By Carlos de Paula
In the early part of my career as a translator, back in the 80s and 90s, I did quite a bit of proofreading. Most of the time I was told to stick to spelling, but I faced, quite a few times, poorly constructed sentences, grammatical mistakes, and often ended up editing the text after getting clearance from the client, normally translation agencies. A few became full rewrites.
In the 21st Century, the practice of submitting translations to a proofreader or editor mostly disappeared from the industry, even though agency clients were often told documents were edited. Translations truly edited by a competent editor were costly, so “edit” normally consisted of the document being looked over by a project manager that did not speak the language, using guesswork. As a result, quality declined, even though word processing software spellcheckers improved (they still have flaws), as prices dropped.
That explains the ambiguous, terrible, unclear, convoluted, dry and incorrect writing found in brochures, sales materials in general, websites and the like, produced by translators who have to self edit and work at unreasonable pace to make some money.
With AI, the role of competent editors has come back full power. Although clients would like to think that AI can produce excellent and precise translations for no cost, the output is often subpar and downright dangerous.
Translators may dislike the idea they will now become mere editors, and fear they are fighting for their professional life, however, editing is not really a bad thing. Although one apparently makes less money editing than translating from scratch, that may not be true for seasoned editors such as me, whose experience allows greater productivity. Novices may struggle, though.
See it as opportunity, rather than doom.
Carlos de Paula is one of the top Brazilian Portuguese translators in the USA since 1982. And now a top Portuguese AI Translation editor as well.
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