‘Being human helps’: despite rise of AI is there still hope for Europe’s translators?

A booming tech sector has disrupted translation jobs in publishing – but they could be needed for a while longer yet In February 2022, while he was plugging away at rendering the US writer Dana Spiotta’s novel Wayward into French, the literary translator Yoann Gentric decided he needed a bit of light relief. He would test whether AI could put him out of work. Gentric had been grappling with a short non-verbal sentence that described the book’s protagonist’s feelings upon opening a window: “Br...

By Philip Oltermann European culture editor