Article How to educate your clients about AI

Artificial intelligence is here to stay and is already playing a big part in the translation industry. And that probably means you’ve already had discussions about it with your clients. If they haven’t started happening yet, then they’re probably on the horizon.

Maybe you’ve had clients wanting to try out machine translation post-editing to see if they can save time and money. And perhaps that’s absolutely fine for some of your client work, but doesn’t work at all for other kinds of text.

Maybe you’ve had clients stop sending you work and have a sneaking suspicion that they’re relying on robots these days.

Maybe you’ve found that for some of your client work, your use of AI or their machine translation tool is actually meaning you can work faster, boosting your profitability.

Maybe you’ve already seen clients turn to machine translation, realise the grass is very much not greener, and come straight back to you.

Or maybe you’ve found that since AI has made itself known, your clients are actually starting to appreciate what you can bring to the table as an expert human translator more than they ever have before.

We’re all having lots of different experiences with AI as the world finds its feet with it.

But here at LSP.expert, we firmly believe that AI can be a friend, not a foe. That it can be a very useful tool if used well by a professional who knows their onions.

And, of course, that in the vast, vast majority of cases, a human translator is still very much necessary, and will be for a long time to come.

Start by educating yourself

That’s why we think it’s so important to educate ourselves about AI so that we, in turn, can guide any clients who might be a little lost with this new technology. So that we can show them how it can be used to everyone’s advantage.

So, if you’ve been shying away from everything AI, doing an excellent impression of an ostrich by sticking your head firmly in the sand, then we’re here to encourage you to start taking baby steps to familiarise yourself with the nuts and bolts of it.

There are plenty of webinars out there which will give you an overview of AI in translation. As well as looking at advances in machine translation, take the chance to educate yourself on how these new tools could help speed up the boring or laborious stuff in your business.

Look into how they can help you with research or terminology for a translation job. Look into how you might use them to help spark creativity for the transcreation of a slogan that has you stumped.

You’d be surprised at some of the mundane, time-consuming tasks that a tool like ChatGPT can take care of for you in seconds. Things like summarising the key points in a report that goes on for page after page after page, or transforming information into the form of a handy table you can just copy and paste into Excel.

Once you start thinking about the possibilities, we promise you’ll wonder why on earth you didn’t let AI start doing all this stuff for you sooner.

Just make sure you look into the very real drawbacks and limitations of this technology whilst you’re at it.

Anyway, we digress. Once you’ve started your own AI in translation education (which will always be ongoing, as this stuff changes faster than a well-paid translation project gets snapped up on a job board), you’ll be feeling confident about discussing it with your clients.

All of these conversations will be of course very different, so we’ve compiled some overarching tips we hope will help light your way through the AI quagmire, no matter what the precise nature of the question or the issue.

1. Take your time to consider your answers

If you get an email about something AI-related that you’re not sure how to answer, or an email that you find, frankly, a bit annoying or frustrating because it’s a bit dismissive of your value as a human translator (we feel you!), then make sure you take your time to think carefully about your response.

Only hit send once those initial feelings have passed you by and you’re feeling cool, calm, collected and objective enough to compose a thoughtful reply you can be proud of. Explain your point of view and your insights patiently and clearly.

2. If in doubt, ask a colleague

If something comes up that you’re not sure about, then turn to your fellow translators. We’re so proud to be part of such a supportive, collaborative community, and we know you do so much for each other!

So don’t suffer in silence, reach out to a colleague or two and ask them if they have any insights on the topic or have experienced the same thing. We’re all in this together.

3. Remember, your clients might be worried too

If you work with direct clients, then some of them might be just as concerned as you about how AI is going to affect their business and how they can do the right thing, using all the tools out there in the smartest way whilst not compromising quality or other humans.

Think about how you can support each other. Be honest that you’re not a total expert yet, but show them that you’re making an effort to educate yourself so you can provide them with the service they deserve. They’ll really appreciate it!

4. And remember, you bring so much to the table

There are still plenty of clients out there who will appreciate just how much you have to offer.

There are, of course, a lot of agencies and companies that have gone into full AI mode, and have decided that other things come before quality. There’s really no point getting upset about losing clients like that, as they were probably pretty terrible clients in the first place. Are we right? And there’s no point trying to explain to them why you’re so much better than a machine. They know, but they don’t care!

Focus your energies on connecting with all the clients out there who do appreciate your skills. There are plenty of them to go around.

5. Let them see the results for themselves

Sometimes the only way for someone to learn is to try something out for themselves. Your clients might well be curious to see whether introducing AI into their translation process would be beneficial for them, and that’s absolutely fair enough.

Share your insights and offer your advice, and let them give it a go. They might find a new way of doing things that works for them, and that’s okay. There are plenty more fish in the sea.

But if they value quality and they find it takes a dip, or that it takes you just as long to post-edit a text as it takes you to translate it, then they’ll be back to doing things the “old way” soon enough.

6. Have clear boundaries in place

You’re in charge here! Having educated yourself about AI, you’re in the best possible position to decide how you’re going to move forward, and explain those decisions to your clients.

You’re entirely within your rights to establish what your boundaries are, and decide:

• To never accept post-editing projects.
• To only work on an hourly rate for post-editing projects (which are often just as time-consuming as translating from scratch).
• To set a hard minimum rate for post-editing and stick to it.
• To turn not working with AI at all into your USP.
• To turn an efficient use of AI in your work into your USP.
• Or to do whatever makes sense for you, your business and your skills.

To be able to make informed decisions about all this stuff, you need the data to back them up. Because otherwise you might start second-guessing yourself, or end up accepting a project you’re not comfortable with if you’re having a slow week.

That’s where LSP.expert comes in. With our platform on your side, you can see at a glance how many words you can post-edit in an hour for a certain client, and how many you can translate in an hour. You can see whether using AI in your work is speeding up your output and boosting your profitability or not.

And all that will help give you the confidence to make the decisions that are right for you, and avoid accepting projects that you’d regret taking on.

See how it could transform your business for yourself with our 30-day free trial.