Not lost in translation: The implications of machine translation technologies for language professionals and for broader society

Francesca Borgonovi, Justine Hervé and Helke Seitz

No 291, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: The paper discusses the implications of recent advances in artificial intelligence for knowledge workers, focusing on possible complementarities and substitution between machine translation tools and language professionals. The emergence of machine translation tools could enhance social welfare through enhanced opportunities for inter-language communication but also create new threats because of persisting low levels of accuracy and quality in the translation output. The paper uses data on online job vacancies to map the evolution of the demand for language professionals between 2015 and 2019 in 10 countries and illustrates the set of skills that are considered important by employers seeking to hire language professionals through job vacancies posted on line.

JEL-codes: J21 J23 J28 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-03-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-cmp, nep-lma and nep-tid
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:elsaab:291-en

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