KDP publishers can now one-click “AI” “translate” their books into other languages. (In beta for now.)
Do you know how many shitty “translations” have already been done on the cheap by “translators” running text through Google Translate? Hey, at least now when readers mercilessly ridicule you because the “translation” of your book is nonsense, you wouldn’t have wasted any money on it!
BOTS CANNOT DO CONTEXT. Literal translations of idioms are gibberish. Humor is incomprehensible. (I saw a comic today, a few hours before I got this “auto-translate” notice, in which the German-to-English punchline was “We accept every brother-in-law hangover.” Potato journal electricity antihistamine. Ha ha, word salad is so funny!) When you write a few lines of dialogue in your English-language book in another language, you need a consult* with a speaker of that language if you don’t want to hear “What is this Duolingo bullshit? No native speaker would ever say it like that!” from readers. And you want to extrude entire books in a form you are incapable of performing quality control on? I would die of shame, personally, but I suppose it’s consistent with the flood-the-zone-with-shit business model.
You need fluent bilingual human beings with critical thinking skills to create translations of any quality whatsoever. It’s disgraceful to charge readers money for the privilege of sifting through your garbage.
*I come from healthcare, where “consult” (emphasis on the first syllable) is often a noun, short for “consultation.” A bot will translate that literally as the verb “to consult” because “consult” stripped of context is a verb in 99.9999999% of cases. The only way to avoid “confusing” the Probabilistic Word Extruder 3000 is to eliminate all nonstandard usage (i.e., purposely make your writing beige in fealty to your tech overlords), and it’s extremely unlikely you could even identify all of your own nonstandard usage because it seems natural to you.
ETA: I just realized this will cut into the income stream of the “translators” who run books through Google Translate, which means they’ll be flocking to other forms of crap. My inbox filters weep.
ETA II: In case there was any doubt, I will not be availing myself of this “feature.”