Architects, oracles and translators: Collaborative translation practice in the era of Wikipedia and ChatGPT

This article discusses the potential of classroom activities involving trainee translators in projects designed for nurturing a sound translation competence, underpinned by digital proficiency well beyond the mere mastery of resources and tools. In the current scenario, where knowledge is produced, transformed, transferred/translated and shared on a variety of platforms, a focus on collective learning and collaboration holds relevance for discussions surrounding contemporary translation practice and might contribute to a deeper awareness by students of their individual and collective roles as translators within an ever-expanding digital knowledge ecosystem. In this ecosystem, a paradigmatic role is played by Wikipedia, a platform offering invaluable pedagogical opportunities for action, interaction, and community-based knowledge creation via translation. This article intends to illustrate that Wikipedia-based activities do not simply offer trainee translators the opportunity to act as prosumers (Toffler 1981) of knowledge in a multilingual ecosystem where contents, ideas and knowledge move freely across language barriers, but also provide them with a unique opportunity to appreciate the impact of human translation in a world where generative Artificial Intelligence and machine translation play an increasingly dominant role.