Creative Approaches to Translation for Language Learning in the Age of AI

This paper showcases translation teaching and assessment approaches developed within the Modern Languages Department of Prifysgol Aberystwyth University (PAU) to promote communicative competence, critical and creative thinking and AI literacy for employability future-proofing. Alongside an exploration of both staff and student perspectives on the impact of AI, this paper offers concrete examples of classroom practice designed to address challenges raised by AI, focused on the need to mitigate concerns around AI dependence and to foster cognitive resilience in the student body, while supporting the development of professional skills. It also discusses the current language-teaching landscape, in which educators increasingly must defend the value of language-learning and plurilingualism in an era marked by freely accessible machine translation and proliferating AI use. The activities discussed were designed by Alex Mangold (German), Roberta Sartoni (Italian) and Jennifer Wood (Spanish).