ABSTRACT

The practice of translating, like writing, has always involved technologies, and those technologies have emerged and evolved over time in relation to a society’s cultural and socioeconomic needs. The analysis of translators’ narratives provides an example of how this method can be fruitfully employed to gain insights into technology usability but also to focus on the generally neglected dimension of affect or emotional response. The issue of user input into product design, particularly for leading commercial software products for the global market, raises important questions that expand the horizons of our studies of technology beyond the user interface and the workplaces or other settings in which the technology is deployed. The futures of translation and translation technology are inevitably intertwined with current and future developments in artificial intelligence. It is realistic to expect that AI will continue to facilitate certain translation and translation-related tasks, as already evidenced by some machine translation and business automation applications.