With the development of remote technology during the pandemic, global connections have rapidly increased, and along with that, opportunities for international communication and the demand for translation/interpreting from such opportunities have grown. In recent years, I’ve seen more job posts for in-house translators. On the other hand, the same job postings keep appearing. It could indicate that either they can’t reach the required number of people, or it’s hard to find candidates who meet the requirements. In Japan, while there are more young people who are more open to languages or skilled in communicating in foreign languages compared to the past, there are various factors that prevent allocating personnel specifically to language-related tasks. Labor shortages are one of them.
Labor shortages are common in every industry, and there are tasks that are more prioritized. That’s why some people handle translation as an ancillary duty alongside their main responsibilities. This means that there will be times when they can’t always handle all translation tasks, so the business of outsourcing translation remains in demand (I’m grateful for that as a freelancer). Indeed, outsourcing for translations where just grasping the gist is sufficient has decreased significantly, but requests from clients who want us to read between the lines and translate beyond what’s explicitly written continue to come in.
Going back to the labor shortage I mentioned earlier, I saw a statistical estimate that in 50 years, Japan’s population will be about two-thirds of what it is now. Looking just at Japan domestically, I thought that further development of AI is absolutely essential, both physically (like robots for serving, caregiving, warehouse work, etc.) and virtually like Agentic AI. That’s how we’ll compensate for the labor shortage.
With an estimated 80 million people in 50 years, if Japan—and the Japanese economy—remains a valuable entity from the world’s perspective, the market for Japanese language will somehow continue, but in 400 or 500 years? Japanese language would disappear in 900 years. It’s a far-distant future that I won’t get to see, but thinking about it feels incredibly sad.
