Will AI replace a Translator?
Estimated risk score: 87 out of 100
Very high replacement risk
Estimate · how we score
Our take: DeepL and GPT-4 do 95% of business translation. The literary and live work survives.
Horizon: about 1 year. That is our estimate of how long until headcount in this role falls by 30% or more.
Median salary $55k a year · Creative
What AI already does well
- Standard business document translation
- Subtitling and dubbing for film and TV
- Localization of marketing material
What keeps you valuable
A high score means many of today’s tasks in this role can be automated — not that you will lose your job. People in roles like yours stay valuable by moving toward the work AI is bad at. Build on these:
- Literary translation requiring cultural and creative judgment
- Sworn / certified legal and medical translation
- Simultaneous interpretation (live, embodied)
How we score. Each score is our estimate, from 0 to 100, of how exposed a role is to AI replacement, calibrated against published research: Goldman Sachs on generative AI (2023), McKinsey’s State of AI surveys, Brynjolfsson and Mitchell (Science, 2017) and Frey and Osborne (2013; published 2017). It is not a prediction about any one person and not career advice. Disagree with a score? Write to hello@yourstopwashit.com. Read the methodology
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