The standpoint of my presentation means to be realistic but not alarmist: I don’t think our professional activity will disappear because of MT, although its transformation is obvious for anyone who has been around long enough; neither do I think that what happens with MT is an isolated or a temporary phenomenon that affects our profession alone.
So, translators will survive, just as accountants have despite all the accounting software around. But the 4th industrial revolution is ongoing and will change and destroy a huge amount of jobs.
After exploring the meaning and consequences of IA and MT, I propose that we think about the future of our profession in the “brave new world” of big data, the Internet of things and (artificially) intelligent machines.
One of the most immediate consequences of all the above, is that we need to face up to this revolution, decide what kind of activity is acceptable for us as “translation work” and what should be considered a separate activity for another kind of professionals that decide to work with machine-translated texts.
I am a French/English into Spanish translator born in the Basque Country, in Spain.
My background is in human and social sciences (Ph.D.). I started translating for several professors while at University (1993), and that was where I got my first professional translation contract in 1998. Previously I had obtained several diplomas and certificates of English and French and a second language, and loved Spanish language. And I loved it! Several thousands of translated pages and self-training later I became a full-time translator in 2000. My fields of work match my personal interests: human and social sciences, marketing, life sciences.