I can understand inventing machines to take the heavy loads off human beings so that they don't get worn out by a lifetime of heavy toil, but what is going to happen when people no longer need to think because those jobs are being done by machines?
I translate for a living and this year, all the translators I speak to (German to English, English to German) have said that work seems to have fallen off a cliff. I've gone from a position of being able to buy what I want (I have modest wants) to not even covering costs.
All the translators I have spoken to say that they believe that clients are using things like DeepL to translate documents. However, they are also waiting for the penny to drop when they realise that those programs are incapable of actually thinking things through.
I tried DeepL out on a price list. The word 'Preise' was above a table of costs. The euro symbol was repeated throughout the table. How did DeepL translate that single word? As 'prizes'. Yes, the German word covers both meanings: prizes and prices.
That's why my colleagues are certain that when the clients get bitten in the arse because they've relied on such a faulty computer-generated translation, they'll be back.
I bloody well hope so.
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