Digital literacy
Digital literacy theory and framework building for professional language services and teaching contexts.
Translation and Intercultural Studies
Haohong Lai
PhD Candidate at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
I study digital literacy, machine translation, post-editing, and posthumanist approaches to translation and technology.
- Location
- Barcelona, Spain
- Affiliation
- Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
- Languages
- Chinese, Spanish, English, Catalan
Biography
Biography
Haohong Lai is a PhD candidate in Translation and Intercultural Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. His doctoral dissertation focuses on deepening the theoretical understanding and practical interpretation of digital literacy in Translation Studies, and aims to develop a content framework for two domains: professional language services, especially professional translation, and teaching activities, including translation and language teaching.
His main research interests include digital literacy theory in Translation Studies, translation technology with a focus on machine translation, post-editing practice, and translation philosophy from a posthumanist perspective. He is proficient in Spanish and English, with extensive experience in Spanish language teaching and professional translation practice.
Research
Research Interests
Machine translation
Training and fine-tuning LLM-based translation systems, prompt engineering, and translation quality evaluation.
Post-editing
Post-editing practices, translator decision-making, and human-machine workflows.
Philosophy of technology
Posthumanist translation studies, agency, subjectivity, and critical approaches to technology.
Projects
Research Projects
GENERATESE-2LT: Description of Generatese in Second Languages and Translation
The project investigates linguistic and extralinguistic features of GenAI-generated texts and develops a methodological framework for text quality assessment in multilingual contexts, with a focus on translation between English, Spanish, and Catalan, and on Chinese as a second language for Spanish-speaking learners.
Project pagePublications
Selected Publications
2026
The Role of Prompt Language and Translation-Theory-Driven Prompts in Large Language Models: A Case Study on Spanish–Chinese Journalistic Translation
Lai, H., & Li, W. (2026). In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT 2026), Volume 1, pp. 927-945.
2025
Using Critical Posthumanist Methods to Navigate Human Translators' Roles in the AI Era
Lai, H. (2025). INContext: Studies in Translation and Interculturalism, 5(1), 65-86.
Education
Education
Oct 2023 - Present
PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Provisional doctoral thesis title: Towards a Digital Literacy Framework for Translation and Language Teaching: An Empirical Study Based on Expert Interviews.
Sep 2022 - Jul 2023
MA in Translation and Intercultural Studies
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Dissertation on neural machine translation error characteristics and post-editing in Spanish-to-Chinese news translation. Awarded Matrícula de Honor.
Repository recordSep 2018 - Jun 2022
BA in Hispanic Philology
Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, China
Coursework in Spanish language, translation, interpretation, and Spanish literature.
Experience
Academic and Professional Experience
Translation
Spanish Translator
Translate and revise patent-related and technical texts between Chinese and Spanish, with attention to terminology, accuracy, and readability.
Teaching
Spanish Language Instructor
Teach A1-B2 Spanish courses in small-group and one-to-one formats, adapting materials to learner goals.
Research Collaboration
Research Project Collaboration Translator
Translated and compiled English and Spanish materials for research deliverables on science and technology awards established by non-governmental institutions.
Awards and Skills
Recognition and Skills
Honors
- First Prize in the "Yimeng Cup" National Research Paper Competition in Translation Studies
- Matrícula de Honor, MA dissertation, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2023
- Matrícula de Honor, Research Areas in Translation Studies and Intercultural Studies, 2023
- Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award, Southwest University of Science and Technology, 2022
- Outstanding Student Leader Award, School of Foreign Languages and Cultures, 2021
Skills
- Languages: Chinese native, Spanish DELE C1, English B2, Catalan A1
- Research and writing: Microsoft Office, Zotero, EndNote
- AI agents: Codex, Claude Code
- Programming: Python basics
Contact
Get in touch
I welcome academic exchange, collaboration, and related inquiries.