The Role of Technology in Translation Studies

Various representations of translation technology (TTy), as used now by transnational companies and cutting-edge aware translators of non-fiction / technical texts, considerably transform the translation workflow. This involves mainly the usage of translation memories (TM) being boosted by statistical machine translation (SMT), which is becoming more extensive by the day. In effect, translators are less and less required to render and more and more required to post-edit. This not only means a substantial change for translation practice, it also raises fundamental questions in regards of the nature of the translator's task, the translation process, and the translation product. The paper seeks to address these issues and reflects on the present role of translation technology in translation studies.