Taylor & Francis is pioneering AI-assisted book translation to significantly expand the availability of academic content that would otherwise remain inaccessible to English-speaking audiences. This initiative represents a significant shift in academic publishing, balancing technological innovation with traditional publishing values while raising important questions about the future of translation work and the ethics of AI in scholarly communication.
The big picture: Taylor & Francis will use AI to translate academic books into English from languages that typically don’t justify the costs of human translation, following a year of rigorous testing to ensure accuracy.
- The publisher will accept works in over 30 languages under its CRC Press and Routledge imprints, spanning various academic disciplines and formats.
- All AI-translated manuscripts will undergo copyediting and review by T&F editors and the original authors before publication in both print and ebook formats.
Key details: The publisher will train its AI systems using comprehensive glossaries of technical terminology to maintain accuracy of meaning across specialized academic subjects.
- The approach eliminates the need for authors to arrange translations before submitting proposals, reducing upfront costs.
- Taylor & Francis’s existing China Perspectives series, which includes over 350 titles by Chinese scholars, represents the kind of translation work the publisher hopes to expand using AI.
What they’re saying: “Taylor & Francis has a proud history of making outstanding books available in English for an international readership,” said Jeremy North, Taylor & Francis Books managing director, in a statement.
- Mark Robinson, corporate media relations manager, told PW: “We are interested in publishing translations of high-quality books across a broad range of advanced learning topics and formats, including academic monographs, textbooks and resources for practitioners.”
Industry reactions: The U.K.‘s Society of Authors has expressed concerns about the potential negative impact on professional translators and the ethics of AI training data.
Why this matters: The initiative highlights the tension between expanding global knowledge accessibility and protecting specialized translation work in the academic publishing ecosystem.
- If successful, this approach could dramatically increase the volume and diversity of non-English academic research available to English-speaking scholars and students.
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