Role · Creative & Media
Interpreters and TranslatorsSOC 27-3091.00
Interpreters and translators convert spoken or written language from one language into another, in the definition of O*NET, the US Labor Department’s occupational database (SOC 27-3091.00). O*NET 31.0 lists 17 tasks for the role, from translating messages simultaneously or consecutively while maintaining content, context and style, to compiling terminology and checking technical terms for consistency.1 Bureau of Labor Statistics figures shown on O*NET count 73,900 interpreters and translators in the US in 2025, at a median wage of $28.93 an hour or $60,170 a year, with employment projected to grow slower than average (1% to 2%) from 2025 to 2035 and 6,000 projected job openings.1
AI reaches the job through speech translation, machine translation and terminology tools, covered in how machine translation and AI interpreting work, and what is left for translators. The firmest cases are public-sector. Beijing’s municipal government reported in November 2025 that AI translation devices at the “Beijing Service” counter of Daxing International Airport interpret face-to-face conversations,2 and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation says its translators work with translation memories and its eTranslation machine translation service, and that terminologists maintain the IATE term database of 6.5 million terms.3 The DG also documents that eTranslation can apply a user’s glossary so set terms are rendered the same way, while the checking stays with a person.4
The weaker cases are vendor statements. Microsoft documents a Teams interpreter agent with 20 hours per user per month included with a Copilot license and describes how it handles voice data, and Google describes adaptive translation that tailors output to examples a user supplies, and says speech translation in Google Meet is generally available to businesses;567 none of these publishes an operator result, so they are graded as vendor claims. Academic work on resolving ambiguous word senses with large language models is at the prototype stage.8 How machine translation is scored, and why a score is not a result for a client, is explained in how machine translation quality is scored. MetaRoles’ scorecard counts 1 of the 8 core tasks it grades as done by AI in production.
Key facts
| O*NET-SOC code | 27-3091.00 Interpreters and Translators1 |
|---|---|
| O*NET tasks | 17 in O*NET 31.01 |
| US employment, 2025 | 73,900 (BLS, via O*NET)1 |
| Median wage, 2025 | $28.93 an hour; $60,170 a year (BLS, via O*NET)1 |
| Projected growth, 2025–2035 | Slower than average (1% to 2%), with 6,000 projected job openings (BLS, via O*NET)1 |
| Terminology database | IATE, 6.5 million terms (European Commission DG Translation, 2025)3 |
AI use cases
As of
| Task | AI system | Organisation | Evidence grade | Latest source | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interpret face-to-face conversations at an airport service counter | AI translation devices | Beijing Daxing International Airport, "Beijing Service" counter | In production | 2025-11 | 2 |
| Compile terminology and prepare termbase entries for translators | Term-extraction tools and AI, IATE database | European Commission, DG Translation | In production | 2026-07 | 3 |
| Look up earlier translations and offer machine translation as an optional resource | Euramis translation memory and eTranslation | European Commission, DG Translation | In production | 2026-07 | 3 |
| Keep set terms consistent by applying a user glossary in machine translation | eTranslation glossary upload | European Commission, DG Translation | In production | 2026-07 | 4 |
| Pick the right sense of ambiguous words with large language models | LLM word-sense disambiguation study | University of Edinburgh researchers (WMT 2023) | Prototype | 2023-09 | 8 |
| Interpret speech in meetings | Teams Interpreter agent | Microsoft documentation (vendor) | Vendor claim | 2026-10 | 5 |
| Tailor translations to examples a user supplies | Adaptive translation, Cloud Translation | Google Cloud documentation (vendor) | Vendor claim | 2026-10 | 6 |
| Translate speech between participants in video meetings | Speech translation in Google Meet | Google Workspace announcement (vendor) | Vendor claim | 2026-02 | 7 |
Sorted by evidence grade, then by date. Production means a named public body says it runs the tool; the Beijing case is reported by the municipal government and the European Commission figures are its own. Vendor-claim rows rest on the vendor’s own documentation or announcement, and their “latest source” is its date. The Microsoft and Google rows describe products, not an operator’s use. How the grades work.
Appears in
Sources
- O*NET OnLine (O*NET 31.0; wages and employment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics), 27-3091.00 Interpreters and Translators, retrieved 2026-10-24.
- Beijing Municipal Government (english.beijing.gov.cn, from Beijing Daily App), Travel Easier with Daxing Airport Expanding Language Support, November 22, 2025.
- European Commission, Directorate-General for Translation, Translation at the European Commission, updated July 24, 2026.
- European Commission, Directorate-General for Translation, Resources for language professionals, updated July 7, 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, Manage Interpreter agent for your organization (vendor documentation), updated October 8, 2026.
- Google Cloud, Translate text by using adaptive translation (vendor documentation), updated October 9, 2026.
- Google Workspace Updates, Speech translation in Google Meet now generally available for businesses, February 4, 2026.
- University of Edinburgh researchers, Towards Effective Disambiguation for Machine Translation with Large Language Models (WMT 2023), arXiv, September 20, 2023.