This thesis looks at the topical issues of translator wellbeing and self-care, and the growing role of machine translation (MT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the translation sector. The aim of this study is to determine whether neural machine translation could be used as a self-care tool for literary translators working on emotionally challenging texts. This issue is examined through an experiment carried out with volunteer student translators, who were asked to assess their experience of translating two comparable sections of an emotionally challenging text on grief with and without MT. A case study of a professional translator’s experience of grief and its impact on her translation work is also presented. The results suggest that the use of MT to translate emotionally taxing texts may have something of a distancing effect, reducing the emotional impact on the translator by requiring less emotional and cognitive effort.