On literary translators' complex relationship to technology and their profession
What is it about?
Literary translators appear removed from both the economic imperatives of today’s society and the realities of artificial intelligence (AI), machine translation (MT), and computer-aided translation (CAT). But is this really the case? Are literary translators’ self-imaging strategies removed from the wider socio-cultural landscape or are they instead a symptom of a more complex and interdependent relationship with new translation technologies and workflows? This article tries to answer these questions by discussing the complex interplay between literary translators' professional self-images and their attitudes towards technology as emerging from a survey of 150 literary translators.
Why is it important?
It's the first study of its kind linking literary translators' self-imaging strategies to their attitudes towards translation technology.