Over at the Huffington Post, Nathaly Kelly has been dispelling some translation myths in a piece entitled “Clearing up the Top 10 Myths About Translation”.
The 10 myths as are:
- Translation is a small, niche market;
- There is a declining need for translation;
- Most translators translate books; most interpreters work at the United Nations;
- Any bilingual person can be a translator or an interpreter;
- Translators and interpreters do the same thing (posts passim);
- Translators and interpreters work in more than two languages;
- Translation only matters to “language people”;
- Crowdsourcing puts professional translators out of work;
- Machine translation is crushing the demand for human translation; and
- All translation will someday be free.
It would be easy to go through each of the above points and comment. However, I would simply make one small remark regarding item 9: I’m so glad machine translation is so bad and likely to remain so for quite some time. I might just make it to state retirement age without having to claim benefits. 🙂
Anyway, I recommend you read the original Huffington Post article.