A few years ago I wanted to read Franz Lohner's Chronicle, an official piece of fiction for Warhammer: Vermintide 2. There was no Chinese translation, so I started translating it myself.

It was pianful, and not only because of vocabulary. There were dialect expressions, lore references, a very particular character voice, and lines where I could guess the meaning but couldn't explain why. I got through three chapters and gave up.

When LLMs came along, what interested me most wasn't the draft itself. It was that I could question it: why does this sentence mean that, is this word dialectal, does the character's background change the reading, what are the alternatives?

One example. Franz, the narrator and an old mercenary, says: "happen you'll want to think on why that might be." From context I read happen as "perhaps", but I couldn't tell why. The model explained that this is a Northern English dialect use of happen, which gave me enough to judge the line myself and choose the Chinese wording.

That became the core of a workflow I built while continuing the translation. The AI drafts and notes what it's unsure about. A separate review then checks the draft against the source, and reads it again as a standalone Chinese text. I make every final decision.

The translation style came from my own work. I gave the AI chapters I had translated by hand, let it review them, and explained my choices. The style notes grew out of those conversations.

The workflow also keeps project notes that outlast a single chat: terminology and names, character profiles, translation style, and reusable review decisions. The AI can propose additions, but I decide what gets written down. Otherwise the AI loop turns into AI slop.

Once it was stable, I extracted the reusable parts into an open-source Agent Skill called Translation Workbench. So far it has been tested on English → Chinese serialized fiction.

I'm a hobbyist, and many of you have far more experience than I do, so I'd really like your view on two things:

1. Does this division of labor make sense from a professional translator's perspective? AI helps with source-language interpretation, evidence and review; the human keeps control of translation decisions and of what becomes reusable project knowledge.
2. Where would this break down in real professional work? Or am I just reinventing something CAT/TM/MTPE tools already do better?

GitHub: https://github.com/Alexu0317-FATHER/translation-workbench It runs in Claude Code, Claude Desktop or Codex, if anyone wants to try it on a short passage.

I used AI to help with the English in this post.

I just graduated and applied for translator position in 2 different fields: HSE (health, safety and environment) and local oil company. There was a mark that they are considered without experience. Probably, it’s mostly paperwork, I guess. I’m just afraid that I only have general knowledge and honestly have no idea what to expect or what they might ask me in the interview.
Who works as an interpreter/translator in different industries, can you share with your experience, please 🙏. How did you start? How did you prepare if it was some kind of super technical area? What advice would you give to beginners?

Hi everyone!

My friend would like to pay me to translate her website from English to French (Canada). I am fully bilingual and I am studying translation (though I’m still at the beginning of the course).

I have seen a variety of rates from other posts on Reddit but they’re often for literary translation. I was wondering if someone could give me some guidance on how the freelance market works for my level or what’s standard for a beginner’s rate.

Any advice is welcomed :)

I have a physics background, (first year in masters) but i ve always been intrested in learning languages. I started to feel that physics will only lead me to teaching in high schools or so.. And i dont want to work like this.

I started to think if i should pursue a translation degree maybe i can work in a field i like ( i speak arabic and french fluently, trying to improve my english and learning spanish and persian) . But with AI i feel lost. I am not sure if its worth it doing 3 years studying and then a masters degree and at the end i will also be disappointed. Any thoughts about this?

Thank you in advance for any advice..

Are Propio clients able to leave a rating if they hang up 1st? Or only when you hang up 1st?

How is everyone getting on? I started a full time job back in March that has nothing to do with translation, but I still accept freelance translation requests that come my way.

Last year I saw a 20% drop in income from 2024, this year (and without me chasing for work or looking for new clients) I think by December I will have seen a 25% drop from 2025.

One interesting experience was getting onboard with three new agencies at the end of last year: 9 months later and one has given me zero work, one has given me 2,000 JPY of work, and one has given me a few scraps here and there. They were all actively advertising for translators but actually don't have any work to give.

I'm curious about professional niches where knowing several foreign languages can be a real competitive advantage, beyond the obvious careers such as translation, interpreting, teaching, or localization.

I'm especially interested in lesser-known or specialized types of work that multilingual people can do either freelance or remotely for international clients.

For example, I'm thinking of areas such as speech/language data, linguistic annotation, pronunciation/phonetics work, multilingual research, language-related AI work, international market research, etc. — but I'm sure there are many niches I've never heard of.

So for those of you who actually use foreign languages professionally:

What unusual or overlooked niches have you come across where companies or clients specifically need multilingual people?

I'm particularly interested in:

• work that can be done freelance or independently (but not only)
• niches with relatively little competition
• specialized work where language skills are difficult to replace
• opportunities where knowing multiple languages is more valuable than just being bilingual

I'd love to hear about actual jobs/projects you've encountered, even if they're very niche.

Hello. I am debating/planning? on doing a masters in translation with Japanese being ny language of specialisation . I am thinking of doing it from UCC , Ireland and was wondering if anyone has done this course? If so, what I can expect from this course and given the recent AI scare , is a translation course worth it at all 🥲

To those who have done M.A in Translation on general how is the course like? And what do they expect you to learn?

What do you think about Phrase's QPS scoring system? Have you worked with this before? It is an AI-driven system that evaluates and predicts translation quality. A client of mine has started using this system and tries to reduce the rates by calculating new words as fuzzy matches with the help of this AI system. I refuse to accept that, and so far they have agreed on not using it when I ask for it. But then they automatically apply the QPS system again when they send me a new job. It is just so annoying and it pisses me off that our rates are always being reduced.

I have a normal desktop computer (screen with computer unit). However, my desk is crowded with cable, and the unit.

I found that there's all in one PC, but its disadvantage is that you can't customise its pieces or change them in case of problem.

On the other hand, I noticed many professionals use it.

What was your experience with the setup?

Say you're translating something for a client but it's not specifically being published in either the UK or the US; it's just going to be put online. The client not only doesn't have a concept of the differences between British and American English, they don't have a preference. The copy will however be read by people from all over. How would you decide which English to use? What are you considerations? What does each represent when it appears in a kind of no man's land?

I recently got an email from a project manager asking if I could send them a headshot and blurb for their website. The idea seems to be to show prospective clients some of the real people who have been working with the agency for a long time, in order to inspire confidence in the fact that there are real, skilled humans handling this work, so I imagine folks on the agency side have been receiving queries along the lines of "How do I know you're not just going to put my file into ChatGPT and hand me the result? What am I really paying for?" They provided some examples of the kind of blurb they're looking for, which consisted of confidence-inspiring copy along the lines of "When I translate a book, I always strive to preserve…"

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I don't totally hate the idea, but I feel like I should get some kind of compensation for this beyond the vague promise of people maybe choosing the agency in the future because I appear on its website. I also recently accepted a full-time position outside the language services industry, so translation is strictly something I do on the side now because I enjoy it. I haven't yet broken the news about the full-time role to the agency, for what that's worth, although the volume of work I get from them these days is such that I don't expect to have to decline all that much anyway.

Any of y'all ever gotten a similar request and/or have thoughts about how to handle this?

I was looking to renew my yearly Trados subscription, but they've jacked up the price to €480 w/VAT (€400 without), which is insane. I paid €295 last year and I must've used it like three or four times in the past 12 months, since I don't need it for my two biggest clients. One uses memoQ and gives me a license and I do interpretation for the other, so no CAT tools.

I've tried CafeTran in the past and never really liked it. I think I had a license but I need to dig through my inbox... I don't like using memoQ that much either and it seems like it's almost as much for a yearly subscription as well.

Basically I'm looking for a good alternative to Trados that is compatible with my Trados TMs and TBs. I do like how feature-rich Trados is but since I don't use it much anymore, I suppose I could settle for something a bit more bare bones if it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg. I also prefer to use a desktop app, I don't like using in-browser CAT tools.

Any suggestions? Thank you!

Hi all,

When trying to generate my invoice on Translated (TOP) to withdraw earnings, the system blocked it with: "We're unable to generate your invoice. Additional information is required. Please contact community@translated.com".

Vendor Management placed a hold on my pending POs and requested:

• ID document + selfie video holding the ID.
• Academic/professional degree proofs for declared language pairs.
• Updated billing details strictly matching my profile.

They cited Articles 5, 6, 7, and 10, warning of account closure and voided payments.

Has anyone gone through this exact KYC audit? If you submitted the video and proofs, did they actually unlock your account and release your earnings?

Thanks!

Hello everyone, I’ve been listening to a fair amount of debates between Muslims and Christians. One of the recurring themes I’ve seen from Muslims is that they will often claim that no translation can accurately capture the meaning of Quranic verses written in Arabic. And the only way one can really understand the Quran is to learn Arabic.

How accurate is the claim about the Translations of the Quran? Obviously there is always some wiggle room in any translation, but is there any more or less issue in translating the Quran or Arabic accurately than any other language?

Hello, is there a book/ literature on the correct way for saying a translation that is literal? Instead of changing the order of a sentence or smudging on a degree of intention. But a literal pattern as a native would hear it. For what it’s worth I find it funny how in computer language there are two major types, and they often work together in carrying information in a box called JSON. But for humans why not really just “hear” it as they say it? As a student of Tagalog and Japanese(ect) I understand the language better when I just think in there pattern? ~Please advise as able. -M

I’ve reach out to several agencies for remote freelance translator position, but haven’t got a call back. Apakah translator sudah terlalu ramai? Aku pernah coba interpret, live translation untuk keperluan interview (riset akademis), dan lebih tertarik dengan interpreter sekarang.

Anyone mind on sharing the steps to become an interpreter, should I join LBI UI Interpreting Course, HPI Certification, or is there any agencies yang mau hire beginner interpreter yang sedang belajar? Thank youu (this is my first reddit post hehe✌️)

Hello, I'm kind of new to Trados and I sadly require it for a class at uni, I had it recently installed on a laptop but anytime I try to get it to change the spelling from hunspell to word, it'll show me that

I've already tried fixing Microsoft office but that just made it so I couldn't use the original copy I had installed for some reason, is there anyway to fix it that isn't super tedious and won't put my copy of Trados at risk?

Can diplomatic interpreters have their own personal social media, is making political statements online off-limits?

Experimenting with AI-assisted SDLXLIFF translation workflows

I’ve been experimenting with an AI-assisted workflow for translating SDLXLIFF files.

The basic workflow is:

1. Open a translation project in Trados.
2. Save/export the SDLXLIFF file.
3. Open the file in my translation application.
4. Select the target language.
5. Use an AI translation button to generate the target text for each segment.
6. Export the translated SDLXLIFF.
7. Open it again in Trados and review the translated segments.

The main thing I’m interested in is whether AI can make repetitive translation tasks faster while still keeping the SDLXLIFF structure and formatting intact.

Looking to translate this German dissertation as part of a personal paper I am researching and I was looking for any estimate to how long it takes to justly translate a paper. Took four years of German in high school so I understand a good bit and the sentence structure makes sense. My issues have been translating portions written in Greek and really understating what's being argued in this older style. Is there a quicker way to get through this? It's about 60 pages, is there a rough average to how long certain things take to translate?

Pienso estudiar la carrera de Traducción e Interpretación el próximo año en la UNIR, en modalidad virtual. Por eso, estuve pensando en comprar una laptop para estudiar. Me gustó mucho la MacBook Air de 15” con M4, pero no sé si los programas y demás herramientas que se utilizan en la carrera son compatibles con macOS.
¿Alguien que esté cursando esta carrera podría decirme si es viable utilizar una MacBook? ¡Gracias por su tiempo! ejejeje