Translators, Texts, and Contexts: Reclaiming Human Agency in the Age of AI

Hosted by the Department of Translation, Lingnan University, Hong Kong

11-12 December 2026  |  M+, West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong

*The event schedule may be subject to change. Please visit our website for the latest information.

As artificial intelligence (AI) sweeps through the landscape of language mediation, the classical trio of Translators, Texts, and Contexts remains central to understanding the art, ethics, and politics of translation. While AI tools offer unprecedented efficiencies in text processing, they often lack the human capacity for nuanced judgment and cultural contextualisation that remain essential to traditional translation studies scholarship.

This conference invites a critical return to the foundational pillars of our discipline: the Translator as cultural mediator, the Text as a site of meaning negotiation, and the Context as the dynamic framework shaping both process and product. We seek to explore how classical methodologies—from hermeneutics and philology to functionalist, historical, and socio-critical approaches—continue to offer indispensable insights, even as researchers increasingly rely on AI tools.

Important Dates