The Interpreter and Translator Trainer

Digital Anxiety and Resilience in Translator and Interpreter Education

Digital technologies have been reshaping translator and interpreter training, creating an urgent need for innovative pedagogical approaches that address both the opportunities and psychological challenges of technological integration. While technology is a key driver, this Special Issue foregrounds digital anxiety and resilience as broader professional constructs shaped not only by tools but also by industry collaboration, sustainability, and the everyday realities of professional practice. As training programmes increasingly incorporate sophisticated digital tools and platforms, educators observe a range of psychological reactions among students, early career and experienced professionals, and educator practitioners, from enthusiasm to apprehension. These reactions, which can collectively be referred to as technological, or ‘digital anxiety,’ have highlighted the need for building ‘digital resilience’ (Kornacki & Pietrzak, 2024). One of the goals of this Special Issue is to explicitly frame digital anxiety and resilience as pedagogical constructs, which sets it apart from ITT’s Special Issues on AI (2025) and value(s) (2027) by putting educational design and measurable psychological outcomes at the forefront of translation and interpreting practice. Accordingly, the editor invites work that links classroom design with professional practice so that anxiety and resilience are addressed beyond technology per se.

Educational Context and Pedagogical Challenges

Digital anxiety in translator and interpreter education has been defined as the stress and unease that students, novice and experienced translators and interpreters, and educators experience as technology—with recent acceleration driven by AI and workflow automation—rapidly transforms their profession (Kornacki & Pietrzak, 2024). This anxiety has been observed to manifest in various forms: technology-mediated concerns about job security, pressure to continuously update skills, quality assurance challenges, ethical dilemmas, and digitally intensified work-life balance issues. In addition, professional conditions—such as client relations, platformisation and precarity, assessment and accreditation pressures, and emerging sustainability expectations for workflows—can amplify anxiety even when specific tools are not the proximate cause. When we view technology as a multi-level disruptor—affecting tools, workflows, platforms, and evaluation norms—we gain a theoretically coherent framework for understanding these anxieties. For example, when clients mandate the use of specific technologies and platforms, translators and interpreters often feel alienated and perceive their expertise as being devalued (Ehrensberger-Dow & Massey, 2014b; Walczyński, 2021; Alonso & Vieira, 2017; Pietrzak & Kornacki, 2021). Equally, when educational and industry expectations are misaligned (e.g., around turnaround times, availability, or sustainability commitments), anxiety can stem from professional norms rather than technical skill gaps.

In contrast, digital resilience is to be understood in the educational setting as students’ and graduates’ capacity to adapt and thrive in an increasingly technology-oriented profession (Kornacki & Pietrzak, 2024; Kornacki, forthcoming). Here, resilience encompasses not only competent technology use but also professional agency and wellbeing: boundary setting, ethical decision making, collaborative practices with industry partners, sustainable workload and workflow design, and reflective habits that support long term employability. Developing this resilience requires thoughtful pedagogical interventions: teaching students effective use of digital tools, fostering openness to change, and developing their ability to respond proactively to technological challenges (including generative AI, machine translation, and workflow automation). This approach has involved designing courses that emphasise continuous learning, problem-solving skills, and the strategic use of technology to enhance translation quality and efficiency (Garista & Pocetta, 2014; Vieira, 2020). It also entails embedding industry linked learning (e.g., live briefs, mentoring), structured reflective practice on wellbeing and ethics, and attention to the sustainability of digital and organisational practices. Educators have, therefore, been called upon to help students navigate complex digital workflows while maintaining professional integrity, particularly as their roles have evolved toward becoming AI-assisted language specialists (Herbert et al., 2023; Kornacki & Pietrzak, 2024).

Rationale for Educational Focus
The significance of this Special Issue lies in its potential to advance pedagogical approaches to technology integration in translator and interpreter education. Beyond technology, the Special Issue centres digital anxiety and resilience across professional practice, informing classroom design, programme policy, and partnerships. Recent research (Vieira, 2020; Kornacki & Pietrzak, 2024) has demonstrated that rigid technological frameworks can compromise translators’ creative expression and professional autonomy – challenges that need to be addressed proactively in educational settings. These psychological pressures have been further intensified by concerns about displacement by AI-powered systems (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014; Pym & Torres-Simón, 2021; O’Brien, 2023). Therefore, the editor invites research on innovative teaching and curriculum design that makes digital anxiety and resilience empirically tractable—through validated measures, learning analytics, or rigorously coded qualitative data—and that operationalises links to professional practices (e.g., co-teaching with practitioners, codes of ethics, workload/time management, sustainable career planning). The
timeliness of this approach is underscored by a growing body of literature that has documented translators’ ambivalent attitudes toward technology and has emphasised the critical importance of building resilience from the earliest stages of professional development (Olohan, 2015; Ehrensberger-Dow & Massey, 2014a, 2014b; Massey & Ehrensberger-Dow, 2017). These concerns have been shown to have direct implications for translator training and professional development (Pietrzak & Kornacki, 2021; Kornacki & Pietrzak, 2024; Pietrzak, 2022; Angelone, 2023). Although these challenges have been recognised in professional practice, research specifically addressing pedagogical strategies for managing digital anxiety and building resilience in translator education and interpreter education remains limited. To address this gap, the issue provides a venue for empirical and practice-based work—especially on aligning education with industry collaboration and sustainability—that demonstrates clear educational impact.

Scope and Pedagogical Themes
The Special Issue welcomes research-based contributions on teaching and learning in the digital age, with attention to the broader professional environments in which anxiety
and resilience arise, including (but not limited to):
• pedagogical strategies that have been shown to help students overcome technology-related anxiety in translator and interpreter training programmes;
• curriculum design approaches that have successfully built digital resilience and adaptive expertise;
• assessment methods that have been developed for evaluating students’ digital competence and resilience;
• case studies that have documented successful technology integration in translation and interpreting pedagogy;
• comparative analyses that have examined different educational approaches to technology training;

• investigations into how educators’ roles have evolved in preparing students for AI-assisted translation and interpreting;

• ethical considerations specific to datafication, AI, and platform mediated work in translation and interpreting education;
• analyses spanning diverse modalities and domains (e.g., literary, technical and scientific, audiovisual, legal-medical, public service, conference and community interpreting), with attention to context-specific anxiety/resilience dynamics;
• industry collaboration and co creation (e.g., live briefs, mentoring, co assessment) that foster resilience without exacerbating anxiety;
• sustainability in T&I education (e.g., sustainable workflows and workload management, responsible use of digital infrastructures) as it relates to anxiety/resilience;
• professional wellbeing, identity formation, employability, and ethics as core components of resilience frameworks; and
• institutional and policy supports (e.g., pastoral care, inclusive assessment, reasonable adjustments) that shape anxiety/resilience dynamics.

The editor seeks contributions that examine how educators have helped students navigate technology-related anxieties while building confidence with digital tools. Papers
that address the following questions would be particularly welcome:

• What pedagogical interventions—evidence-based actions at multiple levels: classroom practices (e.g., scaffolding, peer mentoring, reflective activities); assessment design (e.g., resilience-informed rubrics); curriculum sequencing (e.g., progressive integration of CAT/MT/GenAI); and programme-level policy and support (e.g., staff development, wellbeing provision, industry partnerships)—have proven effective in reducing digital anxiety in translator training programmes?
• How have curricula been designed to systematically develop digital resiliencethroughout a programme?
• What role has collaborative learning and peer support been found to play in building technological confidence among translation and interpreting students?
• How have educators successfully balanced traditional translation skills with technological competence in their teaching?
• What assessment strategies have been shown to effectively measure both translation competence and digital resilience?
• How can internships and industry collaboration (e.g., live briefs, practitioner co-teaching, mentoring) be designed to build resilience without increasing anxiety, and what outcomes have been observed?
• What training has been identified as necessary for teachers to effectively address digital anxiety in the classroom?
• Which sustainable pedagogical and workflow practices demonstrably reduce anxiety while supporting long term professional resilience?
• What institutional policies and student support mechanisms (e.g., pastoral care, inclusive assessment, workload guidance) most effectively mitigate anxiety and foster resilience?
• In what ways do professional identity development and ethics education contribute to resilience across different T&I modalities and contexts?

Target Audience and Educational Impact
The intended audience of the Special Issue includes translator and interpreter educators, curriculum developers, programme directors, academics, educational policymakers,
and all those involved in translator and interpreter training at various levels. It also invites engagement from industry partners (e.g., LSPs, public sector agencies, professional associations) to ensure pedagogical insights are aligned with contemporary professional realities. What is more, it aims to foster cross programme exchange of evidence-based practice. Finally, it is expected to contribute significantly to understanding how technology integration can be taught effectively in translator and interpreter education while supporting student well-being.

By centring anxiety and resilience across technology, industry collaboration, and sustainability, it will inform curriculum reform and institution level policy on wellbeing and employability, and support sustainable partnerships with industry, ensuring that educational programmes equip future translators and interpreters with both the technical skills and psychological resilience required for success in an increasingly digital profession.

Provisional Schedule for Publication

(The dates provided below are indicative and may be subject to modification) 

• Abstracts due: 19 December 2025

• Abstract acceptance notifications: end of March 2026

• Full papers due: 30 September 2026

• First-round peer review: September–November 2026

• Round 1 decisions to authors: end of January 2027

• Revised papers due: end of March 2027

• Second-round peer review: March–May 2027

• Final versions due: end of June 2027

• Guest editor proofreading/editing: September–October 2027

• Editorial team final editing: November 2027–January 2028

• Expected publication: 2028

References
Alonso, Elisa, and Lucas Nunes Vieira. 2017. ‘The Translator’s Amanuensis 2020’. JoSTrans: The Journal of Specialised Translation, no. 28 (July), 345–61.
Angelone, Erik. 2023. ‘Weaving Adaptive Expertise into Translator Training’. In The Human Translator in the 2020s, edited by Gary Massey, Elisa Huertas Barros, and David
Katan, 60–73. Routledge.
Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAfee. 2014. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. The Second Machine Age: Work,
Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. New York, NY, US.
Ehrensberger-Dow, Maureen, and Gary Massey. 2014a. ‘Cognitive Ergonomic Issues in Professional Translation’. In The Development of Translation Competence: Theories
and Methodologies from Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Science, edited by John W. Schwieter and Aline Ferreira, 58–86. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
———. 2014b. ‘Constraints on Creativity: The Case of CAT Tools’. TRANSLATA II: “Translation Studies & Translation Practice” 2nd International Conference on Translation and Interpreting Studies. University of Innsbruck.

Garista, Patrizia, and Giancarlo Pocetta. 2014. Digital Resilience: Meanings, Epistemologies and Methodologies for Lifelong Learning. https://doi.org/10.13140/2.1.3552.1605.
Herbert, Sarah, Félix do Carmo, Joanna Gough, and Anu Carnegie-Brown. 2023. ‘From Responsibilities to Responsibility: A Study of the Effects of Translation Workflow
Automation’. Journal of Specialised Translation 40:9–35.
Kornacki, Michał. forthcoming. ‘Integrating Generative AI into Translator Training: Challenges and Opportunities.’ Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philologica.

Kornacki, Michał, and Paulina Pietrzak. 2024. Hybrid Workflows in Translation: Integrating GenAI into Translator Training. New York: Routledge.
Massey, Gary, and Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow. 2017. ‘Machine Learning: Implications for Translator Education’, Lebende Sprachen, 62 (2): 300–312. https://doi.org/10.1515/les-2017-0021.
O’Brien, Sharon. 2023. ‘Human-Centered Augmented Translation: Against Antagonistic Dualisms’. Perspectives, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2023.2247423.
Olohan, Maeve. 2015. Scientific and Technical Translation. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315679600.
Pietrzak, Paulina. 2022. Metacognitive Translator Training. Focus on Personal Resources. London: Palgrave.
Pietrzak, Paulina, and Michał Kornacki. 2021. Using CAT Tools in Freelance Translation: Insights from a Case Study. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003125761.
Pym, Anthony, and Ester Torres-Simón. 2021. ‘Is Automation Changing the Translation Profession?’ International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2021 (270): 39–57. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2020-0015.
Vieira, Lucas Nunes. 2020. ‘Automation Anxiety and Translators’. Translation Studies 13(1): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2018.1543613.
Walczyński, Marcin. 2021. ‘“Will I Make It or Will I Make a Fool of Myself”: Polish-English Certified Interpreters’ Experience of Anxiety’. Onomázein, no. NEVIII (May), 83–103. https://doi.org/10.7764/onomazein.ne8.03.