You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Taylor & Francis to use AI translation tools to publish books ‘otherwise unavailable in English’
Academic publisher Taylor & Francis (T&F) has announced plans to use AI translation tools to publish books “that would otherwise be unavailable to English-language readers”.
Last year, T&F, whose parent company Informa also owns the academic publisher Routledge, became the first UK-based publisher to confirm it had made deals worth tens of millions of pounds with tech companies, including Microsoft, to sell its authors’ backlist to train AI chatbots – a move which doesn’t include remuneration for authors, or ask for their permission.
T&F told The Bookseller that “following a programme of rigorous testing” over the past 12 months and thanks to “the development of sophisticated AI translation tools” it plans to make “an increased range of translated titles available” under the CRC Press and Routledge imprints “without compromising on accuracy”.
However, the move to use AI has been criticised by the Society of Authors and translators who say “AI-generated translation is just one of the ways that AI is presenting an existential threat to creators.”
T&F has confirmed that so far no AI-translated books have yet been published and that the test phase used traditionally translated books so it could “compare the quality and accuracy of the AI-produced translations”.
Jeremy North, books managing director at T&F, said: “We have always been aware that our translations programme represented just the tip of the iceberg, which is why we were keen to explore whether AI could help.”
He added: “This new initiative, which we will be working on hand-in-hand with our regional publishing partners, is a very positive use of AI technology. It promises to promote better understanding between cultures and accelerate awareness of the knowledge required to meet today’s challenges, regardless of where it is first published.”
T&F said all new manuscripts produced through this AI-translation publication route will be copy-edited and then reviewed by editors and the books’ authors before publication. It claims “comprehensive glossaries” will be used to train the AI on technical and subject-specific terminology.
News of T&F’s move into AI-assisted translation comes four months after the largest book publisher in The Netherlands confirmed it is using AI to translate some of its books into English. The Utrecht-headquartered publisher Veen Bosch & Keuning (VBK), which was acquired by Simon & Schuster in 2024, said at the time it was “trialling” the translation of “fewer than 10” commercial fiction novels.
Continues...
Read More
Rossum Press, an independent press founded in 2023, also uses computer-assisted literary translation to publish “under-the-radar" novels in English for the first time; while self-styled self-publishing “disrupter” Spines offers AI-assisted translation as part of its AI-assisted publishing model.
Professional translators and the Translators Association at the Society of Authors have criticised the growing interest in AI translation tools as a means of making book translation cheaper, saying it is a skill that cannot be replicated by machines.
Translator and novelist, Lisa Fransson, told The Bookseller: “Advanced AI cannot replace human translation. There are simply too many variables in human communications. A human translator is able to consider these variables on a case-to-case basis, where a machine can only ever choose the likely next word based on the information it’s been fed.”
She added: “Translation is a craft that takes many years to learn, and it used to be known as one. The use of AI dumbs down and cheapens the skill it takes to provide high-quality translations, making even those who refuse to use AI less willing to pay translators a fee that equates to a living wage. It has become increasingly clear to me over the past two years that translation is no longer a viable profession, and there are many of us who are now looking for alternative ways to make a living.”
The Society of Authors CEO Anna Ganley told The Bookseller: “The ‘advanced AI’ that Taylor & Francis is using is likely to have been trained on unlawfully scraped data. We do not agree with the ethics of using AI that has not been fairly trained. While we understand the position that AI translation tools enable books to be translated that may otherwise be unavailable to English-language readers, as the trade union for writers, illustrators and translators, we stand with human translators.”
She added: “We are currently in a position where publishers continue to make very healthy profits and yet the creators who do the work are not getting their fair share. With the emergence of AI, this inequity has only become worse, and AI-generated translation is just one of the ways that AI is presenting an existential threat to creators. We stand with the creative industries to Make It Fair for creators, and we urge industry to consider how they can ensure a just transition that considers the jobs and livelihoods of the human creators.”
Ian Giles, chair of the Translators Association at the Society of Authors, told The Bookseller: “[Last] year, the SoA found that one third of literary translators are already losing work to AI. Where work itself is not lost, translators struggle to increase their prices in the face of the AI challenger. This pressure on translators’ incomes jeopardises our ability to support ourselves in what is a highly precarious industry.”
