The Future of Work

Stepes was recently featured in a Huffington Post article on the future of technology innovation that creates significant economic value for the world. In the modern era many technology innovations are increasingly viewed unfavorably as they take away jobs from people, creating financial gains for a few, but leaving the larger population to economic demise. Whether it’s automatic teller machines, industrial robots, or self-driving cars, certain technology innovations seem to serve the opposite purpose as they replace humans in a zero-sum economic game. Many people are genuinely concerned as more and more jobs are rendered extinct by their technological counterparts in a one-way race to doomsday.

On the other hand, there are good technology innovations that unleash previously untapped market potentials that would be impossible without technology and in the process, create huge economic value for the world. Translation is such a market that, if properly developed, can create millions of jobs for the world’s hard working human translators. The world has over 7 billion people speaking some 6,500 languages. Yet, the current translation industry only has approximately 250,000 translators. First, there is a major discrepancy in the demand and supply of translation services, making translation unnecessarily expensive. Subsequently we have a world in which most of the content is never translated and is only available in its source language, leading to lost economic opportunities for businesses and individuals alike. Secondly, the very limited number of translators are simply unable to meet the extremely high level of translation demands the world actually needs should “big translation” ever be unleashed to its full economic potential.

This is why we need technology innovation that makes the translation industry much bigger than ever before. In a world where over half of the population speaks two or more languages, Stepes is an exciting development…

You can read the full Huffington Post article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-glimpse-into-the-future-of-work_us_5893effee4b061551b3dfd33