AI and Interpreting
FIFA is giving us a very public example of something we are all trying to understand right now: technology can track the game, analyze the game, support decisions, and generate new ways of seeing what happened. But it does not play the game. The game is still played by the players.
At the highest levels of sport, technology is everywhere: data, analytics, video review, player tracking, semi-automated offside technology, and AI-supported match analysis. These tools are powerful, and they are changing how the game is assessed, prepared for, and understood. But they do not replace the players. The game itself remains human. The skill belongs to the players. At the most fundamental level, what matters most is still human: focus, discipline, timing, trust, judgment, communication, and the ability to respond to what is happening in the moment.
The real work, the real game, and the real commitment remain human-centred.
Mobilizing the Real Benefits of AI
Communication is the primary function of an interpreter. It is not just the words that matter, but the interactive, evolving, interpersonal engagement between human beings expressing intent, motivation, needs, questions, uncertainty, and meaning; and then receiving and processing all of that in real time.
Interpreting in community settings, healthcare, justice, financial assistance, education, and other public service spaces, is more than moving words across languages. It is about the connection that happens in these spaces, and the efficiency and effectiveness of that connection.
AI is changing the way we work. And that is a good thing. It can support communication, improve coordination, assist with preparation, and help organizations think differently about access. But it does not replace the human responsibility at the centre of the work. AI can support the work. It can analyze the work. It can represent the work. But it is not the work.
The Human Work of Interpreting is Not Pattern Matching.
Interpreting is not simply the transfer of words. It requires judgment, ethics, context, cultural understanding, professional boundaries, and real people making real decisions in moments that matter. It is a form of intelligence that AI has not yet replicated.
AI functions through pattern recognition; interpreting requires thinking. It is a cognitive process that involves analyzing information, intention, context, meaning, and content in real time. Interpreting is not pattern-matching. It is human judgment in motion.
As Sangeet Paul Choudary writes in Reshuffle, AI’s “approach to reasoning, by predicting the next likely word from countless possibilities, is nothing like how humans use language” [1].
AI does not think in the human sense. It processes language by recognizing patterns, structures, and probabilities in large bodies of text. What makes contemporary AI powerful is not human understanding, but its ability to filter, rank, and foreground certain information as most relevant in each context. In that sense, AI does not simply respond to us; it also shapes what is brought forward for our attention. This is why human judgment remains essential: people must still ask what has been emphasized, what has been left out, and whether the response reflects meaning, intention, context, and consequence [2].
Interpreters Think. Think About That.
As we watch players perform with extraordinary focus and commitment, we are reminded that excellence is never only technical. It is human. The AI-generated replays on the screen are useful, but they are still only a representation of the game. They are not the game itself.
At The Interpreter’s Lab, we continue to believe in using new tools wisely, while keeping people at the centre of this very important work.
AI-assisted, yes.
Human-centred, always.
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[1] Sangeet Paul Choudary, Reshuffle: Who Wins When AI Restacks the Knowledge Economy (2025). p. 13
[2] Sangeet Paul Choudary, Reshuffle: Who Wins When AI Restacks the Knowledge Economy (2025)
Reference
Choudary, Sangeet Paul. Reshuffle: Who Wins When AI Restacks the Knowledge Economy. Sangeet Paul Choudary, 2025.
