The Human Translator’s (In)Visibility in Times of AI
An Self-Applied Experiment in Literary Translation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35699/2317-2096.2026.61047Palavras-chave:
literary translation and AI, translator’s visibility, prompt creation, post-editingResumo
Based on a self-applied experiment comparing five different English–Brazilian Portuguese translations of a microfiction, we discuss the (in)visibility of the literary human translator’s work in the age of AI. More specifically, we aim to tap into the interferences in meanings produced by machines, if any, and their impact on the translation process and product (particularly in terms of multiple literary text imports, adequacy, fluency, and post-editing effort). To this end, we designed a self-applied experiment in which the same source text was translated by two humans, two machine translation (MT) engines, and two generative AI chatbots. We assessed the outputs as to their similarities and differences for specific linguistic traits, and their authorial traits. Despite variations in the standard metrics BLEU and TER, both AI chatbots provided human-like outputs, except for crucial interferences that could both hinder the understanding and enjoyment of the literary text and obscure the human translators’ role as both prompt creators and post-editors. Machine-related red flags included the management of deictic possessive adjectives and pronouns by both MT engines, the addition of an undesirable em dash, and the fabrication of a title by one of the AI chatbots. Our findings seem to anticipate a novel instance of translator’s invisibility, challenging the human translator’s degree of engagement in the task.
Downloads
Referências
ALKODIMI, Khaled Abkar; ALQAHTANI, Osama Abdulrhman; AL-WASY, Baleigh Qassim. Human-AI Collaboration in Translation and Back Translation of Literary Texts. Journal of Social Studies, v. 30, n. 2, p. 173-192, July 2024.
ALVES, Fabio; JAKOBSEN, Arnt Lykke. Grounding Cognitive Translation Studies: Goals, Commitments and Challenges. In: ALVES, Fabio; JAKOBSEN, Arnt Lykke (org.). The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Cognition. New York: Routledge, 2021. p. 545-554.
ALVES, Fabio; SILVA, Igor Antônio Lourenço da. Bridging Paradigms to Approach Expertise in Cognitive Translation Studies. In: MUÑOZ, Ricardo; SUN, Sanjun; LI, Defeng (org.). Advances in Cognitive Translation Studies. Singapore: Springer, 2021. v. 1, p. 1-20.
ALVES, Fabio; SILVA, Igor Antônio Lourenço da. Expertise in Interpreting as an Interlingual Reformulation Skill. In: MELLINGER, Christopher (org.). The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting and Cognition. New York: Routledge, 2024. v. 1, p. 32-51.
ANGELONE, Erik. Weaving Adaptive Expertise into Translator Training. In: MASSEY, Gary; HUERTAS-BARROS, Elsa; KATAN, David (org.). The Human Translator in the 2020s. New York: Routledge, 2022. E-book.
BARBASSA, Juliana. ‘Building Something Together’: Translators Discuss Their Art. The New York Times, July 2, 2023. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/books/review/literary-translator-roundtable-discussion.html. Accessed on: Sept. 19, 2025.
BESTGEN, Yves. Comparing Formulaic Language in Human and Machine Translation: Insight from a Parliamentary Corpus. In: PARLACLARIN, 3.; LANGUAGE RESOURCES AND EVALUATION CONFERENCE (LREC), 13., 2022, Marseille. Proceedings […]. Marseille: European Language Resources Association (ELRA), 2022. p. 101-106. Available at: https://aclanthology.org/2022.parlaclarin-1.14.pdf. Accessed on: July 31, 2025.
BISTAFA, Sylvio R. Translating Scientific Latin Texts with Artificial Intelligence: The Works of Euler and Contemporaries. Euleriana, v. 4, n. 2, p. 149-171, 2024.
BOHM, David. On Creativity. London: Routledge, 1998.
BRITTO, Paulo Henriques. A tradução literária. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2012.
BUTTS, Dylan. Sam Altman Defends AI Resource Usage: Water Concerns ‘Fake,’ and ‘Humans Use Energy Too’. CNBC, Feb. 23, 2026. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/23/openai-altman-defends-ai-resource-usage-water-concerns-fake-humans-use-energy-summit.html. Accessed on: Mar. 5, 2026.
CALVO-FERRER, José Ramón. Can You Tell the Difference? A Study of Human vs Machine-Translated Subtitles. Perspectives, v. 32, n. 6, p. 1115-1132, 2023.
CARROLL, Shannon. Saying ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You’ to ChatGPT Costs OpenAI Millions, Sam Altman Says. Quartz, Nov. 3, 2025. Available at: https://qz.com/open-ai-sam-altman-chatgpt-gpt4-please-thank-you-1851777047. Accessed on: Mar. 5, 2026.
COLLINS, Harry. Artifictional Intelligence: Against Humanity’s Surrender to Computers. Cambridge: Polity, 2018.
COSTA, Cynthia Beatrice; SILVA, Igor Antônio Lourenço da. Annotating Translation as a Meaningful Metacognition-Oriented Practice in the Translation Classroom. Revista de Letras, v. 1, p. 1-16, 2023.
COSTA, Cynthia Beatrice; SILVA, Igor Antônio Lourenço da. On the Translation of Literature as a Human Activity par Excellence: Ethical Implications for Literary Machine Translation. Aletria: Revista de Estudos de Literatura, v. 30, p. 225-248, 2020.
DOMINGOS, Livia Cremonez. O desafio da tradução de minicontos da coletânea The World’s Shortest Stories: uma tradução comentada com foco na metarreflexão e no processo tradutório. 2016. 73 f. Senior Thesis (Bachelor’s Degree in Translation) – Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Uberlândia, 2016.
EMSLEY, Robin. ChatGPT: These Are Not Hallucinations – They’re Fabrications and Falsifications. Schizophrenia, v. 9, n. 52, p. 1-2, 2023.
ERICSSON, K. Anders. Expertise in Interpreting: An Expert-Performance Perspective. Interpreting, v. 5, n. 2, p. 187-220, 2001. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.5.2.08eri.
ESQUEDA, Marileide Dias; SILVA, Igor Antônio Lourenço da. An Autoethnonarrative of Charting Virtual Worlds: A Pedagogical Case Study of Training in Game Translation and Localization at a Brazilian University. Mutatis Mutandi, [2026]. In press.
FISCHER, Lukas; LÄUBLI, Samuel. What’s the Difference Between Professional Human and Machine Translation? A Blind Multi-Language Study on Domain-Specific MT. In: ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR MACHINE TRANSLATION, 22., 2020, Lisboa. Proceedings […]. Lisboa: European Association for Machine Translation, 2020. p. 215-224.
GIDDENS, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. Standford: Standford University Press, 1990.
GLAVEANU, Vlad et al. Creativity as Action: Findings from Five Creative Domains. Frontiers in Psychology, Lausanne, v. 4, p. 1-14, 2013.
HADLEY, James et al. (ed.). The Qualities of Literary Machine Translation. Dublin: Machine Translation Summit, 2019.
HALLIDAY, Michael Alexander Kirkwood. Language Theory and Translation Practice. Revista Internazionale di Tecnica della Traduzione, n. 0, p. 15-25, 1992.
HOYTE-WEST, Antony. On the Visibility of Literary Translators Working from Smaller Languages into English: Some Observations from the United Kingdom. Analele Universității „Ovidius” Constanța, v. XXXIV, n. 2, p. 235-250, 2023.
HUMBLÉ, Philippe. Machine Translation and Poetry: The Case of English and Portuguese. Ilha do Desterro, Florianópolis, v. 72, n. 2, p. 41-56, 2019.
KINNEY, Ophelia Hu. Honeysuckle. NYC Midnight – 100-word Microfiction Challenge, 2020. Available at: https://www.nycmidnight.com/stories/honeysuckle. Accessed on: July 31, 2025.
KOGLIN, Arlene; MOURA, Willian Henrique Cândido; MATOS, Morgana Aparecida de; SILVEIRA, João Gabriel Pereira da. Quality Assessment of Machine-Translated Post-Edited Subtitles: An Analysis of Brazilian Translators’ Perceptions. Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies, Antwerp, v. 22, p. 41-60, 2023.
LIU, Ming; ZHANG, He; WU, Guanhao. Fine-Grained Human Evaluation for English-to-Chinese Machine Translation: a Case Study on Scientific Text. ArXiv, Sept. 13, 2021. Available at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2110.14766. Accessed on: Aug. 7, 2025.
METZ, Cade; WEISE, Karen. A. I. Is Getting More Powerful, but Its Hallucinations Are Getting Worse. The New York Times, May 5, 2025. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/technology/ai-hallucinations-chatgpt. Accessed on: Aug. 10, 2025.
MOORKENS, Joss; O’BRIEN, Sharon; SILVA, Igor Antônio Lourenço da; FONSECA, Norma Barbosa de Lima; ALVES, Fabio. Correlations of Perceived Post-Editing Effort with Measurements of Actual Effort. Machine Translation, v. 29, p. 1-18, 2015.
PLITT, Mirko; MASSELOT, François. A Productivity Test of Statistical Machine Translation Post-Editing in a Typical Localization Context. The Prague Bulletin of Mathematical Linguistics, Neuchâtel, n. 93, p. 7-16, 2010. Available at: https://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/pbml/93/art-plitt masselot.pdf. Accessed on: Aug. 10, 2025.
PYM, Anthony. Redefining Translation Competence in an Electronic Age. In Defence of a Minimalist Approach. Meta: Translators’ Journal, Montréal, v. 48, n. 4, p. 481-497, 2003.
SALIMI, Jonni. Machine Translation of Fictional and Non-Fictional Texts: an Examination of Google Translate’s Accuracy on Translation of Fictional Versus Non-Fictional Texts. 2014. 22 f. Thesis (Bachelor’s Degree in English Linguistics) – Department of English, Stockholms Universitet, Stockholm, 2014.
SILVA, Igor Antônio Lourenço da. Translation, Expert Performance and Cognition. In: ALVES, Fabio; JAKOBSEN, Arnt Lykke (org.). The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Cognition. New York: Routledge, 2021. p. 1-17.
SILVA, Igor Antônio Lourenço da; ALVES, Fabio. Desenvolvendo a subcompetência estratégica: convergência entre os elementos da competência tradutória. In: ESQUEDA, Marileide Dias (org.). Ensino de tradução: proposições didáticas à luz da competência tradutória. Uberlândia: EDUFU, 2020. p. 126-152.
SILVA, Igor Antônio Lourenço da; BORGES, Isabel; MAGALHÃES, Janayna Rocha; MORAIS, Cecília Franco. Formação emancipatória de tradutores: uma autoetnografia. In: MALTA, Gleiton (org.). Ensino de tradução e de línguas: reflexões e propostas didáticas. Campinas: Pontes Editores, 2023. v. 1, p. 103-130.
SILVA, Igor Antônio Lourenço da; COSTA, Cynthia Beatrice. A tradução automática de textos literários e o comportamento do tradutor em formação: reflexões para o ensino da tradução. In: PEREIRA, Germana Henriques; COSTA, Patrícia Rodrigues; SILVA, Rodrigo D’Ávila B. (org.). Formação de tradutores: desafios da sala de aula. Campinas: Pontes Editores, 2020. v. 9, p. 143-166.
SILVA, Igor Antônio Lourenço da; SCHMALTZ, Marcia; ALVES, Fabio; PAGANO, Adriana; WONG, Derek; CHAO, Lidia; LEAL, Ana Luísa V.; QUARESMA, Paulo; GARCIA, Caio. Translating and Post-Editing in the Chinese – Portuguese Language Pair. Translation Spaces, v. 4, p. 145-169, 2015.
SPERBER, Dan; WILSON, Deirdre. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1995.
SPOTURNO, María Laura. Traducción literaria e inteligencia artificial: consideraciones para la formación universitaria. Cadernos de Tradução, Florianópolis, v. 44, n. 1, p. 1-26, 2024.
SUN, Sanjun; LIU, Kanglong; MORATTO, Riccardo. Introduction: Navigating the Paradigm Shift-Translation Studies in the Age of AI. In: SUN, Sanjun; LIU, Kanglong; MORATTO, Riccardo (ed.). Translation Studies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. London: Routledge, 2025. p. 1-17.
TORAL, Antonio; WIELING, Martijn; WAY, Andy. Post-Editing Effort of a Novel with Statistical and Neural Machine Translation. Frontiers in Digital Humanities, Lausanne, v. 5, p. 1-9, 2018.
VENUTI, Lawrence. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge, 1998.
VENUTI, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility: a History of Translation. London: Routledge, 1995.
VISBY, Morten. The Future Relationship of Literary Translation and AI: Reflections from CEATL President. Counterpoint, n. 8, p. 33-36, 2020. Available at: https://ceatl.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Counterpoint_2020_04_article_08.pdf. Accessed on: July 31, 2025.
WRIGHT, Webb. Please Be Polite to ChatGPT. Scientific American, July 25, 2024. Available at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/should-you-be-nice-to-ai-chatbots-such-as-chatgpt/. Accessed on: July 31, 2025.
YOU, Mu et al. How Well Can State-of-the-Art Machine Translation Systems Render a 16th-Century Chinese Novel? Cadernos de Tradução, v. 45, n. 3, Special Issue, p. 1-24, 2025. Available at: https://www.scielo.br/j/ct/a/yqp6PPtcD5pKXGYgMWhjRWk/?lang=en. Accessed on: Aug. 20, 2025.
Downloads
Publicado
Edição
Seção
Licença
Copyright (c) 2026 Cynthia Beatrice Costa, Igor Antônio Lourenço da Silva (Autor)
Este trabalho está licenciado sob uma licença Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Autores que publicam nesta revista concordam com os seguintes termos:Autores mantém os direitos autorais e concedem à revista o direito de primeira publicação, com o trabalho simultaneamente licenciado sob a Licença Creative Commons Attribution que permite o compartilhamento do trabalho com reconhecimento da autoria e publicação inicial nesta revista.Autores têm autorização para assumir contratos adicionais separadamente, para distribuição não-exclusiva da versão do trabalho publicada nesta revista (ex.: publicar em repositório institucional ou como capítulo de livro), com reconhecimento de autoria e publicação inicial nesta revista.Autores têm permissão e são estimulados a publicar e distribuir seu trabalho online (ex.: em repositórios institucionais ou na sua página pessoal) a qualquer ponto antes ou durante o processo editorial, já que isso pode gerar alterações produtivas, bem como aumentar o impacto e a citação do trabalho publicado (Veja The Effect of Open Access).
Como Citar
