T

he demand for jobs in the translation industry has dropped by 50% so far in 2025 compared to the previous year according to data from Jobui, a website dedicated to providing users with job information search services. The total market demand accounts for merely 0.001% of the entry-level job demands for undergraduate graduates in Shanghai. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), the translation industry is now facing a crisis of shrinking professionalism. However, Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) has chosen to take measures. It is trying new ways of translation and interpretation education in the AI era.

The risk brought by AI

When we get a long paragraph to translate nowadays, we can input it into the AI’s dialog box and order AI to translate it into English. After less than one minute, we can receive the result, while human translators usually can translate 600 words for an hour on average. Although AI sometimes may get trapped into “AI hallucination” and find it difficult in generating sentence in languages that it is not familiar with, like Chinese, it can be still capable of most assignments.

“I think AI will impact this industry.” Liang Ruilin, a recent graduate who has decided to leave translation industry from the Institute of Interpretation and Translation of SISU, said. “AI has developed so quickly.” When a graduated translator or interpreter wants to be skillful, the accumulation of experience in the initial years is needed. A question appears in her mind, what would it be when they students finally became experienced?

The emergence of AI has made many industries to tighten their nerves back then. However, the translation industry is affected directly. Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, which is famous of its interpretation and translation education, is stopping enrollment and expected to officially close its operation in June 2027. According to the data from Upwork, the salaries in the translation industry have dropped by 20%, which is the most severe among the affected occupations. 

The first reason is that translation work essentially involves the identification and conversion of information, which is very similar to the development direction of AI. For example, Large Language Model (LLM), one of the most representative AI models, operates by identifying text provided by the text base and then forming its own generation logic based on the connection probabilities between syntactic units. As this AI model can accomplish straightforward translation tasks, the industry requires more human proofreading than translation. Moreover, the salary expectations for the remaining translation work will also decrease, since the cost of AI translation is extremely low or even free. DeepSeek, the well-known AI service in China, is complete free to use, and ChatGPT’s plus version service costs $20 per month.

In addition, the development and integration of AI will bring new opportunities to industries. However, while the combination of AI and the meteorological forecasting industry has resulted in the development of new forecast models and sections, the new frontier created by the integration of AI and the translation industry are still being explored.

SISU’s action

In 2024, SISU became one of the first institutions to offer the Doctor of Translation and Interpretation (DTI) degree. In the process of exploring and improving the new model cooperation between university and industry, it launched an organized training model for senior translators and add practicality and intercultural ability in fostering DTI talent.

In the context of AI, the Institute of Interpretation and Translation of SISU has launched new courses, such as "AI-powered English Article Writing". Besides the AI-powered courses, the faculty also actively adopt AI-assisted teaching methods in the classroom. Xu Jiahui, another student from the Institute of Interpretation and Translation said, “In class, teachers tried to help us get used to working with AI and adapt to the current environment.” For some courses, the assignment teachers will encourage students to create using AI, but they must attach their own thoughts and corrections along with it.

According to the word from Zhang Ailing, the dean of the Institute of Interpretation and Translation of SISU, this measure aims at the area where AI is weak. “The key lies in repositioning one’s role, shifting from a mere translator to a comprehensive language service specialist.”, she said.

What to do next?

AI has now become a part of education of universities. Beside SISU, Shanghai Jiaotong University released a plan which initiated an action to combine artificial intelligence and human intelligence (AI+HI). What’s more, the online “Smart Education of China · Higher Education” platform provides a column of AI-powered lessons. As an institution specializing in language learning, SISU will also collaborate with AI in training translators.

Xing Yutang, the deputy daily-operations secretary-general of the Translators Association of China stated at the Seminar on Senior Translation Talent Cultivation in the Smart Age that the supply of senior translators is more a tight contradiction than simple matter of no needing. He said, “We should embrace AI technology, achieving human-AI collaboration and with humans being primary.”