WSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications
Print ISSN: 1790-0832, E-ISSN: 2224-3402
Volume 22, 2025
The Role of Digital Technologies in the Formation of Future Translators’ Professional Competencies
Authors: , , , ,
Abstract: The rapid development of digital technologies, machine translation, as well as artificial intelligence affect translators’ work in various fields, and change the format of translator training and their work in the whole. The purpose of the study is to explore the impact of utilizing digital technologies during the study on the formation of future translators’ professional competencies. To achieve the purpose of the study, the methods of analyzing empirical research data and surveying students about the frequency of use of certain digital tools and their assessment of the impact of these tools on the formation of their professional competence were used. The study was carried out by applying the quantitative method. The study enlisted 448 fourth-year students aspiring to become translators, who were learning English (n=221), Spanish (n=98), Polish (n=97), and Chinese (n=32) for their prospective translation careers. To conduct the research, a comprehensive questionnaire was devised to investigate the frequency and duration of utilizing various digital resources, as well as students' evaluation of their positive impact on molding their professional proficiency. The findings indicated that students, who are prospective translators of Chinese and Spanish, assign greater importance to utilizing digital tools. The duration and frequency of utilizing the applications had no impact on how students rated their importance in professional competence formation. Thus, students consider certain applications to be effective to mold certain professional proficiencies and not very effective for others, due to the high level of language proficiency of future translators. Future research can be aimed at delving into the frequency and duration of utilizing digital tools for the quality of translating texts of different complexity levels, various subjects, speed, and, accordingly, the quality of translation, studying the opinions of future translators about the interaction and competition between human translators and digital translation tools, and people's perception of working with machine translation tools who do not speak the language into which a particular text is being translated in text or audio format.
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Keywords: Computer translation systems, foreign languages, machine translation, students, translation, digital technologies, competencies
Pages: 118-133
DOI: 10.37394/23209.2025.22.12