ABSTRACT
This chapter raises questions that may help us to see through the glare of a future guided by so-called intelligent technologies, to identify the powers that translation contains to determine its own route. Some of the answers to these questions can only be given by the whole community that produces and studies translation, thereby leading the chapter towards a reflection on the present and future of Translation Studies. We begin by looking at the environment around translation, emphasising the predicted disruption of intelligent technologies over what we know about translation, to the point where we might struggle to identify an effective, useful and profitable role for humans in a global industry of communication. At the end of the chapter, we propose a definition of translation that has at its core the notion of effectiveness, added to those of efficiency and adaptability, as a fundamental requirement to the understanding of translation and its transformations over time.
