Teaching translation in the age of generative AI

JC Penet; Joss Moorkens; Masaru Yamada

Forthcoming: Teaching translation in the age of generative AI: New paradigm, new learning?

JC Penet, Joss Moorkens, Masaru Yamada

Synopsis

Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has started reshaping what it means to work as a professional translator in an industry that is becoming increasingly automated. This prompts us to interrogate, once again, the role and agency of human translators in the translation process or, in other words, the intrinsically human value and values they add to it. A natural corollary is that GenAI forces us translator educators to (re-)interrogate what we do in our translation programmes. Whatever we may think or feel about GenAI, we owe it to our students to engage with it in our programmes. However, because GenAI is not just another tool in the translator’s toolkit, we must also to do so in a way that raises students’ awareness of some of the ethical and sustainability issues around it.

This is what Teaching Translation in the Age of Generative AI: New Paradigm, New Learning aims to do. Articulated around three main parts, Part 1 explores the new skills and competences translator educators need to help their students develop in the age of GenAI. In Part 2, the focus shifts to the new knowledge (such as data literacy and prompting) that students in translation programmes need to engage with in the age of GenAI. Finally, Part 3 puts some flesh on the bones, as it reviews some of the new teaching approaches adopted by colleagues since the advent of GenAI. It does so by introducing the reader to a series of vignettes taken from a variety of translation-related disciplines and contexts.

Throughout the entire edited volume, the ambition is to be as accessible as possible, so that this volume can be of help to as many of us in translation education as possible, as we all learn to negotiate the uncharted territory of GenAI.

Biographies

JC Penet

JC Penet is a Reader in Translation Industry Studies in the
School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University. His research
explores the socio-economic and psychological impact of
automation on the translation industry in general, and for
freelance translators in particular. Another, related question
his research seeks to answer is the impact these changes have on
the way we understand and deliver translator training and CPD
for professional translators. He is the author of Working as a
Professional Translator (2024).

Joss Moorkens

Joss Moorkens is an Associate Professor at the School of Applied
Language and Intercultural Studies in Dublin City University
(DCU), Science Lead at the ADAPT Centre, a member of DCU’s
Institute of Ethics and Centre for Translation and Textual
Studies, and board member at the European Masters in Translation
Network. He has published over 70 articles, chapters and papers
on the topics of translation technology interaction and
evaluation, translator precarity, and translation ethics. He is
General Coeditor of the journal Translation Spaces, coeditor of
a number of books and journal special issues, and coauthor of
the textbooks Translation Tools and Technologies (2023) and
Automating Translation (2025).

Masaru Yamada

Masaru Yamada is a Professor in the College and Graduate School of Intercultural Communication at Rikkyo University. He holds an M.A. in TESOL/Linguistics from West Virginia University and a Ph.D. in Intercultural Communication, with a specialization in Translation Studies. His research interests include empirical studies of the translation process (Empirical TPR), translation technology (CAT tools, MTPE, and large language models such as ChatGPT), and the application of machine translation in foreign language education (TILT, MTILT). He has served as a board member of the Japan Association of Interpreting and Translation Studies (JAITS) and the Asia-Pacific Association for Machine Translation (AAMT). He is also a member of the editorial board of The Interpreter and Translator Trainer.

Published

June 4, 2025

LaTeX source on GitHub

Series

Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing

Print ISSN

2364-8899

Cite as

Penet, JC, Moorkens, Joss & Yamada, Masaru. Forthcoming. Teaching translation in the age of generative AI: New paradigm, new learning?. (Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing). Berlin: Language Science Press.