A technical curriculum on language-oriented artificial intelligence in translation and specialised communication
2026-02-12 • Computation and Language
Computation and LanguageArtificial IntelligenceHuman-Computer Interaction
AI summaryⓘ
The authors created a curriculum to teach people in translation and specialized communication about important AI concepts used in language technologies. Their course covers basics like how computers understand language using vectors, how neural networks work, tokenization, and transformer models. They tested the course in a master's program and found it effective, but students said they needed more support from teachers to learn best. The goal is to help learners think computationally and understand AI well enough to work confidently with these technologies.
vector embeddingsneural networkstokenizationtransformerscomputational thinkingalgorithmic awarenesslanguage-oriented AIdigital resilience
Authors
Ralph Krüger
Abstract
This paper presents a technical curriculum on language-oriented artificial intelligence (AI) in the language and translation (L&T) industry. The curriculum aims to foster domain-specific technical AI literacy among stakeholders in the fields of translation and specialised communication by exposing them to the conceptual and technical/algorithmic foundations of modern language-oriented AI in an accessible way. The core curriculum focuses on 1) vector embeddings, 2) the technical foundations of neural networks, 3) tokenization and 4) transformer neural networks. It is intended to help users develop computational thinking as well as algorithmic awareness and algorithmic agency, ultimately contributing to their digital resilience in AI-driven work environments. The didactic suitability of the curriculum was tested in an AI-focused MA course at the Institute of Translation and Multilingual Communication at TH Koeln. Results suggest the didactic effectiveness of the curriculum, but participant feedback indicates that it should be embedded into higher-level didactic scaffolding - e.g., in the form of lecturer support - in order to enable optimal learning conditions.