Work and Employment Beyond Conventional Translation and Linguistics: A follow-up to the UPSKILLS needs analysis

With recent advancements in technology the modern landscape of job searching is being reshaped. This change affects a multitude of fields such as translation and linguistics, leaving industry professionals and recent graduates worried about the requirements needed to retain their position or enter the workforce. To investigate this issue, a study was carried out by Ferraresi et.al in 2021 as part of the UPSKILLS project, which sought to develop new curricula to address skills gaps for linguistics students. The study involved the creation of the UPSKILLS corpus, composed of online job postings for positions requiring skills related to linguistics and technology. A corpus-based analysis was then carried out to determine knowledge, skills and competences required of jobs at the crossroads between language and technology; as well as identifying the most salient tasks and responsibilities of these jobs. This thesis retains the same objective of the previously mentioned study and seeks to provide an update to it; both by providing standalone results and by comparing the two corpora. This is achieved through the creation of the WEBCTRL corpus, a carefully annotated corpus of jobs advertisements from various types of websites targeting the same kind of profile as the UPSKILLS corpus. Results show that the findings from the analysis of the UPSKILLS corpus remain valid, as the most salient skills and competencies (data and research skills, technical skills, language and linguistics disciplinary knowledge and communication, interpersonal and organizational skills) have not changed. The key difference is that technological requirements are being increasingly requested by employers, and more traditional linguistic requirements are on a downtrend. Artificial intelligence in particular represents a new requirement compared to the UPSKILLS corpus that holds particular importance in the WEBCTRL corpus.