Recently, I've been trying to avoid our interns creating two documents, one in English and one in Japanese. This is because Google Translate and deepL Translate are so great that they can be translated almost perfectly into any language if you write it in English. One of our language student intern said that she didn't want to use Google Translate because it was terrible. But, after she used it for the first time, she was amazed at how good the translation was. Similarly, there's a service called Grammarly that will proofread your English text. Twenty years ago, I used to using a proofreading site. Up until about 3 years ago, I used to get my proofreading done by outsourcing sites like Upworks for about $5 a time. I don't use online proofreading anymore because Grammarly's professional accounts are honestly better than the people at these composition sites, and they fix things from the side as you write.
I can read, write and converse in English and Japanese without any problems in business, so I don't have a problem with Grammarly or deepL, partly because I can notice when a machine proofreads a slightly odd translation. But I don't see this trend changing in the future. Translation and proofreading will disappear. I don't think there will be many points in even learning the language.
However, for the time being, if you can't speak the language at all for work, you will be ripped off by dodgy proofreading sites. About 20 years ago, a bogus Japanese proofreading site charged ten times the original price because it acted as an intermediary for foreign proofreading sites. I noticed this and wrote about it on my blog at the time, and someone from the company wrote an excuse in the comments section (^^). I'm sure we'll see more of the same, and it won't stop. So it's good to have at least some language skills and the ability to do a bit of research.
Comments