Well, we don’t think so. And here’s why:

First, let’s look through the lens of today’s legal world. Would you, as a lawyer, or the client of a lawyer, be comfortable with a translation that was produced solely by a machine, without any human input? We think not. Lawyers and clients alike need to know that a translated document has been carefully produced by experienced experts who know what they are talking about. These experts can interact with their clients and make sure that every nuance and context is fully taken on board when a translation is being made. AI just can’t do that.

Secondly, professional human translators not only produce great work, they also back that high quality work up with a legal and professional assurance that their work meets the highest standards. Put it another way, if a machine makes a mistake, there’s very little recourse, you’re on your own if the translation turns out to be wrong. Lawyers are necessarily cautious by nature. They therefore need the type of guarantee of great quality that a good legal translator can provide: AI will most likely never provide such a guarantee.

Thirdly, while certain documents can already be safely translated by machines (we’re thinking here: internal memos, certain draft commercial documents, day to day written exchanges by email, minutes of ordinary meetings, etc.), other documents need a human touch. Contracts, particularly, are the product of human interaction and compromise. Understanding the human subtleties and backgrounds through which agreement is often reached is again where human legal translators provide indispensable expertise.

Finally, with regard to certified translations, it is difficult to imagine that judges will ever be completely willing to entrust the translation of documents upon which they are going to base their rulings to machines rather than fully qualified, experienced expert legal translators.

So, we feel that AI offers us, and you our clients, some great opportunities in terms of productivity and competitiveness, but in terms of replacing us human translators, we think that’s a very, very long way off. Only time, though, will tell.