“Don’t You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?”

“你难道不直接把它上传到 ChatGPT 吗？”

In my Ottawa life, every Tuesday evening, I take two gym classes back to back—boxing and the pompously named “body sculpt,” which makes me discover muscles I didn’t know I had. It’s fun. I love it. 在渥太华的生活中，每周二晚上我都会连上两节健身课——拳击课和那个名字听起来很浮夸的“塑形课”（body sculpt），这让我发现了自己从未察觉到的肌肉。这很有趣，我乐在其中。

But a couple of weeks ago, I ended up cancelling my second class—one of those nights when the first assignment landed in my inbox at 4 p.m., another one arrived while I was on my way to the gym, and a third one popped up right as I was standing in the locker room. All due the following morning, obviously. Welcome to the life of a freelance translator. Work takes priority over muscles. 但几周前，我不得不取消了第二节课——那天下午 4 点，第一份工作任务发到了我的收件箱，第二份在我去健身房的路上发来，第三份在我站在更衣室时又弹了出来。显然，所有任务的截止日期都是第二天早上。欢迎来到自由译者的生活：工作永远优先于肌肉。

I headed for the lockers at the end of boxing class. “Are you leaving? You’re always taking this class!” I turned around. I was changing into my translator clothes—jeans and a T-shirt—and she was presumably changing into her gym clothes, except first, she was busy taking off her jewelry. Her look was very polished—the kind of polished that screams office day. 拳击课结束后，我走向更衣柜。“你要走了吗？你平时总是上这节课的！”我转过身。我当时正换上我的“译者装”——牛仔裤和 T 恤，而她大概正准备换上健身服，不过她先忙着摘掉首饰。她看起来非常干练——那种一眼就能看出是刚下班的精致感。

Over the past few months, the generous pandemic work-from-home policy had been tightened, scaled back, amended and more or less rescinded in a desperate attempt to have employees single-handedly save downtown Ottawa’s many small businesses and general gloom by their mere on-site hot-desking presence. If you ask me, nothing can save downtown Ottawa or North American public transit. 过去几个月里，疫情期间宽松的居家办公政策被收紧、缩减、修改，甚至几乎被废除，当局试图通过让员工回到办公室“热桌办公”（hot-desking），来挽救渥太华市中心众多小企业和沉闷的氛围。如果问我，我觉得没什么能拯救渥太华市中心或北美公共交通。

“I see you there every week!” Apparently, I owed her an explanation and possibly an apology. I didn’t remember her, but it’s a very full class and we all more or less look the same in gym clothes. “I’ve just received some work,” I explained. “I’m a translator and I have three deadlines by tomorrow morning, so I should probably get started.” “我每周都能见到你！”显然，我欠她一个解释，甚至可能是一个道歉。我不记得她是谁，但那节课人很多，而且大家穿着健身服看起来都差不多。“我刚收到一些工作，”我解释道，“我是译者，明天早上有三个截止日期，所以我得赶紧开始了。”

“But… it won’t take long. Don’t you just upload the documents to ChatGPT?” I paused for a split second. Surely, she was joking. I looked up at her. She was not. “It… doesn’t exactly work like that.” “You should try it, it’s so much quicker!” “但是……那花不了多久。你难道不直接把文档上传到 ChatGPT 吗？”我愣了一秒。她肯定是在开玩笑吧。我抬头看着她，发现她并不是在开玩笑。“事情……并不是那样运作的。”“你应该试试，那样快多了！”

Oh. My. Fucking. God. But hey, I parent a teen. I can recognize a teachable moment when I see one. “It’s not that easy, you know. Technically, ChatGPT will spit out a translated document. But first, there may be formatting issues. And most importantly, the translation will be questionable.” 我的天呐。不过嘿，我毕竟是个十几岁孩子的家长，我知道什么时候该进行“说教”。“没那么简单，你知道的。从技术上讲，ChatGPT 确实能吐出一份翻译好的文档。但首先，可能会有格式问题。最重要的是，翻译质量会很成问题。”

“Why?” “Because AI isn’t human, and it takes an actual person to understand what another human is trying to say—and how to say it so someone else understands it. I don’t just make grammatically correct sentences in another language. I adapt, I localize, and I find the best way to convey the original message so it makes sense and feels natural. I research terminology. I make sure it’s consistent throughout. I’m sorry, I’m better than AI.” “为什么？”“因为 AI 不是人类，只有真正的人才能理解另一个人想表达什么，以及如何表达才能让别人听懂。我不仅仅是在用另一种语言写出语法正确的句子。我进行改编、本地化，并找到传达原意的最佳方式，使其通顺且自然。我研究术语，确保全文一致。抱歉，我比 AI 更强。”

We’re all better than AI. AI is just better at pretending it can do the job. Go ahead, ask me how I know. Yes, obviously, I tried translating with AI. Ah, you can’t fire me, I’m self-employed! I’ve been playing with AI since the fall, when it started stealing my job for real. I could either declare it evil and turn into one of those people who will never get a smartphone, or use it to my advantage. I’m practical. I chose the second option. 我们都比 AI 强。AI 只是更擅长假装自己能胜任工作。尽管问我怎么知道的。是的，很明显，我试过用 AI 翻译。啊，你没法解雇我，我是自雇人士！从去年秋天 AI 开始真正抢我饭碗时，我就一直在研究它。我可以宣布它是邪恶的，变成那种永远不用智能手机的人，或者利用它为我服务。我很务实，我选择了后者。

AI can’t translate for me. It can’t write either—unfortunately, ChatGPT can’t vouch for the fact that this article is my idea, that it’s my gym, my ignorant civil servant and my punchline. Just take my word for it, pun slightly intended. And while this article is written by yours truly, you bet I’m going to spell-check it. I probably won’t use AI; I have Antidote. But maybe I will ask Claude’s opinion, and if one of the suggestions is smart—cutting a paragraph, for instance, or clarifying a sentence—I might accept it. AI 无法替我翻译，也无法替我写作——遗憾的是，ChatGPT 无法证明这篇文章是我的构思，无法证明那是我的健身房、我遇到的无知公务员和我的笑点。你就信我吧（这里有个双关语）。虽然这篇文章是我亲笔写的，但我肯定会检查拼写。我可能不会用 AI，我有 Antidote（校对软件）。但我可能会问问 Claude 的意见，如果它的建议很聪明——比如删掉一段话或润色一个句子——我可能会采纳。

When I started translating 15 years ago, we used to paste uncooperative sentences into Google Translate to see if it had interesting ways to phrase things differently. Then came DeepL—same idea. What do you think? That we’re translating with pen and pencil? That your accountant doesn’t use fancy Excel formulas? That your manager formatted the PowerPoint alone? That your favourite restaurant doesn’t Google trendy recipes? We are professionals using tools. But that’s just what they are—tools. 15 年前我刚开始做翻译时，我们常把难搞的句子粘贴到谷歌翻译里，看看它有没有什么有趣的表达方式。后来有了 DeepL，也是一样的道理。你以为呢？以为我们还在用纸笔翻译？以为你的会计不用高级 Excel 公式？以为你的经理是自己排版 PPT 的？以为你最喜欢的餐厅不搜流行食谱？我们是使用工具的专业人士。但它们仅仅是工具而已。

One of my clients has insane style guides, plural. I’m talking about 500-page documents detailing the proper way to format quotes and the one true way to insert footnotes. I fed them to ChatGPT for the final checks—it can kind of flag when I break a rule. I’ve also used AI to extract specialized terminology from reference documents and build my own glossaries. It’s faster than Ctrl+F, and less likely to make me scream. But everything has to be double-checked, triple-checked. It’s another way of working, not a magic button. 我的一位客户有极其变态的风格指南（而且不止一份）。那是 500 页的文档，详细规定了引用格式的正确方式和插入脚注的唯一标准。我把这些喂给 ChatGPT 做最终检查——它确实能在我违规时提醒我。我也用 AI 从参考文档中提取专业术语并建立自己的词汇表。这比 Ctrl+F 快，也不那么让人抓狂。但所有东西都必须经过双重、三重检查。这只是另一种工作方式，而不是魔法按钮。

AI isn’t replacing me. Like a toddler, it needs to be constantly coached. It invents acronyms and organization names, forgets to translate entire sentences, ignores the provided terminology unless repeatedly threatened, and occasionally misses the point completely. Which is why we—translators, writers, editors, and other professionals—shouldn’t suddenly be paid less because AI exists. Should you pay your roofer less because he uses a hammer instead of his bare hands? AI 并没有取代我。它就像个蹒跚学步的孩子，需要不断地指导。它会编造缩写和机构名称，忘记翻译整句话，除非反复威胁否则会忽略提供的术语，有时还会完全曲解原意。这就是为什么我们——译者、作家、编辑和其他专业人士——不应该因为 AI 的存在而突然被降薪。难道因为屋顶修理工用锤子而不是徒手干活，你就该少付他钱吗？

But judging by her amused smile, my civil servant wasn’t getting the point. “But AI is getting better all the time!” “What do you do?” I asked, changing tack. “I’m the Director General, Human Resources and Corporate Services, but I’m currently in an acting position for Workforce Planning and Resources Management.” This actually made sense to my Ottawa brain. Told you, I’m a translator. 但从她那戏谑的微笑来看，这位公务员并没有听进去。“但 AI 一直在进步啊！”“你是做什么工作的？”我换了个话题问道。“我是人力资源与企业服务部的总干事，目前在劳动力规划与资源管理部门担任代理职务。”这在我的渥太华大脑里完全说得通。我告诉过你，我是个译者。

“Great. So, do you use AI a lot at work?” “Oh, I can’t! It’s really not reliable enough.” For fuck’s sake. And she works in human resources! “太好了。那你工作中经常用 AI 吗？”“哦，我不能用！它真的不够可靠。”去他的吧。她可是人力资源部的！