In a world where automatic translation is faster and more accessible than ever, it’s tempting to think of language as something purely functional—just data to process, phrases to align, output to optimize. However, (yes, that word) language is more than just a system and we face this reality daily when working with multicultural audiences or collaborating with clients that serve a wide range of people from varied heritages.
And as our industry continues to explore the incredible potential artificial intelligence (AI) bring to our line of work, it’s equally important to preserve the irreplaceable role of human expression. Language is memory. It’s rhythm. It’s the weight of lived experience expressed into words. When stories cross borders, what’s at stake isn’t just grammatical accuracy—it’s how a culture is felt, understood, and remembered. And this is where AI, no matter how sophisticated, meets one of its limitations.
Language Isn’t Data. It’s Memory.
Let’s face it—AI is, by all technical standards, the most powerful brain on the planet. But what is AI lacking – for now – when it comes to localization? A bodily experience. AI doesn’t have a past. It hasn’t grown up with a language, or carried it through joy, exile, routine. It processes patterns and relies on existing translations—not meanings that live in people. It can predict what word comes next, but it doesn’t know what that word feels like, or what it meant to someone who first heard it at a kitchen table, in protest, or in a lullaby.
Human translators do. They bring not just language skills, but presence—emotional insight, cultural memory, context, and intuition shaped by personal and collective experience. These are the things that make a human translation not just accurate, but alive.
Translators as Curators of Memory
Collective memory is how societies remember themselves—not just through history books, but through the stories they tell, the language they speak, the rituals they repeat, the books they read, the governments they elect. It’s a living structure, shaped and reshaped across generations. And stories are one of its most powerful vessels. When those stories travel—when they cross languages, borders, and world views — professional translators become the ones who decide how that memory is retold.
Most people will never set foot in the places they read about. They won’t share mate on a Buenos Aires balcony or hear the lilt in Caribbean Spanish in a crowded market. Instead, they meet those cultures through stories—novels, films, games, subtitles, UIs, dubbed voices. And guiding that encounter, often unseen, is a human translator who understands the context and meaning. Do they leave mate as is, heavy with cultural texture? Or translate it as “tea,” and lose a piece of identity along the way? Do they preserve the sharp edge of a political joke—or rewrite it to land more gently?
These aren’t just linguistic calls. They’re editorial. Curatorial. Professional translators shape not only what is understood, but how it is felt—and, sometimes, how it is remembered.
These aren’t just linguistic calls. They’re editorial. Curatorial. The translator shapes not only what is understood, but how it is felt—and, sometimes, how it is remembered.
What Artificial Intelligence Can’t Hear
Some stories are built on joy. Others are shaped by wounds. Many original text and cultural narratives are rooted in shared pain—in historical trauma that echoes across generations. The Holocaust in Europe or 9/11 in the United States—these events didn’t just leave political marks; they reshaped language itself. They show up in metaphors, in silences, in humor, in the tone of a phrase or the absence of one. A single word can carry decades of memory.
Desaparecidos, for example, doesn’t simply mean “the missing” for Latin American audiences. It speaks of forced disappearance and the silence that follows. You don’t just translate a word like that—you listen to it. You carry its weight. This is where human translation becomes something deeper: an act of emotional archaeology. Of reading not just the lines, but what’s between them.
History in the Words We Choose
When cultural references don’t translate easily, something more than the target language is at stake. There’s a risk that the original culture gets distorted—either by being glamorized, made to feel distant or strange, or by being overly simplified to fit global expectations.
In trying to make a story more accessible, we can unintentionally strip it of what makes it matter and convey a wrong message. Indigenous terms, for example, often carry layers of spiritual and communal meaning—but when they’re reduced to decorative touches, their depth is lost. Local slang, full of texture and rhythm, might get flattened into generic English. Political undertones might be erased altogether, seen as too risky or too complex. What’s left is a version of the culture that’s easier to digest, but no longer entirely true. These choices aren’t just stylistic—they shape how entire cultures are seen, remembered, and understood.
Not Just Words, But Presence
This is why human input matters. Human translation doesn’t just mean moving words or tapping into translation memory software. Human translators carry voices, memories, and ways of seeing. Every decision—what to keep, what to adapt, what to leave in the margins—is guided not just by rules or statistics, but by instinct. By sensitivity. By experience. Emotional intelligence and cultural intuition aren’t extras in this work—they’re the core of it.
They’re what tell a translator when something needs to be left raw, when it needs to be explained, and when it’s best left untouched. They’re what allow them to preserve the quiet rhythm of someone pouring mate on a balcony, or the full sensory charge of a crowded Caribbean market. These are the details that bring a story to life. They’re what make it land—not just accurately, but honestly.
Language, Carried by Humans
In a time of rapid automation and AI models, human translators remain essential in the translation industry. Because memory doesn’t live in code or trained data. It lives in people. It lives in choices made quietly, by professionals who know that words are never just words.
AI can process language. But only humans can carry it.
This article was written by Nadim Abraham, who works at the intersection of language, culture, and communication as a Head of Quality for Translation and Interpretations.
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