If you’re buying literature in translation online, buyer beware. You may unknowingly be buying low-quality AI-assisted translations presented as the work of a professional.
Certain online retailers are being used to flood the book market with AI-assisted “translations”. Amazon is one such example, though the company seems to be aware of the problem and claims to be addressing it.
I’m a published translator of French and Belgian literature and I teach literary translation to MA students. So I know from experience how much time and effort go into translation. Like many translators, I’m wary of the impact of AI on translation quality, not least because AI is not ideologically neutral. This means AI translation is more likely to reproduce outdated racial stereotypes (rife in colonial-era literature, alas) rather than handle them with sensitivity.
I first became aware of the practice when I purchased a Jules Verne novel in English online. The book presents as the work of a human translator and styles itself as “for a modern readership”. Within three minutes of opening the book, I had got my money back. Why? Style-wise, there was nothing “modern” about the “translation” – the style was as archaic as the first translation in 1877. And the presentation of the text was woeful by industry standards. It was clear AI had been used, but not disclosed.
The phenomenon seems to be expanding, and it raises serious ethical concerns regarding translation as a practice.
Why does it matter?
AI translations push the crafted work of real translators – with qualifications, genuine language skills and experience – to the back of a very busy marketplace.
What galls professional translators like me is that it might take months or even years to read, research and translate just one piece of literature. The AI-assisted pulp being churned out just cannot compete with a professional, human translator in terms of quality.
Translators can do their bit by increasing their visibility. They can offer well-researched forewords, for example, that explain their strategy, illustrate their appreciation of the text and its historical context and demonstrate the value they have added as human translators. But readers will also have to learn to be canny.
Your guide to spotting AI translations
Technology (including machine translation), copyright laws, easy online access to published “classics” (for example through Project Gutenberg) and user-friendly self-publishing platforms mean that anyone can publish and market a text as a translation. But if you’d rather not read AI translations, here are some tips and telltale signs for spotting it:
- do judge the book by its cover. The design won’t be very sophisticated or professional – probably because AI has been used for that too
- the original author is a well-known name – such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, or Niccolo Machiavelli. In any case, the author will be long dead, and their work will be in the public domain. This means the work is probably available online as a cut-and-paste text, which makes it easy to snatch and run through machine translation
- the title is a familiar classic, like The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Alternatively, the title is an obscure work, but it’ll be by a famous author (see above)
- the name of the “translator” is a “ghost” on the internet – meaning there’s next to nothing online (like a bio) to back up their credentials as a translator
- usually, there is no photo of the translator
- similarly, there is often no given publisher as the work has been self-published without the expert assistance of a professional editor
- the author has published an inordinate number of books since the advent of AI
- the range of their work would appear to point to (questionable) mastery of several languages. Most commonly, the original works are in French, Russian, German and (Medieval) Italian
- simply click on the sample. One dead giveaway is the absence of indented paragraphs – conventional formatting and presentation are jettisoned
- while you’re there, just read the sample. Does it feel like a “modern translation” to you?
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