The uncomfortable relationship between AI and translation has been in the news again this week. HarperCollins in France has hired the services of Fluent Planet to help it save money by reducing the labor-intensiveness of the translation process. Fluent Planet will, it seems, be using machine learning to achieve this. The reaction has been exactly what, in short, you would imagine.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
Translators' groups are up in arms. They claim that quality will suffer. They also claim that this represents the publishing industry turning its back on a vital part of the ecosystem. Translation was one of the first areas to feel the AI pinch. But even from the most ardently opposed to image and text generation, I have spotted less than rampant support for such an essential and skilled group.
AI as Solution to Manga Piracy
Translation and AI are also at the center of another story, this time related to manga. The manga industry claims that piracy costs it $55 billion per year. It's a figure that carries out its arithmetic in a somewhat literal way, but nonetheless the 2.8 billion visits to piracy sites are clearly doing something bad to the bottom line.
One of the reasons cited for the levels of piracy is the difficulty of producing manga in translation, meaning those who want to read in their own language have no outlet to go to (again, this is a contributory factor in making the mathematics interesting). But some clearly see AI as the answer. This has led to the creation of Mantra, a Tokyo University startup that will translate manga into eighteen different languages as a way to attempt to stem the demand for piracy.
Remembering Literary Voices
A sobering note to finish on. Lit Hub has, among its many reviews of the last literary year, this list of those writers who died in 2025. So many names of those who feel like lifelong friends and comforts. I raise a toast to all of you.
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