It’s 2022. On one hand, globalization seems to be slowing down – the after effects of COVID-19, supply chain disruption, global unrest, and climate change affect economic predictions. On the other hand, 76% of Amazon sellers are profitable – in spite of 90% having been crippled by supply chain challenges. It’s safe to say that the playing field is volatile and unpredictable. It’s no longer solid business to keep all your eggs in the Amazon.com basket. Time to explore other marketplaces; who knows, perhaps Amazon Japan or Amazon Spain would yield even more returns than your US-based account!
Furthermore, there’s the development of technology for the translation industry. We may all laugh at the localization errors that machine translations churn out, but there are powers working behind the scenes to make sure these machine translations learn from their mistakes. In fact, Tomedes.com believes that machine translations are the future, and there will be a world where human translators and machine translators coexist and work seamlessly together. Perhaps this sounds far-fetched right now, but we’re pretty certain that Google works to improve accuracy and speed while we’re laughing at clumsy machine translations. Let’s not forget machine translation post-editing (MTPE), which may render translation and localization proofreaders redundant.
It’s so crucial for human translators to improve their value as time goes on, so we never run the risk of the machines outpacing us. (That sounds like an episode of Black Mirror, do you watch it?) Our German team lead, Silke, offers some practical advice for translators in this installment of #ylttranslatorprofiles.
Here’s an insightful quote by Ginni Rometty, former chairman of IBM and the first woman to lead the company: “Some people call this artificial intelligence, but the reality is this technology will enhance us. So instead of artificial intelligence, I think we’ll augment our intelligence.” Translators and localizers, you are not exempt from this. It’s time to up your game!