Publishers say using AI to translate classics is ethically wrong
Publishers Krista Kaer and Piret Lemetti warn that AI-assisted re-translations of literary classics appearing on the market are unethical, unfair to readers, and devalue the work of human translators.
Varrak Editor-in-Chief Kaer said that the overall situation for translated literature in Estonia has not improved from the viewpoint of publishers.
"Print runs of books have dropped sharply, and translated literature is expensive to publish. In addition to purchasing rights, there is the translation cost, which is very significant for larger books. Overall, the amount of valuable translated literature has decreased. With the classics, everything is fine — the Hieronymus series publishes books very nicely, and what should have appeared long ago is well covered. However, the situation is bad with contemporary quality literature," Kaer admitted.
"Books are published that are more or less a sure bet. There is nothing to be done; a large part of the world is still uncovered for Estonians, and this situation will not change in the near future either. The Cultural Endowment helps, thank God," Kaer laughed.
"I look with great envy at the French and Germans, where very important works published all over the world appear very quickly and continuously. In Estonia, books that appear quickly tend to belong to the field of entertainment and crime fiction," she noted.
Eesti Raamat Editor-in-Chief Piret Lemetti agreed.
"Often you look at a book that you would very much like to publish, but you know that publishing it would be a very big risk. Especially if it is English-language literature, because people read a lot in English. If you cannot publish the book at the same time it appears in English, then you have already missed the train," Lemetti admitted.
"The share of translations from English is decreasing in other European countries as well because many people read in English. For Estonia, translating literature published in the Nordic countries is becoming more important, as is Central Europe. Of course, Asia is still half-undiscovered for us. South Korean literature is currently making a huge breakthrough, but we simply do not have enough translators," Kaer added.
"It is also very difficult to introduce unfamiliar foreign names to Estonian readers because there is a deep distrust — people prefer to take a book by a well-known author or at least someone who can be associated with something," Kaer noted.
Lemetti added that a point of comparison is crucial for readers. "If readers cannot associate authors with someone or something, they are not very inclined to buy the book," she said.
"If print runs drop by another couple hundred, there will actually be no point in publishing these books anymore," Kaer said, expressing hope that books people hesitate to buy will still be borrowed from libraries, provided libraries have enough money to purchase them.
"At the same time, all agents are gradually raising author fees and translation-rights fees. One can fight this and negotiate down, but these costs are becoming higher and higher. For some reason, there is an opinion that books are being bought more and more and publishers are doing better and better, which of course is not true," Kaer laughed.
The publishers added that exciting niche works remain untranslated because, in Estonia, their target audience would only be 300 to 400 people.
At the same time, older translations are also being updated. Varrak has published Dostoevsky texts, and Kaer herself has retranslated Yeats.
"These are probably needed, but new mystical translations have appeared — for example, of Conan Doyle — that are clearly made with artificial assistance and are completely terrible. Such things are very bad: taking classics to which copyright no longer applies and for which one does not have to pay, and then simply throwing them onto the market in a way that they cannot even be called translations or books," Kaer warned.
Lemetti added that she has encountered such books herself. "It is actually written on the title page that artificial intelligence assistance has been used in translation. I do not understand why this has been done," she noted.
Kaer believes the driver is a quick cash grab.
"This is unfair toward the author, and it is unfair toward buyers and readers. Doing such things is simply ethically wrong," Kaer said.
"This is also the devaluation of the translator's work. Essentially, the translator is reduced to a glorified editor. I do not understand what the point of this is," Lemetti added.
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Editor: Neit-Eerik Nestor, Argo Ideon
Source: ERR interview by Ivo Heinloo
