Marco Simões is a Lilt freelance translator based in São Paulo. He spoke to BI about how he uses AI for translation, research, and paraphrasing texts. Simões said AI has made him more creative and efficient, but he doesn’t think it will replace him.
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This told essay is based on a transcript of a conversation I had with Marco Simões, a 64-year-old higher education teacher and freelance translator from São Paulo, Brazil, about the use of AI in translation work. Edited for length and clarity.
I’m a freelance translator for Lilt, an AI-based translation service. My freelance translation work is flexible and suitable for my work as a university teacher.
Before becoming a translator and teacher, I worked as an instructor in the IT industry for companies such as Novell and Intel.
I traveled from Sao Paulo, where I lived, to the company’s headquarters in the US to learn about new software they were launching. I then returned to São Paulo to train instructors in the corporate sector throughout Latin America in Portuguese and Spanish.
Marco Simões started using AI for translation in 2020. Provided by: Marco Simones
I wasn’t a translator, but I had to learn about technology in English and translate it into Portuguese.
At the same time, I worked as an academic and taught calculus and physics part-time at a university.
When I left Intel in 2015, I intended to teach full time. But I realized I had more time. Someone at Intel recommended that I work as a translator, so I decided to try doing translation work on the side.
When I left, one of my staff members put my name forward to a translation company called WinTranslation. There I started working 5-10 hours a week translating English to Portuguese alongside my teaching job.
When I first started manual translation, I could translate 260-300 words per hour and did a lot of research on my own. The introduction of AI tools has significantly improved our workflow by allowing us to translate up to 1,200 words per hour.
I didn’t work with AI at first.
When I first started, I translated word for word with the help of Google Translate.
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Translating 260 and 300 words by hand takes an hour. I saw that another translation service, Lilt, was hiring in 2020 and decided to leave Wintranslation and work there.
Lilt has incorporated an AI called CAT, which is computer-assisted translation, into its platform. First, the AI generates a translation, a human translator checks it, and then submits the translation. Lilt’s platform is optimized for translators. Prepare the translated sentences, show the translator the vocabulary, and present similar previous segments.
I was surprised. But we also experimented with AI outside of Lilt to see if we could understand its limitations. I found that there were sometimes grammatical mistakes. I check all answers with official Brazilian and Portuguese grammar.
The internal AI I use at Lilt learns from and remembers changes made by human translators. You can also learn about your client’s style. Over time, you will make fewer changes to the AI translation.
Over the past two years, I’ve also started using ChatGPT and Bard for research. Using AI can increase your productivity and allow you to take on more work than before, but it doesn’t mean your salary will increase. It depends on whether you are paid by the hour or by the word count.
We use AI tools to research the subject
AI increases speed and accuracy. We translate topics such as technology, mathematics, physics, theology, and marketing for our clients. I don’t want to do medical translation or legal translation because it requires more specialized knowledge.
Before AI, if a client sent you a text that needed to be translated on a certain topic, you would first have to research the subject and read a lot about it. For example, while completing a financial translation, I came across the word “revolver” but had no idea what it meant in finance. When I asked Byrd, he told me, “In a financial context, a revolver is a recurring loan that repeats over and over again.”
Before AI, it might have taken you 15 minutes to figure that out. In just a short time, I became more confident in my translations.
Not everything always goes well
It’s helpful because instead of researching 20 sites, you can ask the AI for a common term for something in Brazil.
In Brazil, there is an expression called “Planar Bananaeira”. The literal translation in English means “to plant a banana tree.” However, in Brazil everyone knows this word as the word that means handstand. No one in Brazil says that it literally means planting trees.
ChatGPT told me the meaning of handstand, but not the literal meaning. If I were an outsider translating into Portuguese and didn’t realize that the translation only conveyed the figurative meaning without explanation, and I wanted to know the literal meaning, I would You may make a mistake.
Language is very complex. There are several layers to a conversation, and sometimes two human translators can’t agree on a translation. Humans can also be sarcastic and joke. It’s very hard to imagine AI making that possible in the near future.
AI helps me when I get stuck and makes me more efficient
I think the role of translators is changing. We are becoming technology drivers.
With AI, you can be more creative. Sometimes I have trouble translating something because it’s hard to read, but I’m too tired to think of a way to rephrase it. I now go to Bard or ChatGPT and ask them to rephrase a sentence.
It makes me think of new ways of translating and gives me a new perspective. AI tools like Bard and ChatGPT can translate around 1,000 to 1,200 words per hour.
AI will never replace translators
Some translators are very conservative. They don’t use AI. We try to use as much as possible, but always keep an eye on quality control. You can’t avoid it. As we embrace technology, we need to balance it with old-fashioned tools like books.
When translating large amounts of materials such as manuals, websites, and technical documents, it is difficult to survive without AI. Still, there are some types of translations for which AI cannot improve the richness of the translation, such as highly artistic translations like poetry.
Also, having been involved in education and technology for a long time, I know that you should always be wary of systems that claim to have all the answers.
As a teacher, I worry about young people taking advantage of critical thinking skills before they develop them. The question is not whether AI is beneficial, but whether future generations are prepared to use it responsibly. I don’t know about that.
While AI tools can improve translator productivity by automating some of the work, they still require significant human intervention to ensure quality and accuracy.
Language is alive, so I don’t think there is a chance that AI will replace human translators. Language has complexity, nuance, and layers. AI can learn from mistakes and make future corrections during translation, but it still needs a translator to make those corrections in the first place.
