> One, there is no way LLMs in their current state are capable of replacing human translators for a case like this. And two, they do make the job of translation a lot less tedious. I wouldn't call it pleasant exactly, but it was much easier than my previous translation experiences

On the other hand, one day they will replace human beings. And secondly, if something like transalation (or in general, any mental work) becomes too easy, then we also run the risk of incresing the amount of mediocre works. Fact is, if something is hard, we'll only spend time on it if it's really worthwhile.

Same thing happens with phone cameras. Yes, it makes some things more convenient, but it also has resulted in a mountain of mediocrity, which isn't free to store (requires energy and hence pollutes the environment).

Technically modern LLMs are handicapped on translation tasks compared to the original transformer architecture. The origami transformer got to see future context as well as past tokens.

Okay, but I'm not really concerned with the state of the art now with any specific technology, but what will be the state of the art in 20 years.