> That's actually eliminated/reduced the needs for translators
This is a radically misinformed statement. These are the real-world experience I've had with translators:
- translator with degree in languages, occasional translator: never mentioned Google Translate
- semi-professional translator (significant source of income coming from it): said that most professionals nowadays use GT as first pass; never mentioned GT being a threat
- multiple gigs I've requested for official documentation: those can't be done via GT, as they require a certified translator
- realtime translation I needed: again, can't be done via GT, as a certified translator is required
The idea that GT is eliminating translators is nonsense. It actually augments their capacity (re-read above, this is a real-world opinion of a translator).
> The jobs replacing it are much fewer and higher skilled (software dev).
Even assuming the (wrong) argument that GT eliminates jobs, SW devs are just one of the options. This actually reflects the ancestor comment: "Lack of work is only due to lack of imagination". Computer translation surely helped businesses around the world in communicating on a global scale, in a way that previously was not resource-effective (e.g. lookup on the dictionary); while this can't be quantified, it's the opposite of "reducing jobs".
Automation started around 300 years ago, not 30. If the automation-pessimists were right, essentially no jobs would exist by now. See lump of labour fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour.
So the tasks in your example are easier, but the easier jobs have been eliminated or replaced with harder jobs.