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by trention 1407 days ago
>ML revolutionized translation a long time ago and the demand and pay for translators went down.

This is incorrect.

Translators employed:

2005 - 29240

2021 - 52170

Yearly salary:

2005 - 38300

2021 - 52170

Source - BLS (https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm)

Employment growth was ~79% on a US population growth of ~13.5%.

38300 2005 $ equal 52854 2021$.

So pretty much demand for translators exploded while real wages stayed flat.

1 comments

Translation is not exclusively a salaried job. Most translators in the fields I'm familiar with (games and manga) are freelance contractors, and most are getting paid by the word/page, not a yearly salary.

ML has depressed the rates those people earn. It's been good for the demand for editors though since they need to pay someone to fix the DeepL output up so they can release it.

Unfortunately for that line of reasoning, the hourly rate according to the BLS has also been pretty much constant in real $.
Is there a single number in that story that contradicts what I have written?