Dear translator brains everywhere,
Dave Neve is one of those rare people who manages to say out loud what most of us only mutter under our breath.
And he says it well.
Dave is a member of the CotranslatorAI team; he’s also the awesome admin at AI4LanguageProfessionals.
And if you’ve never read his thoughts on translators and AI, today’s your lucky day. What he recently posted in another group was too good not to share here.
I’ve taken the liberty of reworking his note for my audience (that’s you), but the heart of this comes from Dave. And honestly, if there were a trophy for clear thinking in the age of AI panic, he’d be holding it.
Here’s the idea…
Remember when chess experts said a machine could never beat a grandmaster?
The claim was simple. Chess engines don’t understand the game. They just crunch numbers. Pure calculation. No feel. No insight. No soul.
Well, Stockfish and Leela would like a word.
Today, not a single human grandmaster on Earth can beat the top chess engines. Not even close.
Now here’s where it gets uncomfortable.
What’s happening with translation is following the same curve. But instead of grappling with this shift, too many translators are brushing it off by calling AI output “slop.”
That word… slop… is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
It signals a refusal to engage. A dismissal of something that’s not going away. It’s a comforting fiction.
And it’s slowing translators down.
Let’s not forget… we’ve lived through this before. Not just in chess. The agricultural revolution displaced millions. The industrial revolution did it again. And now, here we are, watching the technological revolution do the same.
Translators aren’t exempt.
And we’re just as guilty of using “good enough” translation as the next guy.
When you’re in a foreign country and your hotel toilet is backing up, do you hire a local interpreter to explain the situation to the desk clerk… or do you whip out your translation app and get on with it?
Exactly.
We’re not as righteous as we think. We benefit from AI. We use it when it’s useful. We like it when it serves us.
So what now?
Well, at CotranslatorAI, we’ve been diving into how to work with AI, not fight it.
We don’t pretend it’s magical. And we don’t pretend it’s garbage. What we’re seeing is that with the right approach… the right frameworks… the right voice and command… translators can do their best work faster and better than ever.
It’s not about replacing the human. It’s about augmenting the craft.
That’s what we’re doing. That’s what Dave is talking about.
And that’s what I wanted to share with you today.
So… what do you think?
Steven
Co-creator of CotranslatorAI
Translator, like you
