The Pig and the Cat

Once upon a time there was a cat, and this cat enjoyed itself enormously, stretched out in front of the fire, growing fatter with every passing day. 

It was a good life.

Everyone loved him.

Everyone secretly wanted to be him.

 

Then the pig arrived.

The clods rolled in, the heat from the fire dissipated in a draughty rash, and there he was.

Steaming, or something.

Change had arrived, but was the pig here as saviour or destroyer?

The cat is really the CAT, or Computer-aided translation, and I am the pig, the Kopy Pig, a proof and copy editor for a translation agency for the past decade and a half. My mission is to bring translation out of the shadows of darkened offices and into the spotlight of modern business.

But I am not offering a new dictionary, grammar upgrade or CAT tool app. Pigs don't hand out goodie bags, you must know that!

The language industry today is a tree hung low with fat and juicy plums, each waiting to be plucked by business. Remember the emergence of multilingual customer support services? A fat plum ripped from the interpreting industry because 'it is not what interpreters do'. Today we face AI, neural learning, big data - and businesses big and small are bumping across the meadow to harvest more of those lovely, juicy plums.

For years I have been checking segments in Google Translate, and I can see that the technology has advanced far enough that if someone had a business selling homeware then, without hesitation, I would recommend that all they need is Google Translate and a good editor - cheaper, quicker and more effective than any translator.

 

So what does the Pig offer?

Blah, blah, blah, essentially, how to transition from offering translation as a complete service like it was in 1975 to processing texts ready for the next person down the line - editor, DTP, IT. Whether we like it or not, change is coming, and unless we plan to retire or move into a new industry then our jobs will change too. 

So this blog is all about exploring those issues that we all face, no matter what our role in the translation industry. Come back and see how our industry measures up against others!

Oinks

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