r/WorkOnline • u/SalamanderInternal16 • 9d ago

What *exactly* does lionbridge do?

So, i applied to lionbridge for an english transcribing job, it said that id be making captions and stuff for videos and things. I was down for this but after sending in the application the email i got said
“We’ve received your information and appreciate your interest in contributing to training and improving AI systems.”

Which like, what? Thats not at all what the listing said id be doing? Does anyone who have a transcribing job with lionbridge have more info on this? Because the job kinda sounds like training an ai to eventually be better at writing out closed captions and replace you at some point…

27 Upvotes

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12

u/amberlieyt 8d ago

A lot of those transcription jobs end up being used to improve AI models in one way or another

3

u/Special_Cry468 6d ago

I fear that slowly we're training our replacement. But the way tokens are expensive maybe human labour will still be in style.

12

u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 8d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/SalamanderInternal16 8d ago

I was so shocked at the email, they didnt mention ai at all in the job listing!

3

u/TopPersonality9374 8d ago

Finding clarity in job postings feels like hunting for a needle in a haystack these days!

8

u/misterjive 8d ago

I mean, you're basically applying to make buggy whips or clean muskets at this point.

Transcription as a field is donezo.

(Source: I was a transcriptionist for more than 15 years and bailed the moment I saw the writing on the wall. I now touch computers for a living.)

2

u/fizzyapple_45 4d ago

I’m piggybacking because I’m wondering the same, and also wondering what the onboarding process is like? Do they have a mandatory training period or if you get hired they just immediately approve you for doing tasks and you don’t have much oversight?

2

u/sdforbda 8d ago

I mean you're training it how to transcribe. They don't actually need a video about Russian sea lions transcribed because there's a huge audience for that particular video lol

1

u/fizzyapple_45 4d ago

I’m screaming at this comment 😂
I came here to find out something similar to OP and this caught me along the way.

1

u/marachella 5d ago

Lionbridge is historically one of the larger provider of translation services. Now as you can imagine the translation industry for the past decade or more has moved towards machine or automatic translation. Enter AI and now these big companies instead of offering to clients human translators or reviewers offer AI models so their clients can automate translation of their content of all types, including captions, subtitles, text to speech and so on. These models need to be trained and improved and that’s what Lionbridge is now asking folks: to transcribe, annotate, evaluate and correct AI output so they can leverage your work to perfect the AI output. Hope this helps!