Changes in the translation industry: A prospectus on the near future of innovation in machine translation

This thesis aims to analyze the supposed inevitability of a breakthrough in machine translation and the role that this breakthrough will play in the evolution of translation companies. It will analyze the changes that are happening and what repercussions those changes will have on the decisions made by students, professionals, agencies, and institutions over the next twenty years. This paper will be divided into three main sections: The first part will provide a background of today’s translation industry and consider the advent of machine translation in translation agencies and its continuous developments. In the second part of this essay, I will illustrate how I carried out my research inside Global Voices - a translation agency based in Stirling, Scotland, in which I have interned as Project Manager in December 2018 - to understand what use the translation agency makes of machine translation, also conveying my colleagues’ thoughts about it. The conclusion will recapitulate the topics approached, revolve around the main findings of this study and try to foresee what translators should expect from the future, how in my opinion they should deal with the changes the future will bring.