Predicting the future may be a fool’s game; preparing for the future certainly is not. Such preparation took many forms, building ramparts, digging moats, spread ing disinformation and even silencing opposition – just to name a few. Not surprisingly, the reputed second oldest profession and the wider language service industry worth US$46.52 billion1 are no different. There are the establishment steadfastly defending the status quo, rebels blowing up the foundations and the so-called disrupters whose only achievement remains disrupting other people’s salary and security. And then there are the bewildered interpreting students. Meanwhile, the public is totally ambivalent. Unlike the hype of autonomous vehicles, which are often featured in my key note addresses, most people on the streets of Manchester, Moscow or Mumbai will have little interest in Machine Translation and even less for machine inter preting, let alone any knowledge of the wider social implication thereof. Following on from the success of his first book and the cult-status podcasts by the Troublesome Terps Troika, Dr Jonathan Downie has penned a witty guide to this seemingly fool’s game in this totally unique and dystopically titled volume. Whom do you trust? The trinitarian axioms of interpreting – accuracy, impartiality, confidentiality – which brought about the boom in interpreting from conference to community in the second half of the 20th century as well as the current status of our profession, were a modern construct which arose, to a large degree, from the power asymme try and multilateralism in the atmosphere of distrust of foreignness. So what is the modern currency of trust? Where have all the interpreters gone? I have previously argued in Help or Hinder2 that technology has increasingly obscured the interpreters from the sight of and therefore connection with those who depends on us. As this volume goes to print, there are over two million views of the Wired Masterminds’ “Interpreter Breaks Down How Real-Time Translation Works,” featuring Barry Olsen. It is such positive visibility, career prospects and status which translate into enrolment in T&I schools, thereby disrupting a dangerous self-fulling prophecy that threatens our very future. Excellent interpreting is priceless. It is the difference between successful negotiations and diplomatic incidents, between a recovering patient and a medical malpractice charge, between a Deaf child learning and yet another case of social and economic isolation. It changes the lives of those who experience it and deter mines the course of history. Yet interpreting is under threat like never before. When I wrote Being a Successful Interpreter: Adding Value and Delivering Excellence, there were rum bles of a coming crisis. Now, with technology giants like Google and Tencent applying their seemingly unlimited resources to machine interpreting and plat form after platform being launched to leverage economies of scale and big data to squeeze prices, the need to secure the future of our profession has never been more pressing. But what should we do? What does the future of interpreting look like, faced with the might of the biggest technology companies on the planet? Is it time for interpreters to retreat to the big international institutions, demand legal protection and prepare to be phased out? No responsible commentator could do anything but treat seriously the possibility that one day human interpreters may be eliminated or sentenced to work entirely remotely, chained to their desks. Yet no serious interpreter would be satisfied with either of those futures. The rest of this book will deliberately and systematically examine several possibilities for the future of interpreting and present strategies to ensure that the future of interpreting is skilled, rewarding and most of all, human. Before that, however, there are foundations that need to be laid and stories that need to be told. No one would ever accept a vaccination without being convinced of the seriousness of the disease it prevents. No interpreters should even consider making significant shifts in their working methods, marketing and PR until they understand where the profession is now, how it got here and the pros and cons of any changes they might make.
