EXPOSED
Written translation — documents, subtitles, localization strings, marketing copy — is the single most thoroughly automated language task there is, and the market has already repriced it toward machine-translation post-editing at lower rates per word. Live interpreting holds up better: courtroom and hospital work demands physical or on-call presence, sworn accuracy, cultural mediation, and a certified human whose name goes on the record. The modal worker in this SOC straddles both, which is why the score lands on the COOKED/EXPOSED line rather than clearly above it.
Core tasks are already automatable. A 5 reflects that the bulk of billable volume in this SOC — contract translation, subtitle files, software strings, birth certificates, patent abstracts — now arrives as an MT draft to be post-edited, and even simultaneous interpreting has working speech-to-speech pipelines in conference and telehealth queues; the score is not 2 only because whispered courtroom simultaneous, ASL, and low-resource language pairs still require a live human ear.
Some physical or field component. A 7 covers the interpreter who drives to the deposition, stands next to the patient during a pelvic exam, sits in the booth with a headset, or does relay work over VRI carts — real presence and travel, but nothing manipulated with the hands and no uncontrolled site conditions beyond a noisy courtroom or an ambulance bay, which is why it sits below the 13 line.
Certification preferred, not legally required. Court certification (state or Administrative Office of the Courts) and CCHI/NBCMI medical credentials are gatekeepers for the good assignments and you swear an oath on the record, but no statute reserves the act of translating to a licensed person — an unsertified bilingual can and does take the work, and ATA certification is a marketing asset rather than a legal monopoly, which puts this at 6 rather than 12.
Some relationship component. Court and hospital interpreters are booked through agency schedulers and language-access vendors who fill by availability and language pair, not by name, so the 9 credits the repeat-client relationships that literary translators, conference regulars, and long-term legal teams genuinely build — but most assignments end when the encounter does.
Meaningful discretion. A 7 reflects real calls made in the moment — flagging a register mismatch, deciding whether an idiom or a hedged consent phrase carries over, interrupting to request clarification on the record — bounded by canons of ethics that mandate completeness and prohibit editorializing, so you own accuracy but not the underlying decision, unlike the physician or judge in the room.
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