Areas with higher adoption of Google Translate experienced a decline in translator employment

Carl Benedikt Frey Pedro Llanos-Paredes, Lost in translation: AI’s impact on translators and foreign language skills, VoxEU. 22 march 2025 .

Abstract: Advances in artificial intelligence are rapidly transforming the world of work. This column investigates the effects of machine translation on (1) employment and wages in the translation sector, and (2) the demand for foreign language skills across various jobs and industries. Using variation in the use of machine translation across local labour markets in the US after the launch of the Google Translate mobile app, the authors find that areas with higher adoption of Google Translate experienced a decline in translator employment. The authors also show that improvements in machine translation have reduced the demand for foreign language skills in general.