As artificial intelligence makes translation increasingly fast and widely accessible, academic discussion has focused mainly on how translators should adapt to new technological tools. This paper shifts attention from the technical dimension of translation to the nature of the texts being translated. Drawing on examples from contemporary political conflicts, migration debates, and online misinformation campaigns, the study investigates how source texts are shaped by political framing and how such framing may be carried over and amplified in AI-assisted translation.
The study combines Mona Baker’s narrative theory with critical discourse analysis of machine-translated political and media texts. It also examines selected curricular documents from Polish translation programs in order to assess how issues of disinformation, framing, and critical text analysis are addressed in translator education.
The analysis suggests that current translation technologies tend to reproduce source-text narratives without engaging in critical evaluation of their ideological content. While human translators may question terminology and context, AI systems operate without awareness of narrative bias, which can lead to the uncritical circulation of politically loaded language across languages and platforms.
In addition, the review of translation curricula in Poland indicates that many programs place strong emphasis on technical and technological competence, while providing more limited training in critical reading, media literacy, and disinformation awareness.
The paper concludes that this imbalance may widen the gap between technical efficiency and ethical responsibility in translation practice. It argues for strengthening translator education through systematic training in critical text analysis and disinformation literacy, so that future translators can act not only as language specialists but also as informed mediators of meaning.
Dr Hanna Mijas is Head of English Philology at the Institute of Literary Studies and Linguistics, Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce. Her research is situated in translation studies, with particular attention to the impact of artificial intelligence on translation practices, discourse analysis, and translator education. Current work addresses the intersection of machine translation, narrative theory, and the circulation of disinformation in contemporary media. She also investigates the use of large language models in research, translation, and translation pedagogy. She is a practising conference and simultaneous interpreter and works as a translator of written texts, including literary translation. Her recent work in literary translation (works of Fernando Pessoa) focuses on the position of the translator as an authorial agent rather than a secondary reproducer of the source text.
