Coming from a family with a medical background, medical topics tend to come to me naturally, and I also spent a number of years researching classical medical literature at SOAS and before. This provided me with the background to go on and develop successful medical translation skills, and subsequently to gain recognition with ITI as a medical translator.

I also spent a number of years on the marking team for the Institute of Linguist's Diploma in Translation. 

All in all, I have many years of experience, but have also continued to update my skills in this everchanging commercial environment. I doubt there is any translator who will now insist they can work effectively without adopting translation software, not least of all, myself. 

I do work on Machine Translation projects, but these need to be of a significant scale to be worthwhile. As for AI, from what I have seen it is useful, but so is Google translate, and that has been around for donkeys' years. I think the recent spurt in marketing and the reality of the situation are two different things. From an enterprise point of view, MT allied with bespoke terminology and a strong repository of previous work should provide a more stable foundation. Only when AI is actually subject to the constraints that apply within the translation industry as a whole will it really be capable of offering significant advantages. 

I would be very interested to hear from clients with an interest in adopting AI technology though, as no doubt this will eventually become part of our everyday working lives.

Peter Offord

May 21, 2024