{"id":433,"date":"2026-03-07T21:30:29","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T21:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/?p=433"},"modified":"2026-03-07T21:30:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T21:30:29","slug":"what-do-clients-want-from-translators-in-the-age-of-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/?p=433","title":{"rendered":"What do Clients Want From Translators in the Age of AI?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>What do clients want from translators in the age of AI?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">A client called me today and said, \u201cI\u2019ve written a book, and I\u2019d like to translate it into English. I ran it through ChatGPT, and the translation is pretty good. But I\u2019m not sure if I should send it to the editor like this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cWhy?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cBecause I\u2019m not sure ChatGPT can capture the soul of what I\u2019m saying. <a href=\"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/?p=423\" title=\"\">I\u2019m sure it can get the words right, but the soul\u2026 I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">I said, \u201cYou don\u2019t need to explain to me what \u2018soul\u2019 means. It\u2019s what lies behind the words, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cYes, exactly,\u201d he replied emphatically. \u201cI want the translator to convey more than words. I\u2019m not sure AI can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cIt can\u2019t,\u201d I said. \u201cAI is data-driven. It can\u2019t go beyond data. Humans can. In fact, all human communication works like that &#8211; we listen to words, but we hear what lies behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cTrue,\u201d he agreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">So we made a deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">When I hung up, I scratched my head, thinking: the more advanced AI becomes, the more people begin to see the unbridgeable gap between machine and human. They start looking for what only humans can do &#8211; feel, intuit, grasp the whole, grok, catch the meaning, see beyond the words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">I think I\u2019ll change my LinkedIn headline to:<br><strong>\u201cI do what AI cannot &#8211; I ensoul words.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/?page_id=81\">Let&#8217;s create something together<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do clients want from translators in the age of AI? A client called me today and said, \u201cI\u2019ve written a book, and I\u2019d like to translate it into English. I ran it through ChatGPT, and the translation is pretty good. But I\u2019m not sure if I should send it to the editor like this.\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russiantranslators.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}