Is automation changing the translation profession?

Abstract

As a language-intensive profession, translation is of frontline interest in the era of language automation. In particular, the development of neural machine translation systems since 2016 has brought with it fears that soon there will be no more human translators. When considered in terms of the history of automation, however, any such direct effect is far from obvious: the translation industry is still growing and machine translation is only one instance of automation. At the same time, data on remuneration indicate structural wage dispersion in professional translation services, with some signs that this dispersion may increase in certain market segments as automated workflows and translat..