It's been almost 6 years since my last post here. A lot has happened: a 2-week training on a tall ship; a new job; a half marathon; a promotion; taking up a new language (Duolingo streak 1311 days and counting); a second home that was going to become a primary residence; a pandemic (that's still ongoing); a leave of absence to help care for an ailing parent in Taiwan (in the middle of the pandemic); a series of wildfires that destroyed that second home; a mad dash to find trees and government assistance after the wildfires; a long journey to seek insurance reimbursements; an effort to start (re)building the future home. And yet, I am thankful that my husband and I are in relatively good health and have each other.
Those all sound like good excuses for slacking in writing, but the main reason actually has to do with the role I'm in these days. As the Vendor Manager of a prominent LSP in the US, I don't want my words to be taken as representative of LanguageLine or vice versa. I know that some vendors wishing to work with LanguageLine actually try to connect via this blog, and that's not really what this venue is for.
A lot has changed in the translation and localization industry in the past 6 years. Machine Translation isn't the laughing stock that it used to be, thanks to innovations in technologies. Depending on what the need for translation is, sometimes MT outputs are actually enough for comprehension purposes. Human translation still has its place (and won't be replaced by MT any time soon - yet), but we now also have "human in the loop" to help bridge the gap and get translations done faster.
The pandemic didn't slow things down. It accelerated the growth of this industry, in fact. Translators are used to working from home, therefore being in lockdown does not necessarily mean having no work. The need to get the latest information out to the public also contributes to this invigorating growth. Translators in general are still paid peanuts, but at least they're getting lots and lots of peanuts.
Distance learning and online meetings make the need to transcribe/translate recorded content go up exponentially. And then Zoom announced its acquisition of Kites, so they can start providing multi-language translation capabilities for Zoom users. How genius was that?!
All in all, lots of encouraging stuff is happening. Sitting in a front-row seat, I eagerly await what comes next.
Please translate responsibly.
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