The Future of Translation: Artificial Languages and Human Intelligence

1 Sep 2026

Happening On 07/09/2026

MA Translation Studies Inaugural Lecture

Dr Gabriela Saldanha

MA Translation Studies Inaugural Lecture - The Future of Translation: Artificial Languages and Human Intelligence 

"For some, Artificial Intelligence is all the rage; it will solve all our problems, from poverty to climate change, from cancer to mental health, not to mention translation. I trust my audience is not in this camp, so I will not lecture you on the limits of AI. For others, it’s all doom and gloom. AI will take our jobs and heat our planet to the point that we will have to find a new home in Mars, or at least the billionaires will, the rest of us will die of cancer or starvation before. I trust my audience is not in this camp either. After all, students that are clearly smarter than their phones are still signing on to do translation degrees, believing that they can do better than AI. And they are right. Even so, there is no doubt that machine translation has surpassed the expectations of the most sceptic language and literature lovers, me included. We should not be under the illusion that there are easy answers, of the kind that are always somewhere in the middle, like saying AI can be useful but needs to be used with caution. AI literacy is a must for everybody, but when it comes to translators, literacy is not sufficient. Translators need to understand AI. This does not mean they need to become computer scientists. The answer I propose may not be easy, but it is simple: we keep doing what we do best, and that is understanding language, and not repeating it like parrots, but interpreting it and adapting it to our audience. In this lecture, I suggest that we start by exploring the meaning of the two key words: ‘artificial’ and ‘intelligence’. Dr Gabriela Saldanha"