The idea that there can never be a labor shortage, only a pay shortage seems a bit odd. Would you say that there isn't a housing shortage? Only a shortage of people willing to pay up for it?
We had a good demonstration of the above here in Finland a while back. There's been a lot of talk here about a "nurse shortage", but the reality is that most places just aren't willing to pay nurses well. When an individual company announced an opening for nurses with way higher pay, they were flooded with qualified applicants - many which came from people who had quit nursing previously due to poor pay.
If there is insufficient supply to meet demand at the market price, this information is irrelevant. Whether or not there are enough people capable of being in the translation market, there aren't enough actually in it to satisfy demand. There must be a structural issue on the other end causing the translations not to be valuable enough to the would-be purchaser to raise pay and clear the market. That creates this set of circumstances.
- Employers will have deadlines they must meet, regardless of whether they can find a translator at the price they would like before that time. There will be contractual penalties if they cannot manage this.
- Potential translators don't have to work for peanuts as a translator even if they need a job "today" to pay for food and shelter. There are jobs in other industries which may pay more than translation.
The problem here is one company wanting to increase their profits by reducing what they pay for translations, plain and simple.
There is also a massive shortage of new developers. You heard it from me: I'm paying 30k/year on Palo Alto, but nobody wants to work. Lazy bastards!
On a serious note, I've seen something similar happening with copywriting in the past, having worked in a couple "Uber-but-for-copywriting" companies. Copywriters would get about 2x, 3x what they can get now, but due to freelancing work opening up to amateur copywriters, the price and quality was pushed down until the internet became the SEO cesspit it is today and experienced professionals had to either accept or quit the internet copywriting market. It's a race to the bottom.
This is a largely semantic argument about how we describe the phenomenon of more supply coming on-line in a market when demand increases.
Does that definitional question really matter here? It has very little to do with the point that OP is making, which is that the pending translation needs of streaming services will easily be met if they pay more for translation services.
> There must be a structural issue on the other end causing the translations not to be valuable enough to the would-be purchaser to raise pay and clear the market.
One likely explanation is that for the people who actually pay for translation services, it is more profitable to queue up translation work rather than pay extra to accelerate it.
In other words, the issue is not that there is demand that is not being met, but is instead that demand for translation output (i.e. consumer demand for international streaming content) is not translating to demand for translation services.
Most likely, the amount of money that Netflix, etc, is losing in the short term not translating content is less than they would have to spend to accelerate the translation work.
No. It would mean that the demand truly isn't there.
> There must be a structural issue on the other end causing the translations not to be valuable enough to the would-be purchaser to raise pay and clear the market.
Or the demand isn't really there. People may be overselling demand.
Any time someone is complaining about a shortage of ‘skill x’, it’s almost always a shortage of ‘folks who will put up with me and get through my hiring process for $y dollars with skill x’.
Some small exceptions of course in truly chaotic or difficult times, but it holds pretty solid as a rule.
You might not call them "translators" but they can speak both languages. There's lots of these people and I'm sure that if the work was well paid then many of them would jump at the opportunity. The issue is that it's not well paid. Those who want to do translation work and not live paycheck to paycheck often have different jobs and translate work as a hobby, e.g. many Anime and Manga translators.
It really isn't. It's maybe 40% there. Actual good translation of something requires you to be very good in the "I'm good at writing literary essays" sense in both languages, and be able to understand and research relevant references in both languages, and be able to understand various cultural differences, and....
There are more houses empty than homeless people.
So, there seems to be a bunch of people willing to pay for houses and no living in them.
In some cities we already have second home taxes of about 20%. So why not empty home taxes too?
I’m willing to pay $1 for a kilogram of gold. That doesn’t mean anyone’s interested in selling it to me.
If you see translations for Netflix movies and shows from ES, PT, FR, NL, DE, I often go back (I watch everything OV but with subtitles and the subtitles mostly stink) thinking, what, he really didn’t say that at all. There are massive errors in there along with the flattening and badly translated nuances. Humor never works unless it’s slapstick because translating humor is really expensive.
There is no shortage of fast food workers or translators. If the bids go up to be on par with restaurant jobs or international business jobs, someone adequately qualified will decide to stop looking for a better career option and take one of these jobs.
There isn't, the problem is everybody thinks they must be owners despite their financials. Truth is, offer is limited because not everyone can afford a house in most cities.
From a bank perspective, the bank wants more from both sides : deposits and loans and that's the truth driving the "demand" : let's give away more loans !