Article 5 ways translators can actually use AI to their benefit

No one who’s gone anywhere near the internet in the last year can have failed to realise that there’s been change afoot.

AI has been creeping up on us slowly for a long time, but it’s now very much here, and making itself known.

Some of you might have already fully embraced it, but if you’re reading this, then you’re probably curious about what AI could do for you in your work as a translator.

And the answer is: a lot more, and in very different ways than you might realise.

A caveat

There are a lot of ethical issues surrounding AI that we’re not going to go into in detail about, as we’d be here all day. There are plenty of other places on the internet you can visit to find out more, and we encourage you to do so, as knowledge is power.

But to sum up, as often happens with new technology, AI isn’t currently regulated. A lot of the main AI tools being used violate intellectual property law.

And there are environmental issues to consider. Most of us are already aware of our digital footprints, and a lot of us are doing our best to minimise them. But using a tool like ChatGPT can send them through the roof. That’s because it requires an awful lot of power and water to keep it running.

A lot of people aren’t aware of that, but with our beautiful planet in mind, we need to be sure our use of AI is conscious, not gratuitous or thoughtless.

Last but not least, and you don’t need us to tell you this, AI is having a huge and controversial impact on the translation industry as a whole.

Obviously, everyone has different views on AI, and you’re quite within your rights to choose not to use it whilst there are so many issues surrounding it.

But it’s also true that it’s a reality that’s here to stay, and if we want to future-proof our businesses then we need to consciously educate ourselves and our clients about how it can be useful, where its weaknesses lie, and all the ways in which human translators are still absolutely vital. And in which we firmly believe they’ll continue to be vital for a very long time to come!

All that being said, there are so many things AI can do for us as translators, streamlining our work, boosting our productivity (and our profitability), and even inspiring our creativity.

We’ve been discovering new ways to use it constantly, and the possibilities are probably endless. Give us another year, and we’ll have a lot more suggestions for you, and you’ll have probably discovered a lot of other uses yourself!

But here’s a short list of ideas for using AI to your benefit to get you started:

1. Researching terminology

Even if you’re a specialist in a certain subject, as a translator you’re always going to come up against terminology that you’re not sure about.

You’re not a walking dictionary, after all, and it’s part of the fun of the job.

What AI can do here is speed up the research process, meaning you can get your translation work done faster, improving your profitability.

Say you’re working on a beauty translation about eyeshadow and you want to confirm what it’s called when you end up with more eyeshadow under your eyes than on your eyelids.

You might struggle to formulate a question to ask Google for it to tell you what that term is, if you don’t have the first idea what it’s called.

But a chatbot like ChatGPT (other brands are available!) can help you with that!

It’s called “Fallout”, in case you were wondering.

You can use it both to confirm whether a word or turn of phrase is used in a particular content, or to find out what the right term would be.

You can then ask it to use that term in several different sentences, for example, to make sure you’re using it in the right way.

You might want to double-check this term on a search engine to make sure the chatbot isn’t making it up (AI can “hallucinate”), but in general, this can be a fantastic way to find those elusive terms you need.

2. Sparking creative ideas

As we all know, creative work takes time, and inspiration isn’t always available on tap.

Sometimes it’s hard to get into the zone and let your creative brain do its thing. On the other hand, deadlines don’t always respect our creativity and the time it takes to come up with the best ideas.

Which is where AI can lend you a helping hand. If you’re working on a transcreation project of, say, a slogan, you can give a chatbot all the context you have about the product or service. Rather than asking it to translate the slogan, ask it to come up with multiple suggestions in your target language.

Chances are it’s not going to provide you with the perfect solution, but a certain word it suggests might lead to a light-bulb moment, with your brain suddenly making the leap and coming up with a fantastic translation.

3. Writing tricky emails

There’s no getting around the fact that some emails are just plain difficult to write. Especially if there’s been some kind of disagreement or difference of opinion.

As translators, you might have to write tricky emails every so often, in both your native language and your source language(s). And finding the sweet spot between being assertive and professional, and not sounding angry or accusatory, isn’t easy.

That’s where AI comes in.

No matter how good your prompt is, it probably won’t nail the email you need to write first time, but with a few tweaks and different cues and instructions, it could produce just what you need.

The more you use it for things like this, the better you’ll be at getting results more quickly. And though it might take you time to get what you want using AI, we wouldn’t mind betting it’ll be quicker than just staring at a blank email, agonising over how to get your point across.

Another thing that’s great about this is that as freelance translators or small business owners, everything to do with our work can be charged with emotion.

If something goes wrong, it can feel like a personal attack or failing, as everything we do professionally can easily end up being tied up with our self-esteem and self-worth.

But we find that having an AI tool to help us in these situations can help give us a bit of healthy perspective and distance, as it makes things feel slightly less personal.

Just like the automated invoice reminders you can easily send out if payment is late using LSP.expert, it’s like having a virtual assistant there to help you be more matter-of-fact and businesslike, and spend less time agonising over how to express yourself.

4. Help with social media

We’re definitely not here to suggest that you should get ChatGPT to write all your social media posts for you. People can still tell AI-generated content a mile off, and it won’t do your business any favours!

However, that doesn’t mean AI can’t help you with your social media for your business at all.

You can use it if you’re struggling with inspiration, or if you want to talk about a certain topic but aren’t sure how to frame the post.

It’s good at providing inspiration or first drafts of posts that you can then heavily edit to make sure it sounds like you.

If you’re really good at using AI then you can even train these tools to “write like you” by feeding them lots of examples of your writing, asking them to identify your voice, and then write a post on a certain topic using that voice…

And if you want to go down that road, it’ll take time to nail the prompts to make sure it’s working well, but it could be a big time saver in the long run.

But most of you probably won’t go that far! Just using it as a starting point to get you past the point of staring at a blank screen, stuck for ideas, could mean you slash the amount of time you spend on your marketing, whilst still growing your network and building your authority.

5. Finding reliable sources

Everything that AI presents us with has to be double-checked, as we all know already, and there are issues around how up-to-date the information that chatbots provide us with is.

But if you need sources to confirm a fact, or are looking for information about something and want sources to back it up, then give Bing Chat a try.

It generally does a pretty good job at presenting a list of sources that you can then go and investigate, potentially saving you lots of time as you’re not having to trawl a search engine looking for that information yourself.

Going back to the idea of a slogan transcreation, Bing Chat can, for example, provide you with a list of slogans that have been used in the past for similar purposes, with links to where you can find more information about that slogan and campaign.

Some people really like Bing Chat as an AI chatbot to help them write, especially because of its ‘More creative’, ‘More precise’ and ‘More balanced’ buttons, which make playing around with a text super easy.

Play around with those buttons and you might find they help give you ideas, boosting your creativity and making it quicker to find the perfect turn of phrase.

AI can help save you lots of time, and so can LSP.expert. The platform is designed to streamline your client and project management, so you can do everything you need to in just a few clicks and have more time for paid work, or for other things in life that have nothing to do with work at all.

See how it works for yourself with our 30-day free trial.