Jung Min-ho has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2012, mostly covering social and political issues. He currently belongs to the Politics & City Desk where he covers topics such as health, labor and human rights. Prior to joining the team, he was responsible for covering North Korea and sports. His article about a biosecurity breach of Middle East respiratory syndrome won him an award from the Korea Science Journalists Association in 2016. He is also the co-author of the book, "Medical Pioneers of Korea" (2019). He served as the head of the international relations committee at the Journalists Association of Korea from 2021 to 2023.
Will AI replace human translators?
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By Jung Min-ho
AI tools are not replacing language mediators, but prompting them to redefine their roles
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in translation has raised concerns among professionals in the industry, with some wondering whether they will soon become as obsolete as typists or video store clerks.
But professional translators and scholars in the field recently told The Korea Times that they don’t believe AI-powered tools are rendering human experts obsolete just yet. Instead, they said the powerful technology is prompting a redefinition of their roles as it changes the nature of the profession.
“Many professionals, including myself, view AI translation tools with concern, because it will continue to develop. But if you ask me whether I think it has reached a level where I feel my job security is under threat, my answer is no,” said Lee Jun-ho, professor of advanced translation at Chung-Ang University. “AI, at least so far, has had limited impact on the translation market for high-level human experts. In some way, it is even helping and empowering them by creating more opportunities.”
AI-powered translation tools, built on neural machine translation and large language models, can deliver translations at unprecedented speed and at far lower cost than human experts, if not completely free. For routine, high-volume tasks such as product descriptions, AI systems can generate “good enough” translations instantly, making human translators far less needed in this section of the market, according to experts.
However, even though AI translation has improved drastically in recent years, its accuracy is still lower than experienced professionals. This gap matters, especially for high-stakes tasks such as legal documents and any content requiring cultural nuance or idiomatic precision, experts say. And, they noted, these are the most lucrative markets in the translation industry.
Human translators excel in areas where context, tone and deep cultural understanding are essential, said Lim Dae-geun, a Chinese interpreter and a professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS). He added human experts can be more trusted on interpreting humor, idiomatic expressions and subtle messages ― which, if mishandled, can lead to costly misunderstandings or even legal trouble.
“Moreover, human involvement means, if some major error is found, there is someone who can take the legal responsibility. So I believe the human role as the final checker of the work done by AI and a legal entity will remain, and it will be difficult to replace them,” Lim said.
In fact, experts say AI is helping human experts more than hurting. As machine translation quality rises, there has been a growing need for human professionals to post-edit and refine AI-generated output, such as subtitling for streaming content and inspections of AI-assisted user services for customers overseas ― creating new markets and other opportunities.
According to data from Statistics Korea, the number of translation and interpretation firms rose from 2,429 in 2020 to 2,805 in 2023. Meanwhile, the number of people working in the industry increased from 6,251 to 6,712.
Demand for acquiring such skills at higher education institutes also appears to remain strong and stable. When asked whether the number of applicants has decreased in recent years, officials at two of the most reputable schools for translation programs in Korea ― HUFS and Chung-Ang University ― said there has been no noticeable change in numbers.
“So far, there has been no impact on the number of students applying for our program,” an official at HUFS said. “At the very least, those who want to be the top elite in translation do not seem to be affected by the recent rise of AI.”
Rather than eliminating jobs, experts say AI is shifting the focus of human experts toward higher-value tasks, while AI does the heavy lifting for first drafts, bulk and repetitive tasks.
“So, a graduate school of interpretation and translation really gathers only the very top few percent of foreign language experts,” Lee said. “Both the students applying and we teachers believe there will always be a demand for this top-level human expertise.”