AI is coming on strong, promising a new insight into the world; at the same time, many professionals, such as translators, feel threatened by that. The question is whether AI really comes to get rid of them, or to facilitate their work. Both can be true, indeed. It depends.
However, AI can be very useful, as Neural Machine Translation (NMT) can do a huge amount of work and difficult tasks that are impossible for human translators, in only a few seconds. In addition, this will allow the later to save a lot of time to perform more enjoying tasks in which creativity, self-improvement, emotion, art, and the like, take part. Moreover, human translator is able to find new ways of using language and mind, which machines cannot do.
Furthermore, AI machines need to be managed by people; to be trained and updated by them, since language is moving constantly. After all, beneath a machine there must always be a human being.
We can conclude, then, that AI and human translators can walk hand by hand, benefiting one another. Because they need one another.
Clemen Corbalán. 15/10/2020