Journalists in French-speaking Switzerland worried: translation tools on the rise

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• Journalists in French-speaking Switzerland fear job losses due to the use of AI-based translation tools that could replace their work.
• Media companies such as the Migros Group are increasingly relying on machine translations, which jeopardizes the quality and diversity of reporting.
• Despite the potential for savings and improvements in error correction through AI, the Swiss Federal Media Commission (FMEC) warns of possible factual and logical errors and the loss of specialist knowledge.

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Mireille (real name known to the editors) has not yet digested the shock. The young journalist worked for a Swiss media group and was responsible for a publication that appeared in French-speaking Switzerland. She was recently made redundant.

The reason given for her dismissal was that her articles would now be written by German-speaking colleagues and translated into French using AI tools. Thanks to AI, the company will increasingly do without journalists in French-speaking Switzerland in future, the journalist, who wishes to remain anonymous, added.

"The topics that interest people in French-speaking Switzerland are not always the same as those in German-speaking Switzerland," she continues. She believes that the quality and diversity of reporting is at risk.

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More and more translated texts

Journalists from French-speaking Switzerland who work for the high-circulation Migros magazine have echoed similar sentiments. Since the orange giant began restructuring, more articles have been translated from German into French for the French editions and preferred to the French-language editorial team's suggestions, as the news agency AWP has learned.

A Migros spokesperson rejects concerns that the use of an AI-based translation tool could result in "poor and incorrect" French texts in the Migros magazine. As the magazine is only published once a week, the texts can be easily checked for errors and revised.

The spokesperson also rejects the accusation from the editorial team that a large proportion of the articles published in French-speaking Switzerland are only translations. After all, many texts and content could not be translated one-to-one into French due to the different regional interests, he says.

Advantages and disadvantages of technological change

The question of whether the use of AI will lead to redundancies is a controversial one in the media industry, says Etienne Coquoz from the journalists' association "Impressum". He has not yet heard of any redundancies for which AI has been cited as the reason. However, as little is known about the reasons for the dismissals, this cannot be ruled out.

Coquoz believes that it is not necessarily the journalists' jobs that are at risk due to technological developments, but rather other functions in the media companies, such as translation and layout tasks.

However, the Federal Media Commission (FMEC) took a close look at the key consequences of technological change for the industry last November. Among other things, the FMEC noted that AI helps media companies to save costs. It could also reduce the error rate, promote linguistic diversity and make better use of data.

However, the commission also pointed out dangers such as factual and logical errors that can arise in AI reporting. Knowledge would also be lost in editorial offices if competent media professionals were to leave the industry as a result of restructuring.