VOL.69/2024.04

The Influence and Application of AI Translators on
the Publishing Industry and the Import and Export of Copyrights

2024.04.01

AI technology is advancing rapidly and transforming the way we work. These technological developments are affecting many areas of our lives, and the publishing industry is no exception. The use of Neural Machine Translation (NMT), such as Google Translate, which emerged in 2017, as well as Naver’s Papago, DeepL, and Microsoft Translator, is growing dramatically, and the publishing industry is joining this technological trend. Its use is expanding from simple business emails to book introductions, copyright marketing materials, subtitles for book trailers, speech-to-text technology, and more. This means that a fundamental shift in working tools and business structures is taking place. This article examines the influence of AI on the publishing industry from an editor’s perspective.

Low cost, high performance

AI translators boast extraordinary efficiency. They are incredibly fast and cheap, even when compared to human translators. With some popular free services, you can translate mass amounts of text in a few seconds to minutes. The efficiency is even greater when it comes to the fast production of publications and the research phase of rights import and export. It became convenient to find foreign sources, get a general idea of the content, read reader reviews, and make decisions. The time spent on review has been dramatically cut down.

The advantages are not limited to the fast speed and efficiency. When properly used, translators can help small and medium-sized publishers knock on doors in global markets that they would otherwise have given up on due to lack of resources. It opens the door to reviewing and producing publications in multiple languages. Small publishers used to have limited opportunities to export their works, producing once or twice a year and pitching them to agencies, but now they can organize and distribute a list of titles every month. Compared to the traditional process of translating abstracts, this significantly saves time and money, while breaking down language barriers to reach more international publishers.

Neural Machine Translation (NMT) opens a new horizon

Machine translation has a long history, starting with code-breaking in the 1950s, moving through the 2nd generation of statistical machine translation, the 3rd generation of neural network-based translation, and now the 4th generation of transformer models. However, it is only since 2017 when AI translation was introduced, that its potential to break down language barriers between countries and facilitate exchange and communication has flourished. Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is a form of translation technology based on AI and deep learning that processes the entire sentence as a unit to understand the context and provide a more natural translation. By understanding the meaning of the entire sentence instead of translating words or phrases individually, it is able to produce more accurate and fluent translations.
This is a significant improvement upon the 2nd generation of Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) methods, and the difference in performance is especially noticeable when translating long sentences or complex phrases. It has a high level of naturalness and accuracy in translating between different languages as it learns from huge amounts of linguistic data. Advances in this technology not only improve translation quality, but also speed up translation and expand the possibility of translating different language pairs. Its use is growing in the fields of global communication, multilingual content creation, international business, and education. It is also opening up new possibilities in the publishing industry, contributing to the translation of books and marketing materials into different languages and enhancing communication with international readers.

Balanced coexistence

Experts in the publishing industry generally agree that the widespread use of AI translators is bringing positive changes to the market. However, due to the lack of accuracy and contextual understanding, a human expert’s review is essential when drafting copyright contracts and making important communications. To address these issues, Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE) is becoming more common.
The advent of AI translators is an inflection point in the publishing copyright import/export market, as they have enabled greater accessibility, reduced costs, and saved time. These benefits will shine brightly when properly balanced with professional translation.

Written by Kai Song (Editor-in-chief at Hanbit Media)