From the race to machine translation to generative AI: Implications for the Translator Education

Abstract

As with any other field of knowledge, technological advances affected Translation Studies. The emergence of machine translation in the 1940s, CAT Tools almost 40 years later, and the confluence of these with generative artificial intelligence, have both optimized the work of translators and demanded of them, and are increasingly demanding, a new kind of knowledge, namely technological knowledge. In view of this scenario, this text seeks to reflect on the work of professors in the technological education of translators. The reflections to be presented focus on teaching and learning processes related, above all, to machine translation technologies and translation memory systems, in their interfaces with generative artificial intelligence. In the midst of these reflections, certain historical perspectives on the incorporation and impact of translation technologies on the translator’s work and education will be emphasized.