Satire

Seymour Ludd’s Candidacy Statement for ATA President-Elect
(This is Satire)

I have been an admirer of the translator’s craft ever since I first read Che Guevara’s Guerilla Warfare in translation. Here at the ATA, we have the joy of being both the Guerilla and populace under siege (vis-à-vis technology) as well as the Incumbent Regime (vis-à-vis new market entrants, both of the compliant and disruptive variant). While I have little experience as a translator prior to my candidacy for the ATA Presidency, I believe that I can make a convincing case for becoming your new leader.

I believe that the ATA and fellow language professionals are optimally situated to establish and operate as vital members of what the Japanese refer to as a Keiretsu: a diffuse (potentially global) organization that transcends all industrial boundaries to operate in a polycentric form throughout and within extant governmental, parastatal, academic, and private organizations to shape policy and events, including the development and implementation of AI technologies. Rather than merely advocating for policies to shape what private corporations are doing, keiretsus operate in the shadows to shape corporate activities and possibilities from within, in covert coordination with partners similarly nested within diverse industries, at all hierarchical levels, and (in our case) with a shared interest in preserving the dignity and value of legitimate human beings.

I once read that the triumph of the good over evil requires that the good be organized like a mafia. Thus, I have these strategies to propose. Remember, this is satire.

Generalized Regulatory Fortification

Today, any bilingual person can, in theory, translate their own birth certificate and certify it within the United States of America. Additionally, in the world of machine translation, a person could have a machine translate a document, one they cannot actually understand in translation themselves, and submit it with a certification statement, without there being any way for the recipient organization to immediately verify that the certification is legitimate. Therefore, the strategy of generalized regulatory fortification seeks to make ATA certification a legal necessity for any and all documents that enter into federal, state, and local government/legal proceedings—for the good of all. Then, moving beyond public fortification, keiretsu members will seek to similarly require certified translators for all internal processes within private organizations. A series of planned theatrical events will make the need for certification clearer to all private and public actors as highly visible episodes of poor-quality humans and machine error lead to large-scale horrific accidents that will haunt the public consciousness and officials for years to come.

Selective Permission and Cooptation of Machine Translation Systems

Some translation work is routine, lower-stakes, intelligible to a twelve-year-old, and already fully within the capacity of automated systems. Let’s automate that, while keeping an ATA-certified human in the loop, and keep the systems under our direct and indirect control. The key is to maximize the addition of new rents while minimizing the loss of rents due to automation, all in tandem with a series of security measures that I will discuss in further detail below. On this front, desirable systems can be fostered while requiring that rents be paid to ATA to continue to allow and to protect their operations. The highest rent-yielding systems can be identified, coopted, and empowered while those that would undercut the ATA advantage would be targeted for internal poisoning, social undermining, and long-term strategies of degradation. We will then treat the permitted systems like oil wells, pumping them for rents to fund our new style of operating. All members of the newly establish ATA Paramilitary Force will receive payments for services rendered as derived from our control of the permissible machine translation systems, similar to the way governments of oil-producing states provide oil rent payments to their citizens. Depending upon the surplus, certified translators who have passed through the newly established, more rigorous, and less transparent certification/recruitment process may also be eligible to receive rents from system welling in addition to subsidized attendance to invite-only ATA conferences held at secret locations, which will henceforth be referred to as strategic gatherings of the good.

Targeted Undermining of Unwanted Competitors (Enter the ATA Paramilitary Force)

Slashing tires is too easy. Nonetheless, I do propose a set of security measures to establish and sustain ATA’s hegemony. (1) We will significantly increase the costs to competing with certified translators and interpreters beyond the regulatory fortress; this may include in-network actors sending abysmal paid assignments that are more trouble than they are worth to unwanted competitors, potentially increasing their liability and introducing opportunities for character assassination, as well as implanting saboteurs within corporate contexts. (2) We will work in tandem with diverse in-network actors across industries (medical, police, business, academic, and beyond) to implement strategies to protect our operations and members, such as through strategies to covertly induce the long-term degradation of the physical and psychological wellbeing of competitors, while (3) providing our language services and linguistic abilities to similarly protect and enhance partners’ performance as well as the general operations of the network. (4) We will establish a cross-industry blacklist of the most egregious unwanted competitors and noncompliant persons/corporations to devise unique, tailored solutions to thwart disruption, ensure continuity, and to increase the value of ATA membership, ATA certification, and the wellbeing of our network partners around the world.

I am confident that, in the absence of a legal force to thwart our efforts, as the central hub of an effective keiretsu, we will slowly, but surely, remake the world (in our image) through consistent, sustained, precise, and unseen application of the proposed ATA defense strategy. Please keep me in mind when the time comes to vote to shape our future.