Last month’s presentation of the 2025 European Language Industry Survey was grim. Translators are getting squeezed by agency consolidation on one side, and the rise of AI language models on the other. We’re losing our living fast and apparently not a lot of people care, since every hint of “innovation” in this sector is hailed by the media as the end of language barriers and the need for those pesky translators.
I cannot stress the dire scenario enough. It’s not imminent: it’s already here. My translation associate and I just lost a big client: an agency that was acquired by a huge industry multinational and decided that from now on we would receive only AI-output editing jobs at the eye-watering rate of 0,01 €cents per source word. No room for negotiations: like it or lump it. It wasn’t the only one, since we a few more clients just vanished over the last year.
I still think people are not scared enough of this whole thing.