Having everyone around you talk about how powerful of an AI tool ChatGPT is, and how it will soon takeover your job, is certainly not the best thing when you are just about to graduate completing your Master’s in Translation.

You most probably have already read many articles reassuring you that ChatGPT cannot replace you, in fact, the tool itself will tell you just that if you ask it. However, having experimented with it a bit myself, I do not totally agree.

The truth? I think ChatGPT can easily replace you soon if you are doing your job “just enough”.

As translators, we have already witnessed the great advancement of Neural Machine Translation within the last few years, especially when it comes to pragmatic texts. Most of us, if not all, use machine translations as first drafts now, and post-edit them. But if your translation is pretty basic, and you’re sticking to the original text’s structure, how much editing are you actually making? In this case, it is obvious that many (previous) clients/recruiters will prefer having a free, instant and good-enough translation than a more expensive, slower and not-that-different one.

With the impressive development of AI, machine translation and writing will definitely be further improving.

However, this certainly doesn’t mean that it is our enemy. On the contrary, it only pushes us beyond our limits and urges us to enhance our skills and stay ahead of the curve. It challenges us to leverage our unique human abilities—intuition, creativity, and empathy—to deliver translations that not only convey words but also capture the essence and intent behind them, adapting the content to different cultures.

Nevertheless, if you ever feel that you aren’t able to overdo the basic logical/mechanical work of AI, you are probably not working in a field you are truly passionate about. And while making a shift in your career isn’t always fun and easy, it can be a lifechanging opportunity to rediscovering yourself and doing something you actually enjoy and can excel at.

In other words, ChatGPT can only be a serious threat if you are choosing to sit in your comfort zone (which means that your nonchalance is your real enemy), but if you use it as the actual “tool” it is supposed to be, even the sky won’t be the limit.

Hanine Jaafar

M4 Traducteurs Rédacteurs