Radosław started earning from translation while still a student, nearly two decades ago. He eventually set up his own business specializing in technical texts — a segment long considered resistant to automation, since it demands precise terminology and familiarity with the client's industry. Around 2013, his monthly revenue reached 13,000 zlotys, which he admits was an impressive result at the time.
The first wave of change came with CAT tools, computer-assisted translation software that stores previously translated sentences in a translator's own database. They were meant to speed up the work, but agencies quickly found a way to use them to cut costs: for sentences 80 percent similar to ones already translated, they began paying only 40 percent of the full rate.
The real turning point came with large language models. Radosław initially used DeepL and ChatGPT himself, which let him speed up his work and post the best earnings of his career in 2023. A year later the roles reversed: agencies started sending him texts already translated by machine, expecting only proofreading and editing for a rate lower than the previous full translation price.
Editing text translated by an AI engine is now priced at 60-70 percent of a rate that hadn't risen in years anyway. The billing mechanism changed the nature of the work itself. Instead of translating from scratch using his own experience and terminology, the translator increasingly acts as an editor correcting an algorithm's output.
"The market collapsed because agencies quickly figured out how to exploit automated translation," Radosław said. His story, first reported by Onet, spread to other outlets including National Geographic Polska, confirming the scale of the shift across Poland's translation industry.
Despite the drop in income, Radosław plans to stay in the profession, shifting his services toward verifying and editing machine-generated text. Industry observers say this is the scenario awaiting most translators currently working for agencies in the coming years.