The largest book publisher in The Netherlands has confirmed it plans to use artificial intelligence (AI) to translate some of its books into English, The Bookseller can exclusively reveal.
Utrecht-headquartered publisher Veen Bosch & Keuning (VBK) was acquired by Simon & Schuster earlier this year. It was Simon & Schuster’s first acquisition of a non-English-language publisher, which it said at the time would help it access “broader European markets”.
A spokesperson for VBK told The Bookseller: “We are working on a limited experiment with some Dutch authors, for their books to be translated into English language using AI. There will be one editing phase, and authors have been asked to give permission for this.
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Ian Giles, chair of the Translators Association at the Society of Authors (SoA), said: “This is concerning news. Earlier this 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.”
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One thing I can tell you with confidence about the Netherlands is that people there almost invariably overestimate their proficiency in English, so adverts and public announcements and the like in English often have embarrassing mistakes, so I’d put money down that they’re not going to hire a native speaker or perhaps even a chartered translator to check the translations.
I can’t elaborate on the Dutch, but I feel that your prediction that they won’t hire native speakers/chartered translators will hold true not only for the Netherlands. I used to work for international publishing houses in various roles and guess I have some idea of this industry, and I think they won’t hire experts just for saving money (not because they overestimate their language proficiency). They won’t care about quality as long as the financials are fine, even if such a commercial success has a short life.
The only exceptions I see at the moment are some small media organizations and/or grassroots media. But large publishing houses will use AI to further drive down costs, no matter what.
A user in another thread on this topic has guessed that there will be a ‘parallel economy’ (their word) dedicated to human-made goods, while the rest is AI generated. Maybe that’s the future?
This is very true, but I assume they are translating from English to Dutch.
Edit: I was wrong.