🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses how human value is reconfigured within the language and translation industry amid the surge of automation and how this transformation influences translation pedagogy. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 29 industry stakeholders and integrating Chesterman’s framework of translation ethics with data from the LT-LiDER project, the research proposes “adaptability” as a central mediating concept linking human professional value with technological efficiency. Findings indicate that while technological efficiency has become a baseline expectation, human value is reaffirmed through professional judgment, oversight, and accountability embedded within automated workflows. The study demonstrates that automation does not replace but rather reshapes the translation value system, offering a new direction for translation education oriented toward human–machine collaboration.
📝 Abstract
This paper examines how value is constructed and negotiated in today's increasingly automated language and translation industry. Drawing on interview data from twenty-nine industry stakeholders collected within the LT-LiDER project, the study analyses how human value, technological value, efficiency, and adaptability are articulated across different professional roles. Using Chesterman's framework of translation ethics and associated values as an analytical lens, the paper shows that efficiency-oriented technological values aligned with the ethics of service have become baseline expectations in automated production environments, where speed, scalability, and deliverability dominate evaluation criteria. At the same time, human value is not displaced but repositioned, emerging primarily through expertise, oversight, accountability, and contextual judgment embedded within technology-mediated workflows. A central finding is the prominence of adaptability as a mediating value linking human and technological domains. Adaptability is constructed as a core professional requirement, reflecting expectations that translators continuously adjust their skills, roles, and identities in response to evolving tools and organisational demands. The paper argues that automation reshapes rather than replaces translation value, creating an interdependent configuration in which technological efficiency enables human communicative work.