Goodbye Human Translators - Google Has A Neural Network That is Within Striking Distance of Human-Level Translation

Sorry, but that's just... hogwash. There will always be a need for human translators and interpreters. I've been working as a translator for 13 years now and it seems like every single year we hear some Big Scary Announcement about how translation will be a thing of the past. Today's barriers of entry to the field are so low that literally anyone with a laptop and Google Translate can say they are a "translator," and that makes it all the more easy for you to stand out if you are excellent.

And yet we keep working, fine tuning our capabilities and stringing our nets in the off-season as it were. Computers will never be able to make puns or turn colloquialisms from one country into culturally appropriate colloquialisms from another. Computers will never be specialized in niche industries like someone who has worked in them for decades. Computers will never be able to interpret a third culture kid who grew up to be a diplomat speaking French with a heavy Chinese accent talking about crop yield in Lesotho. There will always be a need for translators and interpreters with excellent skills--machine translation will separate the wheat from the chaff, as it is currently doing.

Want to make sure your job is never replaced? Be a damn good translator and specialize.

/r/Futurology Thread Parent Link - research.googleblog.com