When work, study, and AI collide: Cognitive dissonance and emotional regulation in part-time translation master's students

In the era of generative artificial intelligence (AI), translation education is undergoing profound changes, posing new cognitive and emotional challenges for students. This study explored the cognitive dissonance experiences of part-time Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) students during their translation learning. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 21 part-time MTI students across five universities in China, the study adopted a grounded theory approach to identify key sources of dissonance and students' coping strategies. Findings reveal five factors contributing to cognitive dissonance: competence challenge, relatedness gap, autonomy tension, value discrepancy, and role conflict. These factors reflect unmet psychological needs aligned with self-determination theory and are shaped by broader social and technological shifts. Notably, students experience dissonance not only due to conflicting beliefs and behaviors, but also due to mismatches between perceived effort and return, evolving professional identities, and the ways in which generative AI intensifies concerns about translation competence, professional relevance, and educational value. Theoretically, this study enriches the contextual application of cognitive dissonance theory by showing how unmet psychological needs, viewed through the lens of self-determination theory, function as salient antecedents of dissonance in part-time MTI students. It also develops a visualized "Pentagonal Pyramid Model of Cognitive Dissonance" as an integrative framework to clarify the pathway from dissonance formation to emotional regulation in this specific educational context. Practically, the findings offer valuable insights for educators and program designers to better support part-time students in maintaining psychological balance and professional growth in the AI era.