OPEN LETTER TO VEEN BOSCH & KEUNING
IN REGARDS TO THE USAGE OF AI
TO TRANSLATE BOOKS INTO ENGLISH LANGUAGE

We are horrified to read in The Bookseller (https://www NULL.thebookseller NULL.com/news/dutch-publisher-owned-by-simon-schuster-to-trial-using-ai-for-english-language-translations) about Veen Bosch & Keuning’s “limited experiment with some Dutch authors, for their books to be translated into English language using AI”. Veen Bosch & Keuning claim that they are “not creating books with AI, it all starts and ends with human action” – yet this is patently not the case.

As CEATL points out in its Statement on Artificial Intelligence, “AI usage standardises translations, impoverishing written cultures and languages in general through, among other things, priming bias and self-pollution.”  Studies have demonstrated that post-editing a literary text generated by AI takes much longer.

Furthemore, literary translators are already struggling to make a living with their work, a work that requires a great deal of knowledge, creativity and many different skills. The publishing sector cannot do without well-trained literary translators; to pretend otherwise would mean impoverishing the cultural landscape as a whole.

We strongly believe that it is very much in interest of every stakeholder in the book chain – translators, authors, publishers and especially readers – to keep literary translation human. Machines do not translate, they merely generate textual material; books are written by human authors and should be translated by human translators. Imagination, understanding and creativity are intrinsically human and should not be left out of any literary text.

Regards,

The Board of CEATL