Beyond Translation Memory: Computers and the Professional Translator

Translation has historically been performed by bilinguals equipped with specialised topic knowledge. In the mid 20 century, textual theory and discourse analysis saw emphasis on a top-down, whole-text approach that paved the way for modern professional translators as linguistic transfer experts. This professionalisation was further driven by the digital revolution in the 90s which caused a huge increase in translation demand, and the creation of purpose-designed translation tools—principally translation memory (TM). However, the same technological processes that briefly empowered the professional translator also signalled a return to a bottom-up approach by concentrating on the segment. Twenty years on, translation tools and workflows continue to narrow this focus, even tending towards simple post-editing of machine translated output. As a result, topic-proficient bilinguals are again entering mainstream translation tasks via simplified translation management processes and crowdsourcing approaches. This article explores these recent trends and predicts that, over the next decade, professional translators will find it increasingly difficult to survive as linguistic transfer experts alone.