Beyond compliance: Creativity and human agency in audiovisual translation

The academic field of audiovisual translation (AVT), broadly conceived as the localisation and adaptation of multimodal media content, is currently experiencing a structural transformation of unprecedented scope. Driven by the digitisation of media and accelerated technological innovation, this transformation has reshaped not only the production, circulation, and consumption of audiovisual texts, but also the epistemological foundations and professional practices of AVT itself (Chaume and de los Reyes Lozano 2021; Spiteri Miggiani 2022). While earlier technological shifts primarily affected tools and workflows, recent develop- ments — particularly in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine translation (MT) — directly challenge long-standing assumptions about authorship, creativity, and human agency in audiovisual translation. This volume advances the argument that creativity constitutes the primary qualitative threshold separating human audiovisual translation from machine-assisted output. Far from being an optional enhancement, creativity underpins the capacity of audiovisual translators to produce emotionally convincing perfor- mances, culturally situated dialogue, and narratively coherent adaptations.