“If students translate like a robot … ” or how research on human-centered AI and intelligence augmentation can help realign translation education

The emergence of LLMs and improvements in neural machine translation has led to a focus on the human touch, or what it means to be an expert professional translator in the age of AI. This paper interrelates translation competence with the Human-Centred AI (HCAI) paradigm to identify specific areas in which humans showcase their ‘added value’, as well as to focus on human centeredness, control and autonomy. It first describes ‘broad’ and ‘narrow’ conceptualisations of translation competence to identify possible foci of human-machine interaction, with an HCAI approach in which the human is at the centre of the cognitive system and in control. The paper argues that an outward look to other disciplines through the perspective of HCAI can provide insights into potential ‘added value’, leading to a shift of translation education to focus precisely on areas in which machines exhibit limitations, such as creativity, narrativity and contextualisation, common sense, judgement, empathy, etc. To conclude, two activities are proposed that involve an AI-augmented human-machine tandem in which trainees can critically engage with their own agency, autonomy, decision-making processes and central role in producing high-quality, high-value translations. These approaches lead to an empowering and professionalising vision of trainees’ agency to prepare them for the AI-driven era.