In the language services industry, the following themes are currently on everyone’s lips:
The relevance of understanding clients and their clients
The need to transition to a digital-first organisation
The emergence of machine-first solutions
The provision of artificial intelligence support services (e.g. data collection, processing and labelling)
The improving quality of neural machine translation
This is also important:
University degrees increasingly limited in covering language industry skills
Today, <...> the university staff is expected to teach all of the above as well as the traditional skills in translation theory, vertical industry specialisation and comparative analysis between the source and target languages. Add to that the new services present-day LSPs are introducing to their portfolios, and you see how academic translator trainers have to choose between covering a few key subjects in a cursory fashion or devising a slightly more in-depth course focusing on one area only.
There are fewer translators studying for university level qualifications than before. Many practitioners enter the industry via other routes.
As for me, that was true for the USSR, they tried to train translators in universities in post-Soviet time only.
Anu Carnegie-Brown. Director’s Cut, take 22: The future isn’t what it used to be. – 9 January 2020.
