What will AI never replace? As an ATA-certified Russian translator and interpreter, I get to meet many people—and learn a great deal about the psychology of interpreting.
What do people actually look for when they hire an interpreter?
It’s one thing to ask clients to leave a review about your services. It’s something else entirely when they volunteer their feedback—telling you upfront what mattered to them the most.
This morning, after interpreting for a Russian couple at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Green Card interview in Houston, Vera, a lady in her 60s, came up to me, shook my hand several times, smiled, and said:
“Thank you so much for making me feel more confident. I was so nervous this morning because of my limited English. I thought I wouldn’t be able to understand the officer. You exude so much calm that I must have caught it from you.”
I thought: Wow—that’s a profound insight into what people truly need when they seek an interpreter.
An interpreter is not just someone who renders words from one language into another. An interpreter is a mediator. The client wants you to intercede for them, to protect them, to reflect not only their words but their feelings—something no machine can ever do, because machines cannot feel.
Imagine what Vera would have experienced if she had hired AI as her “interpreter.” She might have had all her words translated, but she would not have felt understood, calmed, interceded for.
She explained further:
“At first, we contacted another interpreter, but after talking to her for a while, I realized I wouldn’t be comfortable working with her. And I needed someone I could easily connect with in such a stressful time.”
This is the heart of the matter. People who promote AI as a universal language solution miss the key insight: communication is not bound to words. Words are the tip of the iceberg. Communication is about communing—establishing a living connection.
When two people talk, they hear words, but they listen to what lies behind words. They hear sound waves, but they listen to the subtle vibrations in the other person’s tone, eyes, expression, sighs.
When communication is reduced to simply transmitting words, there is no communication—because there is no communing. And the foundation of communing is our uniquely human ability to feel.
This is what clients want, first and foremost.
This is what they will never get from machines.
