At present, artificial intelligence technology has made a major breakthrough. Big data, cloud computing, language recognition, deep learning and other artificial intelligence technologies are widely used in the field of education and teaching, which not only changes students' traditional learning methods, but also promotes the innovation of teachers' teaching methods and teaching functions. The application of artificial intelligence technology, especially language translation technology in language teaching, has brought new opportunities and challenges for the development of language teaching in colleges. In this paper, artificial intelligence and its development are briefly introduced; then the influence of artificial intelligence on college English translation teaching are analysed; finally, college English translation teaching under the background of artificial intelligence is expounded.