The booth will survive the machine

Read about Microsoft's buyout push and thought about the interpreters I used to sit next to — the good ones are retiring now, and the machines are getting close. But I've spent forty years listening to people say things they don't mean in one language and then say them differently in another, and I'm not convinced a model will ever catch the pause that changes everything. It's 4 AM and I'm half-convinced the secret of my profession was just standing in the right empty room at the right time, which isn't something you can train.