Far and away my most popular article on LinkedIn over the past couple of years, was a quick note about my thoughts on the future of the translation industry, in particular with regard to machine translation.
That being to put it simply:
There will always be some amount of demand for skilled humans.
However, that demand may not be sufficient for all the existing translators to keep busy.
The vast majority of commercial paper can be easily translated by a machine, with acceptable (but not good) quality, and the cost of fixing the bad translation is less than the cost of doing it well in the first place in many cases.
So overall, not a great view for translators. The best of us will keep going for some time, but who knows about the future!
I noticed that a couple of years ago I had written an article called “the machines are coming“. Well they have arrived now.