist the inexorable march of technology and the obliteration of 99% of your industry.
Some genies just cannot be coaxed back into the bottle.
And that’s where I think the translation industry is at right now.
It’s facing wholesale replacement by AI.
Yes, humans will always be needed to perform some quality checks, but to think that there will be the same amount of work to go around as there is now is – in my revised opinion – sadly, as deluded and foolish as our hypothetical scribe who thought they could resist reality through the sheer force of their will.
It’s time to reckon with reality.
This, for me, is the ultimate reality check.
The Harsh Reality: Businesses (and Even Most Ordinary People) Don’t Think Like Linguists
Let’s go back to that whistleblowing project. Did I see this coming? Maybe – but not this soon.
These are global companies whose names everyone would recognise. Revenues in the hundreds of millions, maybe billions. I assumed translation costs would be, to them, “chicken feed” – far too trivial to bother auditing or cutting.
And yet, they did.
Despite the fact that AI transcription and translation tools are nowhere near ready for the kind of messy, emotional, colloquial content these employees send in. I’ve seen firsthand that these written messages are often grammatically incorrect even in Chinese, as these employees are often less educated than your average office worker. It takes a human to decipher what they mean, let alone turn it into idiomatic English.
And don’t get me started on transcription! These are much trickier to handle due to regional accents, sound quality and a multitude of other factors. Machines simply aren’t up to the job right now.
But still, despite all these issues, these corporations jumped at the “cost-effective” option.
That’s when a huge realisation hit me (maybe it was actually obvious all along to more business-minded individuals?!): businesses don’t think like linguists.
We linguists love language. We live and breathe it. We care about nuance, tone, and precision. And it’s natural to think that everyone thinks like us.
But recently, I’ve noticed that NOT everyone thinks like us.
One quick example: I told someone the other day that I’m a translator when asked what I do for a living; the other person’s immediate response?
“Can’t Google Translate do that?”
It’s worth noting that this person only speaks English, a fact that perhaps makes him representative of the population at large.
That one comment made me realise: DANG! Not everyone thinks like US!!!
And let’s think about corporations.
What’s the name of the game for them?
Profitability.
ROI.
A while ago, I read a chilling article about how even publishing houses are now using AI to translate… NOVELS.
And publishing companies are, as businesses go, probably somewhat more concerned about language and nuance than your average private company.
So, if this is where the publishing industry is heading, imagine what it’s like in other industries where most senior managers don’t know the first thing about translation?
If they can cut costs by 50 percent, and in their eyes quality “only” drops 20 percent (and who knows, maybe whoever sells these AI solutions to them will convince them that the quality will only drop by 1%? 5%?), that’s a no-brainer.
Unless it’s a flagship marketing campaign or something customer-facing, many companies simply don’t care enough about quality to justify human translation.
We can blog, lecture, and highlight AI mistranslations – I’ve done all that myself – but ultimately, these are financial, not linguistic, decisions.
What Happens Next?
So far, I’ve painted a picture of AI being inferior to human beings, hence my outrage.
But in truth, I actually think that AI already outperforms human in many translation-related tasks, and will soon outperform us in all but the most specialised tasks, perhaps 1% of everything we do now.
And here’s the truth: AI translation technology is advancing at breakneck speed.
Within a few years – certainly within five – it will likely replace 99% of what many translators do today.
Take what I do as an example.
Right now, most of my income comes from certified document translation – birth certificates, marriage certificates, official paperwork. At the moment, there are two main bottlenecks within the process: first, AI’s inability to accurately extract information from PDFs/ JPGs and, second, formatting the translation in a way that mirrors the source file.
But as soon as the technology becomes good enough to overcome these hurdles, the translation process itself can be fully automated, only requiring perhaps human “sign-off”. Yes, I still believe humans will always be needed to certify such translations, but the volume of work and the pay translators will get will be significantly reduced.
The same goes for transcription. While the technology is quite rudimentary at present, it WILL catch up and be able to replace 99% of what transcribers currently do within five years.
When we reach that point… What’s left for us? What value do we bring?
Can We Pause AI? Probably Not.
Some have called for a pause in AI development. Even leading AI researchers have urged caution. (Check out this interview with Geoffrey Hinton – the "Godfather" of AI – it's illuminating + frightening in equal measure)
One of my favourite creators in our field, Adrian Probst of Freelanceverse, recently shared a thought-provoking video on this topic.
And while I agree with many of those concerns (I even signed a petition urging the UK government to take them seriously), realistically, I don’t think it’s possible.
Even if Europe or the US slowed down, do we really think other countries – those with world-dominating ambitions – would?
So we have to face it: this is happening. The question is how we move forward.
One path for me might be evolving into an AI translation consultant – helping companies implement AI ethically and effectively.
But I’m also asking: is that what I really want to do? Will it feel meaningful?
Yet, at 39, with decades of work ahead, I’m trying to see this not as an ending, but an opportunity to pivot – to find a new kind of purpose.
In Chinese, the word for “crisis” (危機 weiji) combines “danger” and “opportunity.”
Ten years ago, in 2015, being made redundant pushed me into freelancing – one of the best decisions of my professional life, in retrospect.
Maybe 2025 will turn out to be another pivotal year – a moment to forge a new path…?
Finding Meaning in This New World
So where do I go from here?
Honestly, I don’t yet know.
One clear direction is content creation. Since 2023, I’ve been running my YouTube channel, The Multilingual Family Hub, where I help parents raise bilingual and trilingual children.
That part of my work feels human. It’s about connection, authenticity, and meaning – all the things AI can’t replicate.
Right now, it doesn’t pay the bills, so it always have to take "second priority".
But what if that's actually where my future lies…? One way for me to make an impact? And one day, it might even pay the bills – who knows?
One thing is for certain though: in an AI-dominated world, people will crave authenticity and connection more than ever.
It’s scary, but it’s also exciting.
This could be the start of a new chapter – as I enter my fourth decade (or is it my fifth? Maybe I should ask ChatGPT…) on this planet in 2026. Who knows where it’ll lead?
So… What Now for Us All?
I honestly don’t have the answers.
I don’t think anyone does right now.
But maybe this is the moment – not just for translators, but for everyone – to pause and reflect on what we truly value.
If AI takes over the mechanical parts of our work, maybe our role as humans is to rediscover meaning.
Because, to me, nihilism and cynicism can’t be the answer.
As a mother of two young children, I feel a visceral sense of responsibility towards the future – to help build a world where the AI revolution serves humanity, not the other way around.
We cannot leave them a future completely devoid of meaning, a future where they will be paid a “basic universal income” to sit at home playing (AI-generated) video games and scrolling (AI-generated) 60-sec videos and dating (AI-generated) virtual boyfriend or girlfriend.
We HAVE to do better.
And it starts with each of us.
Has your career been affected by AI?
What are your thoughts on the direction things are going – in translation or in your own field?
Share your reflections in the comments below.
Comments