YOUPOST: thoughts & ideas on the history & future of work.

The past
1)  Consider your experiences of work so far. How might these be different from those of your grandparents when they were your age? 

 I don’t know whether my grandparents were already working at my age, but unlike me, they had to do far more house chores, work in the fields as they lived in the countryside and walk to their school for hours. My grandparents never had the luxury to choose their studies freely like me. They had to worry about how they would finance their studies, the work prospects of their job choice and many other factors. In the end, my paternal grandmother became a university professor of pharmacology and my paternal grandfather was a naval officer, whereas my maternal grandparents worked as government officials. To start a family, you needed to have a good regular income, as the state did not support working women with a maternal leave or governmental aid (at least in China). My paternal grandmother gave birth to three children in five years and simultaneously raised them and worked without any problems.

2) What were the main challenges of work 50 years ago? In which ways have these changed?

50 years ago, the gender payment gap and inequality were probably a lot worse than they are now. Traditionally, women were taking care of the children, while the husband provided for the family. Physical work was definitely more exhausting and challenging as a lot of helpful devices didn’t exist at that time. Another field of work that has radically changed in recent years is science. New medicine was developed, computers were improved and the internet revolutionized global communication. 
Using this page (http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/business/aims/aimsandactivitiesrev3.shtml) as a guide:
3) What types of work were common in Austria 50 years ago?

50 years ago, the primary sector and secondary sector were far more dominant than they are now. This means that working in agriculture and the industrial field used to be much more common than today. According to statistics, the tertiary or service sector used to form 50% of the total ratio, whereas it has increased to a total of 70% now and the other two sectors slowly decreased.

4) In which way is it now different?

Today, jobs in the field of agriculture have almost disappeared, whereas an abundance of new possibilities has opened up in the tertiary sector. There is an infinite variety of jobs involving tourism and the media. Thanks to the growing number of inventions in technology, science and medicine, a lot of difficulties which people had to face, have dissolved.
Globalisation and the future
Think about the flow of workers. Think about the flow of work. Think about English as a lingua franca.
5) How has globalization affected the world of work?

Nowadays, it is highly important to be flexible and have basic IT skills. You can work for an Austrian company, but barely ever touch Austrian ground because you’re sent to the other end of the world to negotiate cooperation treaties. Therefore, it is also advisable to learn more languages than only your mother tongue to facilitate communication.
On the other hand, it is also possible to stay in your pajamas all day long and work for foreign companies through the help of your computer. Free social platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter enable people to build business partnerships easily or attract a lot of followers and possible clients through videos, songs, pictures and messages which demonstrate their skills to a huge public audience. Popular YouTubers with an ample number of viewers, for example, often sell merchandise and promote products from sponsors. You only need the know-how and courage to present your work to complete strangers.

6) Taking this into account, how will the job of a translator/interpreter change over the next 50 years?

Personally, I don’t think that there will be any dramatic changes for translators/interpreters in the next 50 years, except for the working fields of specialist translating and remote interpreting because there is lots of room for improvement. Working as a freelance interpreter or translator will be facilitated through new technological innovations. Nowadays, interpreting services via video camera have been established for remote places and terminology banks speed up the work of translators enormously. Still, I don’t think that machines or robots can replace a real person in all fields of work, but the expectations for translators/interpreters will definitely be raised. It is already a very competitive line of work, but in the future, you will have to perfect your language skills in order to be more efficient and faster than a computer.
Technology and the future
Watch this video:

7) Briefly discuss at least two things mentioned in the video which you think may come to affect the work of a translator/interpreter in the future.

Terminology banks are constantly improving and might replace us sooner than we’d hope, but I seriously doubt that a translating machine could ever replace a human being. Just have a look at Google Translate and you’ll know what I’m talking about. One day, some genius might manage to program a system in such a way that it will be able to translate a text in a grammatical correct way, but with an odd word choice that might be wrong in register or unusual for the country in which the language is spoken because the translating machine lacks the cultural knowledge and context. It would really impressive me if it were possible to distinguish between the different nuances of synonyms and the regional dialects of each language.