AI Translation and Feminist Research on Asia

Asian Journal of Women’s Studies is calling for papers that discuss the uses of AI translation and its implications for feminist research in Asia.

In a world that both requires English to widely diffuse research and that also does not accept a variety of “Englishes,” generative artificial intelligence writing tools have the potential to promote linguistic equity. AI translation has become a powerful tool for scholars who work between languages, promising to increase access to a global audience by smoothing out the written accents of English as additional language scholars that are still met with prejudice. Yet AI translation is not a neutral technology. It inherits the gender biases of the societies and institutions that created it. We also risk reinforcing the norm of 'proper' English rather than challenging it. As Spivak noted in her piece on politics of translation, this raises the question of for whom we are making the language accessible, and to what effect. In light of all this, how are scholars invested in decolonizing knowledge and feminist methodologies who are working on Asia and Asian diasporas in Asian languages grappling with the ethics of AI translation? How can we use this new technology while also finding our own voices and effectively challenging institutionalized modes of thinking? The position of English as a mediating language for research from and about Asia is already problematic, and how might the use of AI translation offer ways to mitigate this issue—or compound it? We invite short (~5,000 word) pieces in which scholars researching Asia meditate on their own experiences and use of AI translation addressing some of the questions above—or by posing new ones.

Submission date: February 15, 2026

https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20132068/ai-translation-and-feminist-research-asia