Bots vs. Brains: The Ultimate Language Showdown

If you’ve been wondering whether ChatGPT is going to put an end to the profession of a translator, here’s the answer: It’s already underway. As LSPs have been laying off translators by dozens, happily moving on with AI, let us take a moment to think of what the future of the industry is going to bring us.

A couple of months ago, I was asked by one of my clients to deliver a webinar on ChatGPT and the role it could play in the world of localization. We did plenty of trials, and compared the results we obtained for multiple languages. Since then, the little guy has been more or less present by my side in my daily job. He (or she) can machine-translate content into English and, to various degrees of success, into any other language. They will try hard to please you and generate any type of content you could imagine. But much as they do a fair job of providing multiple ideas, there’s something missing, every time.

Having extremely high expectations of my employees, I’ve been using and abusing the poor creature, perfecting queries hundreds of times, and asking it to regenerate responses endlessly. I quickly noticed that its idiolect is rather narrow and repetitive. It’s trying hard to please you, but it clearly has its limitations, and when you put it to the test, it reveals its lacks pretty fast. What is worse, it’s a liar – it will rather make up information than admit to its ignorance. It has a hard time providing variation, and its produce tends to be maladjusted, incoherent, or simply unimpressive. One could say the AI quality standard is highly functional mediocrity. And, in all honesty:

"I react very badly when mediocrity throws a tantrum of entitlement." (Lee Siegel)

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By definition, artificial intelligence is not capable of being genuine. It lacks integrity. It speaks without a deeper understanding of what it’s talking about. Every time I work with ChatGPT, I find myself editing its output deeply, to the point of rewriting it completely. And this is why I quickly came to realize it will never be able to reach any real linguistic and rhetoric excellence without being wisely guided by an educated human being. Which means sentient language specialists will always be sought for.

If you’re a translator, or a student of translation, don’t lose heart. Your skills are still in high demand. It’s just you may need to revisit the way you think of your profession, reinvent yourself, if you will – and yes, it may happen you will have to do it overnight. But if you’re truly passionate about your trade, then it shall come naturally. My personal experience has always been that when you love what you do, then you’ll always find yourself creative, meaningful occupations to fill your time with.

I say all this to say: The time has come for us to tap into our authenticity and to let it shine. Because, at the end of the day, there is no gross margin high enough that would replace the human touch.