Agency, Competence and GenAI in Translation and Translator Education

As the age of neural machine translation (NMT) has matured, agency seems to have emerged as a fulcrum around which the value of professional human translation can be judged. However, some studies suggest that more recent generative AI (GenAI) systems indicate a potential for collaboration and reciprocity that bears resemblances with human agency, for instance, in the nascent deployment of AI agents in cognitive behaviour therapy and social skills training. The present article examines important implications of GenAI for translators and those who educate them. Against the backdrop of human-agent interaction (HAI), it considers the dynamic interactions of human and GenAI agency, sketching out some key skills required by professional translators in a language industry that is moving progressively towards GenAI. It then briefly outlines how these might be taught by combining an expert-in-the-loop model with established social constructivist and emergentist approaches to (experiential) learning proposed by Kiraly (2000, 2013).

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