Job profiles for translators: (un)expected career opportunities in the language industry

The language industry is undergoing a new revolution with the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in different scenarios. The hype of AI affects all professional industries, but in our case it takes on nuances not present in others due, above all, to machine translation, with the idea that it may take jobs away from translators.

This is not the first time that these concerns have arisen in the industry, such as when computer-assisted translation tools and the first machine translation engines (particularly the neural ones) appeared. At those moments, the concern turned into a readaptation of professional profiles, which is not something new. It has been happening since the appearance of the first personal computers in the last quarter of the 20th century, when they became the basic tool for translators. This professional profile became more and more specialised with the advent of the Internet, industry-specific tools and new technologies, which in turn opened the door to new disciplines.

In this session we will explore this evolution and the type of professional profiles that have emerged in parallel to these technologies in the field of translation, in language-related disciplines and in other more unexpected industries, as well as the potential pathways into these professional positions.