#8: AI bubble about to burst? 🔮
First off, no Textual Healing last month, sorry. All I can say is, circumstances conspired. This has been a big month though, with Halloween, some cool work, a new Translators Against the Machine piece, and a development in the cooperative's structure. Want to find out about all this stuff? KEEP READING.
TATM 4: Happy ending?
The latest instalment of Translators Against the Machine is a really fantastically formatted "story in two acts" from Julian Pintat. Julian works in some of the translation industry's higher-pressure areas, including (get this) the instructions for components of nuclear power stations. He's been in the sector for 15 years, and has watched machine translation go from "not that good" to "not that good but imposed on workers anyway by AI-bubble hype" to "now in seemingly rapid decline".
He foresees a bursting bubble in the near future, and we're inclined to believe him. It's not just wishful thinking – few people are in a better position than he is to see the edifice starting to crumble.
Alex Minshall
✨ We're federating! ✨
That means we're growing a new node – an interpreting node.
Since time immemorial (more or less), our interpreting work has been very capably handled by longtime GMC member Silvia, with minimal input from the rest of us. This system largely evolved because interpreting is quite different from translation – Silvia knows interpreting inside out, but the rest of us mainly handled a bit of admin, and asked incisive, probing questions like "who is this email from?" and "wow, did that event happen already?"
But this is all changing, as GMC is no longer managing interpretation requests as a coop. Any interpretation queries will now be directed to Silvia, who manages our autonomous, closely affiliated, could-not-be-more-highly-trusted interpreting node. The difference will be absolutely minimal for clients, and everything else – services, interpreting teams, rates, and so on – will be as they always have been. It should also go without saying that Silvia herself remains a close friend of the cooperative.
Big picture, we're quite excited to be federating. It's a sustainable form of economic growth, one that allows an organisation to expand without the need for hierarchical, centralised control. Under a federated model, resources (in our case clients, branding, networks) are shared as and when they need to be shared, not based on the whims of some power-drunk fat cat conglomerate overlord or distant, faceless committee.
It might seem like a small change, but it will make everything smoother for everyone involved – the coop, interpreters and clients. We're able to make this change because we've built a flexible, dynamic cooperative model, one that allows us to look at our systems and processes, realise "this ain't working right", and then actually do something about it.
Other work we've been doing
For the second year running, we've copy edited the English edition of the Agroecolgy Coalition's (very smartly named) Stories from the Ground. This publication features ten case studies from around the world, which detail all manner of truly inspiring initiatives to create stable, sustainable food systems. The 2025 edition is due to be published any day now, but you can read last year's here.
Agroecology Coalition
We've also translated web materials for Political Watch, a Spanish organisation that promotes political advocacy and democratic values. We're very happy to be working with them, and they've got some really valuable tools, including "Qué hacen los diputados?", which allows people to easily track what their elected representatives are actually getting up to in the Spanish senate. Have a look at our translation of the website here.