The European Union, with its 27 nations and two dozen official languages, is a center of the translation and interpretation industry. That is why, in Brussels and The Hague and Paris, a recent nugget of literary news has generated so much conversation.
Harlequin France — purveyor of titles like “Médecins et Célibataires” (“Doctors and Singles”) and “Passion Pour un Inconnu” (“Passion for a Stranger”) — recently confirmed that it would be running tests with Fluent Planet, a company that uses A.I. to make translation cheaper and faster. The move was met with both outrage and resignation within the industry. Translator groups called Harlequin’s decision to cut ties with some human translators “unacceptable.” Translators themselves posted about the “sad news.”
Other publishers did something else. Several reached out to Fluent Planet to ask if they, too, could get a quote for A.I.-assisted translation.
“The demand is increasing quite rapidly now,” said Thierry Tavakelian, a founder of Fluent Planet, which uses machine-based translation under human supervision.
Harlequin France’s story is an example of how artificial intelligence is sweeping the translation field, rapidly improving machine translation, particularly for popular language pairs like English and French.
The technology’s progress has spurred warnings that translation jobs could go the way of carriage drivers and typists. Recent research on which industries are most likely to be shaped by generative A.I. identified translation and interpreting as the most affected.
“One day, thanks to artificial intelligence, we will no longer need interpreters,” Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, predicted in September.
But many experts suggest that such predictions are oversimplified, arguing that A.I. will probably change language work rather than make it obsolete. Multinational organizations like the European Union and NATO offers a snapshot of the shift.
“The pressure is really clear,” said Anna Wyndham, the head of research at Slator, a language industry analyst. “But that doesn’t mean that the profession is collapsing.”
Many translators and industry experts say human expertise will still be needed. So far, the hard data backs that up. Employment in translation and interpretation has continued to climb in the European Union in the past 10 years, according to official figures.
But pockets of change are already apparent, and artificial intelligence seems to be affecting job quality.
A translation industry survey in Britain suggested that more than one-third of translators had lost work to A.I. A broader survey, carried out by a consortium of industry groups in the European Union and beyond, found that translation companies, independent interpreters and university departments were worried about the field.
According to that report, “All point the finger to an indiscriminate use of language technology, in particular artificial intelligence and dedicated machine translation, to cut costs and replace or minimize human translation work.”
As in other fields, translators worry that competition with technology could make it more difficult to find entry-level jobs.
“It’s a bit depressing,” said Apolline Descy, 26, a translator who has a master’s degree but has struggled to find jobs in Brussels.
Many of Ms. Descy’s translator friends are working as language teachers or have gone back to school, she said, even though their professors had told them there would always be jobs in translation.
“Maybe my professors were too optimistic,” she said.
Unlike other industries, which are just beginning to grapple with the implications of A.I., the disruption in translation is well underway. Google Translate appeared in 2006 and rapidly improved after the introduction in 2016 of more sophisticated machine learning. Cost-cutting prompted by the pandemic also brought a greater embrace of such technologies.
In the past few years, A.I.-powered tools have been improving digital translations and making real-time subtitles more accurate.
For some common language pairs, the quality now rivals or is even more consistently accurate than human translation in some tests of simple tasks, said Jarek Kutylowski, the founder of DeepL, an A.I. translation company in Germany.
“The change is going to be profound,” Mr. Kutylowski said.
Computers will not automatically take over work that was previously done by humans, he noted, adding that, as with self-driving cars, there is likely to be a low tolerance for errors made by machines.
And experts widely predict that human translators will still be required for high-stakes, specialized projects like government translation, which makes the European Union an example of how the industry may evolve.
The European Union was an early adopter of A.I. The bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, has been working on artificial intelligence language tools and has spent years learning how to apply new technologies to make translation more efficient.
But while the commission’s language staff has shrunk over the past 10 years, it has not disappeared. So much of the work is detailed and specialized that, even as machine translation improves, humans must remain involved.
“There is a lot of anxiety,” said Guillaume Deneufbourg, a freelance translator in Belgium who has worked with the commission, the United Nations and on many literary projects.
But, Mr. Deneufbourg said, for now, the situation is “not catastrophic.”
Koba Ryckewaert contributed reporting.
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The Times.
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