The Introduction explains important concepts and what they mean in this book. It also outlines the project scope, which covers both written and spoken uses of machine translation to fulfil communication and information access purposes in one of the sectors selected for analysis. Following a brief historical account of how social conceptions of machine translation have changed, the Introduction addresses a recent shift in translation research towards multilingual communication practices that take place outside education settings or the language services industry. Given how fast language technologies are evolving, it will not take long for the tools and types of human–computer interaction that appear in the book to change quite significantly. The Introduction addresses implications of this dynamic landscape for this book specifically and for translation and multilingual communication research more broadly.

This chapter is about trust. It is the only chapter in the book that considers the opinions of professionals who had not used machine translation at work. Most of these professionals were prepared to use machine translation if needed. Some were enthusiastic about it. Others had reservations which they would want to see addressed before deciding to use a machine translation tool. These reservations included: (1) concerns about accuracy; (2) concerns about privacy and confidentiality; (3) perceptions of social and professional norms and whether their use of machine translation would be accepted by others; and (4) concerns about how machine translation may lack ‘the human touch’ in sensitive interactions. The chapter examines human communication in relation to the concept of empathy and AI’s ability to mimic it. It ends with a discussion of workplace training by exploring what machine translation users would like to see covered in initiatives aimed at enhancing their trust judgment abilities.

The sections that follow describe the project’s methodology. All stages of data collection were approved by the Faculty of Arts ethics committee at the University of Bristol.

The questionnaire responses discussed in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 were collected in 2024 in a survey of over 2,500 professionals based in the UK. I included a summary of the survey methodology in a preliminary report published by the Chartered Institute of Linguists. Some of the information provided below first appeared in that report.

I distributed the survey via Prolific (www.prolific.com), a database of pre-registered individuals who can be invited to take part in research. Only studies that offer remuneration to participants can be distributed via this service. Remuneration involves the risk of attracting participants who are only interested in the payment and who are therefore more likely to submit satisficing responses. On the other hand, remuneration can also be considered an ethical principle. It is a way of compensating participants for their time and of recognising the importance of their input.

Chapter 6 is a case study of multilingual communication in social work. It draws on in-depth interviews carried out with eighteen UK social workers. The interviews included vivid accounts of challenging scenarios. In one of them, a child protection team manager had to sit with a family for two hours while trying to contact a Vietnamese interpreter. A different social worker had concerns that human interpreters could fail to convey explicit but crucial details relating to rape and sexual abuse. Machine translation was used in all such cases. Its balance of risks and benefits was sometimes clear. More often, it was highly complex. Two problems raised by the social workers are foregrounded in the chapter. The first is the issue of languages for which both human and technological resources are less abundant. The second concerns additional needs that involve more than a barrier between verbal languages. The chapter draws attention to the practical challenges of navigating cultural and linguistic differences in the provision of social services. It echoes the social workers’ requests for more guidance and support.

What should a nurse do when non-speakers of the local language come to the ward seeking information about a loved one? What should a receptionist do when they need to book an appointment and a language barrier takes them by surprise? How can an emergency call handler let a caller know that a human interpreter is being contacted? Chapter 3 examines circumstances in which the risks of multilingual AI are ostensibly low. It proposes a distinction between ancillary and core communication but argues that communicative settings are fluid. What starts as ancillary communication can easily turn into core care, so risk is not associated with specific roles or with levels of professional seniority. The chapter argues that, in the sectors under analysis, communication is rarely risk-free. Even where machine translation may not directly lead to harm or loss of life, it may be a feature of complex communicative environments which pose significant systemic risks.

Chapter 2 has three main sections. First it draws on the philosophy of technology literature, more specifically post-phenomenology, to interrogate the meaning of human–technology relations. Can visitors to a website be considered users of machine translation even if they are unaware that a machine translation tool is in use? What is the meaning of ‘use’ exactly? When a police officer uses machine translation to speak to a driver, what type of relationship does the driver have with the machine translation tool? These are some of the questions initially addressed in this chapter. The chapter then examines technologies’ influencing properties. Convenience is persuasive and machine translation tools are designed to be convenient. They reflect specific social and economic values which research on their use needs to consider. Lastly, the chapter discusses the complex decision-making that uses of machine translation call for in the sectors under analysis. A case is made for the notion of virtue as an apt framework for engaging with the dilemmas posed by risky but potentially beneficial uses of machine translation.

Chapter 1 lays foundations for the study of AI-mediated multilingual communication. It proposes a typology of machine translation use based on whether communication takes place at a distance or in a shared physical space, whether the use of machine translation is overt or covert and whether it happens in real time or with delays between sending and receiving messages. The chapter examines how the pursuit of cost efficiencies is a recurrent and sometimes problematic feature of organisational deployments of machine translation tools. It reviews important incidents and draws on case law and official documents to discuss uses of machine translation by immigration officers and the police. The chapter concludes by examining the concept of AI literacy, a type of meta-literacy associated with broader competencies such as being able to evaluate the quality of information and to use it critically.