Review of Vieira (2026): Translate: Multilingual Access to Critical Services in the Age of AI

Research on machine translation (MT) has traditionally been closely connected with the language services industry, including its user experience in professional translation processes, post-editing, productivity and translator education (for instance Kenny 2022; Briva-Iglesias et al. 2023; Penet et al. 2026).As MT has become embedded in widely accessible digital technologies, its role has expanded beyond professional translation into everyday multilingual communication tasks.In this shift, the core question is no longer only how accurately MT performs, but how people use and rely on it in circumstances where its suitability is not established in advance.In public services, these emerging uses intersect with longstanding concerns about how language barriers are dealt with in daily practice.Healthcare and social science research, for example, has examined the effects of language difference and mediated communication on clinical interactions, care and service organization (Greenhalgh et al. 2007; Seale et al. 2013).Alongside these discussions, Translation Studies provides perspectives on institutional translation policy (González Núñez 2016a/b; González Núñez and Meylaerts 2017).Within this wider research scope, the growing use of MT tools introduces a new actor into an already complex system of language provision.Recent United Kingdom research by Orrego-Carmona et al. (2026) mapping MT use across public and third-sector organizations in the West Midlands region demonstrates that these technologies are already being used to negotiate multilingual service provision.Vieira's Translate enters this developing field in the knowledge that MT is already used by both service users and public-service professionals whose primary expertise lies outside translation and interpreting.Adding to the existing question of how MT tools are used, Vieira shifts his attention to how their use can be approached responsibly within the constraints and obligations of actual public service practice.The book includes six chapters which can be clustered into three broad sections.Chapters 1 and 2 establish the conceptual foundations for evaluating MT use, from its usability and a necessary literacy to human-technology relations and ethical judgement.Chapters 3-5 then test these foundations across empirical sur-