I recently spent a few days away relaxing and while I was enjoying swimming I overheard a couple talking. The woman had an accent I was trying to identify so I started a conversation.  Turns out she has been in this country 10 years and is native born Israeli.  Naturally, we discussed recent events (not for this post) but I also asked her what she does for a living.  She said she is an interpreter.  I always find those who do interpreting work fascinating because there are so many necessary avenues. Plus, I love people who know many languages.  I asked her who she worked for because at first I heard her husband say Netflix and Hulu, etc.  I thought she interpreted Israeli shows for an American audience or vice versa.  Turns out she works for four different companies doing interpretation.

I immediately asked how AI was impacting her profession because we got on the subject of AI changing the nature of lower level jobs, document review, etc.. She was only too happy to discuss because it very much is.  She explained that now the companies use AI to do the interpretation and she is hired to edit the AI’s work.  I asked if they have issues. She rolled her eyes and said very much so.  However, she is not paid to hear or read the original version that AI has to interpret or given access to it.  She is only allowed to edit AFTER AI has interpreted and she said so much doesn’t make sense and she has to ‘interpret’ the interpretation. In entertainment or literature it really is not of consequence. In legal matters it very well could be.

Let’s say you are working in an area of law that involves multiple languages, international banking or real estate transactions, depositions of foreign nationals, criminal work with non-English speaking defendants, etc. and you require translation.  Do you use AI to do the initial interpretation because it is more cost-effective?  Do you hire an interpreter to just do edits?   Does this change the nature of what has been actually said and then carried forward as fact impacting the outcome of your legal defense or contractual obligations?  This is what I’ve been thinking about all morning.  Yes, there is Google translate but I highly doubt lawyers would rely upon Google translate.

If you are in an area of law requiring regular translation, how do you move forward with confidence in the translation in this day and age of less expensive alternatives such as AI?  Please do share.