Preparing Translators for the Age of Generative AI: Revising Educational Curricula to Prioritize Essential Skills in an AI-Dominated Landscape

Abstract

The recent ability of machines to generate text and images that are fluent, coherent, and culturally nuanced is already causing major upheavals in the translation sector. Machine translation tools have exploded in number, sophistication, and quality, and the profession of human translator needs to adapt to work within this new environment and avoid being replaced by it. This paper examines the major changes that have taken place, and which could take place in the near future, and suggests ways of revising translator-training curricula to adapt to these challenges. This is essential at a time when the profession is undergoing profound changes and when all translators and future translators need to be prepared for new skills in the field of post-editing, machine-reading, machine-cultures and multidisciplinarity. After outlining the challenges that AI is causing to the profession and to the norms and values of the translation sector in its current state, the author suggests that translator training should adapt to the new reality of the profession and not to what it used to be. The profession is undergoing profound changes, and all translators and future translators need to find new skills and knowledge in order to continue to work with AI. The article concludes with recommendations on how to design AI-friendly translation programmes that can train students for the post-AI era.