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AI Killed My Job: Translators - by Brian Merchant

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In July 2025, Microsoft researchers published a study that aimed to quantify the “AI applicability” of various occupations. In other words, it was an attempt to calculate which jobs generative AI could do best. At the very top of the list: Translators and interpreters. The paper itself was strange (historians and passenger attendants took the second and third place slots) but it underlined a talking point that’s been roundly discussed in the media: That translation work is uniquely vulnerable to AI. To wit: After I put out the call for AI Killed My Job stories, I heard from a lot of translators, interpreters, and video game localizers (essentially translators for in-game text, design and dialogue). Of all the groups I heard from, translators had some of the most harrowing, and saddest, stories to share. Their accounts were quite different from those described by tech workers, who were more likely to lament managements’ overuse of AI, a surfeit of dubious code in digital infrastructure,

In July 2025, Microsoft researchers published a study that aimed to quantify the “AI applicability” of various occupations. In other words, it was an attempt to calculate which jobs generative AI could do best. At the very top of the list: Translators and interpreters. The paper itself was strange (historians and passenger attendants took the second and third place slots) but it underlined a talking point that’s been roundly discussed in the media: That translation work is uniquely vulnerable to AI. To wit: After I put out the call for AI Killed My Job stories, I heard from a lot of…

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