Exploring the goals of translation education: adding human value to literary translation through deep meaning making and artistry

This paper describes a novel approach to translation education, which incorporates a five-week Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) literary translation project into a high-level undergraduate translation course, with WIL defined by Australia's Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) 2021 as any arrangement where students undertake learning in a work context. Although the bulk of industry demand tends to be for legal, medical, technical and business translations, it is widely recognised that literary texts combine several features that pose particular challenges for human and machine translators. These include figurative language, layered meanings, assumed background and cultural knowledge, variations of tone and register, etc. By collaborating on an authentic literary translation of an Australian short story into several target languages, students in the current study acquired professional skills in translation, professional collaboration and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine translation (MT). The emphasis was on the transfer of knowledge and skills accrued during studies into real-world applications, specifically applying flexible, adaptive thinking to industry practice in the context of AI/MT.