Recently, a friend had been talking about a series she really wanted to read.
I wanted to get the books for her so I went to my local bookstore, only to learn the books aren't available and cannot be ordered from them because they are self-published.
I assumed the books were written in French but after some digging around, they are not.
They are written in English by a US self-published author who only sells through Amazon. Their works are available in French and it just worries me that they could be using AI for the translation.
After a French publisher announced they would no longer use professional translators and rely almost entirely on AI, I've been trying to avoid translated works even more. I aim to only read books in their original language where I can.
In the case of this series, I'm worried because it's the first time that I find a self-published author who writes in English making their works available in other languages.
Since this is a pretty recent development for me, I'm not sure how I can find out if the books was translated by an actual human professional translator.
I'm debating asking the author directly, though I understand it's probably very insulting for me to even doubt their ethics like this.
Is there any other way?
by Lullayable
4 Comments
I would probably be highly suspicious of a self published author translating their work ethically. You could ask them, if they get offended there’s your answer…
A pure AI translation is going to take considerable licenses in the translation. However, if the translation is just assisted by AI and is edited by someone proficient in both languages, I wager you will actually find the translation high quality and perhaps even possibly better than a pure human translation.
Most authors worth their salt, if they are selling in other languages, give full credit to their translator.
If I came across a self-published book with an unattributed translator my one and only conclusion would be that it had been machine translated, and I wouldn’t bother with it at all.
The name of the translator should appear somewhere. Ideally, it would be on the cover but oftentimes, it will only be on the title page or elsewhere. But it should not be completely omitted.
I don’t think it would be out of line for you to ask the author.Â