TechGist05

This is a guest post by a frequent contributor to eMpTy Pages, Luigi Muzii, on the future of translation, written in what some may say is an irreverent tone. I like to hear his opinions because he has a way cutting through the bullshit and getting to core issues quickly.  Getting to core issues matters, because it helps then to get to the right questions and the right questions can sometimes lead to meaningful and impactful answers. And isn't that what evolution and progress are really all about? For those participants who add very little value in any business production chain, the future is always foreboding and threatening, because there is often a sense that a reckoning is at hand.  It is easier to automate low-value work than it is to automate high-value work. Technology is often seen as a demon, but for those who learn to use it and leverage it, it is also a means to increase their own value addition possibilities in a known process, and increase one's standing in a pro...

This is a guest post by Kevin Hendzel whose previous post on The Translation Market was second only to the Post-editing Compensation post, in terms of long-term popularity and wide readership on this blog. This new post is reprinted with permission and is also available on Kevin's blog with more photos. I am always interested to hear different perspectives on issues that I look at regularly as I believe that is how learning happens. As with many interesting posts previously published, this I mistakenly thought started from some Twitter banter, when I presumed that Kevin saw this post, which sees MT driving translators (and the translation industry) into an Armageddon scenario. However, it turned out that Kevin wrote his post first, and the Armageddon post may have been a response to it. Steve presents a pretty grim outlook with not much hope in sight. Some of the comments on his post build on this gloomy and forbidding outlook and are worth a gander too. I myself felt that the...