The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution has already claimed its first victims in the publishing world. Literary translators − the most fragile link and the most exposed to the AI tsunami − are witnessing their working conditions worsen by the day and their orders dwindle. As the use of automatic translation programs like DeepL becomes increasingly widespread, the job of a translator is increasingly reduced to post-editing contracts (using a text pre-translated by a machine).

According to Jörn Cambreleng, the director of Atlas, an organization promoting literary translation, this practice is still considered "shameful" among publishers, who never mention AI use on book covers, but also among translators, who accept this type of cheaper contract only due to a lack of other options.

The latest survey on machine translation and post-editing conducted by the French Literary Translators' Association (ATLF) in December 2022 among 400 people already showed a "strong lack of transparency from publishers" on AI use and "lower compensation" (lower than average translation rates in 68% of cases).

For almost half of those surveyed, post-editing requires "more time than a conventional translation." The few professionals (8%) who said they accepted post-editing work again did so "for recreational works (such as cooking or yoga books), on condition that the compensation corresponds to the actual working time," for strictly economic reasons. A minority of cases took it on "out of curiosity, in the belief that AI will continue to expand."

ATLF secretary Peggy Rolland is concerned about the arrival of AI and fears a chain reaction of challenges, starting with legal ones. "Translators are authors and must receive royalties on each book sale (usually between 1% and 2%). "However, publishers who use AI want to pay us as self-employed contractors, which is not legal," Rolland pointed out.

One translator, who also works as a musician, noted that beginners in the profession are nonetheless accepting these proposals, as well as those from publishers paying translators on an hourly basis. For years, the profession's official scale − modeled on the subsidies granted to publishers by the National Book Center (CNL) − has been set at €21 per page, but it could fall to €17 or €18 with the use of AI.

Another unanswered question: "Since the original text has already been translated by a machine, who is the author?" wondered Rolland. In total, more than 5,100 people have already signed the petition by the En chair et en os ("Flesh and bones") collective, launched in September 2023, to oppose "soulless translations." "What may seem like progress is actually resulting in a huge loss of know-how, cognitive skills, intellectual capacities (...) and paving the way to a soulless, heartless, gutless future, saturated with standardized content produced instantaneously in almost unlimited quantities," the manifesto asserted.

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