More than sixty Portuguese translators, writers, editors and booksellers condemn the use of artificial intelligence tools in translation, calling for regulatory measures to protect works and specialists.
“This editorial policy is directly responsible for the real impoverishment of these professionals and the general decline of editors and booksellers, and also does a disservice to readers, writers and, above all, the Portuguese language,” say the subscribers to an open letter published this Friday in newspaper Publico.
They stress that “given the alarming figures regarding reading habits in Portugal”, it is essential that the newly sworn-in government and “in particular the new Minister of Culture Dalila Rodrigues” pay special attention to regulation and transparency in the field of reading. use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the publishing sector.
The open letter calls for publishers to be required by law to indicate the source of any translation, clearly stating so on the cover of the book, and calls for mechanisms to encourage the funding and publication of translations that are not man-made.
The document was signed, among others, by Frederico Lourenço, historian and translator; writers Afonso Reis Cabral, Manuel Alegre, Luisa Costa Gomes, Richard Zenith, Dulce Maria Cardoso, Richard Zimler; university professors and historians Diogo Ramada Curto and António Araujo (Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation), as well as António Feijo, President of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
In addition to reviewers, booksellers and journalists, the open letter was signed by the editors Barbara Bullosa (Tinta da China), Carlos Vaz Marques (Ziggurat), Dinis Machado (Society of Poets and Dragons), Francisco José Viegas (Quetzal), Isabel Miños. Martins (Planet Tangerina), Maria do Rosario Pedreira (Leia), Rosa Azevedo (Snob), Rui Coceiro (Counterpoint) and Vasco Santos (VS).
The letter mentions that the translation of books, carried out mainly using artificial intelligence programs (ChatGPT and DeepL programs), “has become a practice increasingly used in certain sectors of the Portuguese publishing world without warning to readers.”
“Individual industries” are not specified in the open letter.
For subscribers, “it’s normal to have translators who use automatic translation programs to carry out steps of the work,” but, he adds, hiding the use of tools as the primary or almost exclusive translation tool, “which turns translators into machine language proofreaders, cannot be ignored.”
“In many of these cases, books translated by these tools do not respect the author’s code, violating basic editorial rules: the technical sheets do not indicate the original title of the work, nor the language from which it was translated, nor the names of the translators. and reviewers,” they accuse.
“Translations made from scratch using automatic translation programs imply an undoubted regression in the quality of the works. These editions contain spelling and grammatical errors, a mixture of spelling conventions, Brazilian terms and various idiomatic inconsistencies,” subscribers add.
The names who signed the open letter emphasize that translation requires highly varied decisions and interpretive choices, the quality of which depends on specialist knowledge, experience and “poetic vision”, and the consequences are “regrettable” for readers.
“This method of transfer has serious consequences at the labor level. Since works done in this way eliminate the task of the translator, the reviewer’s job is twofold: he has to not only review, but also rework the translation of the text, which is not the result of anyone’s thoughts, receiving in return the lowest remuneration of the two services, which worsens even without this is a difficult situation,” the subscribers further accuse.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I’m Tifany Hawkins, a professional journalist with years of experience in news reporting. I currently work for a prominent news website and write articles for 24NewsReporters as an author. My primary focus is on economy-related stories, though I am also experienced in several other areas of journalism.