A translator is both a matchmaker and a traitor. This vivid metaphor by Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998), acclaimed Chinese writer and literary scholar, captures translation's nature as a cultural bridge that brings people closer, yet risks betraying the original text. For over half a century, solving this paradox has been the goal of many translation scholars. Amid rapid advancements in translation technology and talent cultivation, new solutions are emerging.

At the 2025 annual conference of the Translators Association of China (TAC) , translators, business leaders, policymakers, and scholars gathered to assess the industry's latest breakthroughs and chart its future course.

Launch of major projects 

This year's edition saw the launch of the Four Translation Projects, a groundbreaking initiative encompassing the development of expert networks, cultural outreach, research hubs and training, designed to steer the translation sector into a new era of technological and cultural integration.

"The Four Translation Projects is a groundbreaking endeavor designed to elevate China's all-round translation ability through talent development, forming a national translation team, implementing nationwide cross-industry translation programs, and advancing academic research in translation," Huang Youyi, Executive Vice President of the TAC, told news portal China.org.cn.

Huang said he believes that the initiative will both elevate translators' expertise and expand the reach of translated works.

"We have built a translation team that consists of numerous highly capable translators, including professionals and university faculty," Huang said at the conference. "This initiative will consolidate these dispersed talents into a cohesive force. We can better focus our human resources on major national projects, pooling their respective strengths to communicate China's stories more effectively through language that bridges cultural divides. This meets national needs while providing translators opportunities to contribute their skills in service of the country."

One project under the initiative is the Translation Talent Project, which focuses on the development of translators and aims to establish a tiered and dynamic talent supply system by creating recruitment channels to attract domestic and foreign translation experts and building a comprehensive talent-sharing platform.

This project provides targeted personnel recommendations and robust human resource support for major national translation projects, key international communication initiatives, critical research in translation and global communication studies, as well as China's important diplomatic events and international outreach efforts at both central and local levels.

"The Four Translation Projects is a strategic endeavor in response to evolving industry demands and global trends," Ren Wen, Dean of the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), told Beijing Review.

"BFSU is already collaborating with China International Communications Group to enhance the training of high-caliber translators," she added. "We are eager to take an active role in the initiative by developing joint doctoral programs in translation, co-designing advanced courses and teaching materials, and pooling faculty and academic resources."

Ren emphasized a focus on key areas such as political discourse translation, where specialized curricula and textbooks will be jointly published and regularly updated to produce high-quality translations of China's narratives for global audiences. Additionally, the partnership will drive research in translation studies aligned with national strategic priorities.

As China's premier institution for language studies, BFSU is accelerating its mission to cultivate top-tier professionals.

"To meet evolving demands, we prioritize developing all-rounded talents. In 2021, we pioneered a joint initiative with BFSU's School of International Journalism and communication to train translators specializing in global communication," Ren said.

Ren elaborated that the program extends beyond core translation training. "Students engage with interdisciplinary coursework including new media studies, international news editing, media management, communication policies, and journalistic ethics," she said.

"This year, we've launched an AI-aided translation track," Ren added, highlighting cutting-edge modules that extend beyond traditional translation studies, covering generative AI fundamentals and applications, programming for translators, language model theory and practice, multilingual corpus development, and AI ethics.

"Through the Four Translation Projects initiative, we're building a nationwide network to nurture highly-skilled translation professionals," Ren said.

Code vs. classics 

At the conference, industry and academic delegates explored cutting-edge technological advancements and challenges. For instance, technology company iFLYTEK presented its large model customization platform that now delivers faster, more accurate translations through its dual-engine system, with added capacity for sector-specific data uploads.

"The evolution of large language models has fundamentally transformed traditional translation workflows," Zhang Hui, Director of Exhibition and Media Products at iFLYTEK, said at the conference. "These systems integrate background knowledge bases, specialized terminology banks, and translation memory databases to generate context-aware, personalized outputs—while also helping with proofreading human translations."

"We have developed products based on neural network large models that support audio and video uploads, facilitating cross-border content adaptation for social media repurposing, cultural tourism promotions, corporate videos, ad campaigns, and live e-course translations. This significantly assists the export of China's cultural product and the localization of cross-border companies. One typical example is the recent boom of Chinese short dramas worldwide," Zhang added.

According to the Report on the 2024 National Translation Capacity Indices released by BFSU at the conference, China's national translation service ability scored 0.6693, ranking second globally behind the United States. However, the assessment identified key areas for improvement: Public service translation accesses, including foreign ministry websites and major tourist attractions, require more language categories, while the quantity of high-impact dubbed films and professional interpreters needs to be increased so as to enhance the impact of cross-cultural communication. The report also highlights generative AI as a transformative solution, noting its potential to significantly enhance both translation capacity and international outreach effectiveness.

"AI's greatest strength lies in its real-time efficiency, delivering relatively accurate multilingual translations instantly," Ren said. "It significantly reduces both time and economic costs by streamlining human translators' preparatory work, core translation processes, and post-editing tasks."

However, she cautioned, "While AI demonstrates robust semantic comprehension, it struggles with nuanced authorial intent, contextual subtleties, and layered meanings—precisely where human linguists excel."

"Additionally, since large language models primarily train on English and other high-resource languages dominated by major powers, they tend to assimilate those cultures' values. Expressions from low-resource languages risk erosion or distortion, while source texts' cultural specifics and ideological nuances may get lost in AI translation," Ren said.

"We should leverage AI for repetitive, rule-based translation tasks, while human translators focus on creative adaptations and culturally nuanced work," Ren said. "But we must also prioritize linguistic diversity and social responsibility—especially in developing low-resource languages and specialized fields like minority language preservation, sign language interpretation, and audio description technologies." 

"Advancing these areas isn't just about technology—it's a benchmark of societal progress," Ren explained. "Language equity, inclusiveness, and cultural diversity can only be achieved through more comprehensive, long-term support for underserved translation domains. This represents the critical path forward for our collective efforts."

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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