A panel discussion was held on January 29, 2026, on the importance of AI for the future of translation. It was held as part of the International Academic Conference “Translating Crisis: Identity, Translation and Future of Humanities”, organized on 29 -30 January 2026, by the Department of English of Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi.
Prof. Rukmini Bhaya Nair’s lecture, “MIA! The Translator’s Identity: AI Machines, the Human Mind and Narrative Mimicry,” examined the implications of rapidly advancing AI systems, particularly Large Language Models such as ChatGPT, for the field of translation. She began by observing that translation has traditionally been understood as a deeply human practice requiring nuanced sociocultural knowledge across languages. However, this long-held assumption is now unsettled by AI systems that demonstrate impressive competence in translating even between linguistically and culturally distant languages like Tamil and English. Rather than framing AI as simply displacing human translators, Prof. Rukmini called for a fundamental rethinking of what translation and translational expertise mean.
Dr. Vinayak Das Gupta approached similar questions from the vantage point of digital humanities practice, focusing on infrastructure, collaboration, and pedagogy. Rather than advancing a single theoretical claim, he mapped an intellectual practice grounded in long-term projects and attention to the material conditions of knowledge production and preservation. He discussed initiatives such as Bichitra, a digital variorum of Rabindranath Tagore’s works, which exemplifies editorial rigor and multilingual encoding, and Recalling Jewish Calcutta, a community-driven archive highlighting the fragility of digital memory. Other projects, including Letters of 1916 and Battle of Mount Street Bridge, demonstrated innovative modes of public engagement, from crowdsourced transcription to game-engine simulations used as forms of historical argument. Through Humanities at Scale and anvay, a topic-modelling tool for Bengali texts, Dr. Das Gupta emphasised collaborative, exploratory pedagogy and the importance of sustainable, open-ended digital infrastructures. He concluded with emerging work such as The Indian Fountain Pen Project, underscoring care, process, and material culture.
Together, the talks reframed translation as an ongoing, relational practice grounded not only in technical proficiency but in discernment, responsibility, and infrastructural care, affirming its centrality to human inquiry even as its tools evolve.