If you’re buying literature in translation online, buyer beware. You may unknowingly be buying low-quality AI-assisted translations presented as the work of a professional.

Certain online retailers are being used to flood the book market with AI-assisted “translations”. Amazon is one such example, though the company seems to be aware of the problem and claims to be addressing it.

I’m a published translator of French and Belgian literature and I teach literary translation to MA students. So I know from experience how much time and effort goes into translation. Like many translators, I’m wary of the impact of AI on translation quality, not least because AI is not ideologically neutral. This means AI translation is more likely to reproduce outdated racial stereotypes (rife in colonial-era literature, alas) rather than handle them with sensitivity.

I first became aware of the practice when I purchased a Jules Verne novel in English online. The book presents as the work of a human translator and styles itself as “for a........

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