When Translation Goes Digital: Case Studies and Critical Reflections. Renée Desjardins, Claire Larsonneur, and Philippe Lacour

Abstract

The emerging and growing field of ‘Digital Humanities’ (DH) has brought profound and comprehensive changes. Particular concern has been aroused by the impact of advanced technologies on translation and Translation Studies (TS). Cutting-edge technologies have developed effective online machine translation (MT) tools such as Google Translate and DeepL. Consequently, there has been an on-going debate about whether digital technologies will completely replace human translation in the near future, which seems unlikely to me. When Translation Goes Digital: Case Studies and Critical Reflections (Desjardins et al., 2021) supports this position and bolsters my confidence in human translation. Consisting of ten studies presented at the sixth International Association for Translation at Hong Kong Baptist University, the book is structured in three parts. Aiming to ‘explore how the digital landscape was impacting translation and TS, broadly and specifically’ (1), it is suitable for scholars, translators, or any translation practitioners curious about the latest studies regarding TS and the current digital world, the relationship between human translation and digital technologies, and how scholars define the relationship between DH and TS.