The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 32

FUTURE TENSE: THRIVING AMID THE GROWING TENSION BETWEEN
LANGUAGE PROFESSIONALS AND INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS continued
Similarly, a person with refined multilingual skills who
fearlessly interacts with technology and has the ability to adapt
and develop new skills will continue to be a valued asset. But
you'll spend much less time translating. Exactly what your work
will look like depends on how you, as a "natural" intelligent
system, respond to the business environment and technological
environment in which you work.

Figure 3: Hierarchy of supporting goals in an Artificial General
Intelligence System (Copyright Max Tegmark, 2018)

LEARNING FROM THE INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS THAT
LEARN FROM US
Success for a language services provider requires a disciplined
approach to defining what the customer needs and what skills
and tools are required to fulfill those needs. Why not immediately
adopt the method of continual improvement that futurists predict
AGI will have someday? In other words:
■	

Select a goal that's relevant to your current worldview.

■	

Always assign yourself the task of improving your ability to
achieve goals, both in terms of the tools you have at your
disposal (your "hardware") and your cognitive abilities
(your "software").

■	

Stay curious and continually improve what you know about
your world.

■	

Regularly assess how well your primary goal fits into
that worldview.

■	

Stay on task until your primary goal is fulfilled or is no
longer necessary.

■	

And then reinvent yourself.

Even if you're still in a quiet and comfortable corner of the
language services industry, be aware that tumultuous technologydriven change is coming, both in terms of the way we work
and what customers require of us. Agility will be increasingly
critical to success. The big institutional players of recent years
will likely struggle with procedural inertia. And there will be
great opportunities for intrepid language professionals who work
toward a virtuous cycle of thriving alongside intelligent systems in
the fulfilment of their customers' requirements.
NOTES
1.	
Kurzweil, Ray. "The Law of Accelerating Returns,"
https://bit.ly/Kurzweil-returns.
2.	

Gibson, William. "Peering Round the Corner," The Economist
(October 13, 2001), https://bit.ly/Gibson-special-report.

3.	

CSA Research, The Language Services Market: 2019,
https://bit.ly/CSA-2019-market.

4.	

Tegmark, Max. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial
Intelligence (Knopf, 2017), https://bit.ly/Tegmark.

Jay Marciano has been involved in the development
and application of machine translation (MT) for
22 years. He has held leadership positions at
Lionbridge and SDL, where he was responsible for
the development and application of MT. He presents
widely on the future of the language services industry,
and has been a central figure in building understanding among
language service professionals of the power and potential of MT.
Contact: jaymarciano@gmail.com.
32

The ATA Chronicle | July/August 2020

www.atanet.org


https://www.bit.ly/Kurzweil-returns https://www.bit.ly/Gibson-special-report https://www.bit.ly/CSA-2019-market https://www.bit.ly/Tegmark http://go.depaul.edu/languages http://www.atanet.org

The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020

Contents
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - Cover1
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 2
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - Contents
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 4
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 5
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 6
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 7
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 8
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 9
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 10
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 11
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 12
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 13
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 14
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 15
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 16
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 17
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 18
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 19
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 20
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 21
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 22
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 23
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 24
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 25
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 26
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 27
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 28
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 29
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 30
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 31
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 32
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 33
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 34
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 35
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 36
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 37
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 38
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - 39
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2020 - Cover4
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20240102
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20231112
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20230910
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20230506
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20230304
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20230102
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20221112
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20220910
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20220708
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20220506
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20220304
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20220102
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20211112
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20210910
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20210708
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20210506
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20210304
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/chronicle/20210102
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com