Lucas N. Vieira – Language Access in the Age of AI
This talk examines how machine or artificial intelligence (AI) translation mediates a wide range of high-risk intercultural encounters. Analyses of these encounters are vulnerable to several pitfalls. Polarised discourses on AI often overstate what translation technologies can do. At the other end of the spectrum, these discourses may also reject these technologies outright irrespective of their benefits. This talk charts a different path. Its focus is on the experiences of UK critical professionals, including doctors, paramedics and police officers. The talk looks at these professionals not to judge the adequacy of their decisions but rather to examine how their work environments and the affordances of AI give rise to complex communication practices which merit attention from language researchers. The discussion will draw on a range of sources including legal decisions, official documents and findings from Translate: Multilingual Access to Critical Services in the Age of AI. The talk will defend the value of nuance. It will support a broadening out of conceptions of translation and of the social roles fulfilled by translation and interpreting specialists.
Łucja Biel – AI Literacy for Specialised Translators: Developing Critical Digital Skills
Generative AI is changing translation practice, creating new opportunities as well as challenges for translators. How can translators learn to use these tools effectively without compromising translation quality or professional responsibility? The EU AI Act highlights the importance of AI literacy, including understanding the capabilities, risks and limitations of AI systems. This talk explores how translators can develop the critical digital skills and digital resilience needed to work confidently and responsibly with AI, using legal translation as a practical example. Drawing on classroom experience, it presents a step-by-step approach that combines specialist translation skills with AI-assisted workflows, critical evaluation and output verification. The aim is to help future translators adapt to technological change while maintaining their professional judgement and accountability.
Agnieszka Bartczak – Terminologia w erze AI – szanse i wyzwania
Prezentacja przybliży specyfikę tłumaczeń i prac terminologicznych w Komisji, w tym narzędzia i metody pracy. Omówione zostaną zastosowania sztucznej inteligencji i wiążące się z nimi wyzwania, a także umiejętności przydatne w pracy tłumacza i terminologa z użyciem AI.
Anna Konieczna-Purchała – Looking for Joy, with Skill-Building as a Side Effect
On embracing uncertainty, using robot tax as a useful point of reference, and practising optimism with both feet firmly on the ground.
Arkadiusz Badziński – Can We Trust AI with Medical Translation? Accuracy, Terminology and Responsibility
The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming specialist translation, including one of its most demanding areas: medical translation. Large language models can produce remarkably fluent target texts, retrieve specialist terminology and process substantial amounts of information within seconds. Yet fluency should not be confused with reliability. This presentation examines the use of AI in medical translation through a four-level model of translation quality: linguistic correctness, terminological correctness, domain correctness and communicative appropriateness. Particular attention will be paid to situations in which an AI-generated translation may appear entirely plausible while introducing subtle changes in medical meaning, including terminology selection, and diagnostic certainty. Rather than framing AI as either a threat to translators or a replacement for human expertise, the presentation argues for a human-in-the-loop model in which AI becomes a powerful translation and terminology tool while the specialist translator increasingly assumes the role of verifier, decision-maker and risk manager. The discussion will conclude by considering what these developments mean for translator education. If producing a linguistically acceptable translation is becoming increasingly automated, the ability to evaluate, verify and justify translation decisions may become one of the defining competences of the medical translator of the future.