alt Hacker NewsBut what share of translation dollars are non-formulaic content? To me it seems that there are tons of manuals for dishwasher and such to translate (where from my experience quality basically doesn't matter) and only a limited amount of diplomatic communiques.
Manuals have been machine-translated for ages, well before algorithms were anywhere close to ready for the task. No change there.
>a limited amount of diplomatic communiques
With zero data to support it, I'd bet good money the vast majority of semi-professional translators (that is, those not employed by publishers but still making some money off of their work) work on fiction, translating comics, subtitles, etc.
Actually, come to think of it, mixed media like those will be the last where machine translation will be able to fully take over humans, just because the text doesn't contain the entire relevant context for the job.