It follows that our most anticipated and widely read work of 2025, tackles the most batted topic of the year: AI. Daniel Saldaña París’s “Translation, AI, and the Political Weight of Words” (tr. Christina MacSweeney) tackles it head-on in an interesting project for Cita Press, and shares his reflections in a thought-provoking essay published in the Summer issue.
For context, Cita Press is an open access publishing project that “pairs contemporary authors and designers with public domain or open-licensed texts to create a free online library of carefully designed books by women, in Spanish and in English.” The project at hand, the “Literary Translation & Technology Project,” involves using AI (Large Language Models, Neural Language Models, and Machine Translators), traditional translation tools, and of course, a literary translator to evaluate AI’s potential for creating open access editions of works in translation. París took on a Spanish translation of Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly. In this piece, they mediate on translation through AI, where questions of ethics and effectivity take center-stage—can AI do as we do, but better?
Exactly how revolutionary is this new technology in terms of our profession? Based on my one-off experience of translating Diez días en un manicomio, I can say that the benefits are limited to speeding up the translation process while not necessarily improving it.
. . .
When choosing the most appropriate translation of a particular phrase or sentence, I keep in mind the readership of the text, in addition to its social function: I don’t make the same decisions when translating for a Spanish publishing house as I would for an independent Latin American publisher, or for an open access project that will be consulted by Spanish-speakers of different origins who are unfamiliar with my version of the language. At the other extreme, when translating, I am also conscious of the historical immutability of the original: I am working with a text written in 1887 and I must retain certain usages of that context, even when this may shock our contemporary political sensibilities.
First, París stresses the unacknowledged and unpaid labor concerning the body of work that trains AI. Given that this work is largely skewed to texts by male authors, there is an inherent gender bias in AI results. This would likely apply to translating the subtleties of minority-specific content that the software isn’t adequately trained to handle. Not to mention, were you aware that “each ChatGPT consultation uses two glasses of water?”
On the flip side, there is an obvious benefit of efficiency (if not accuracy) to using AI—it can handle volumes of work that translators cannot possibly match. In doing do, the artistic process of the discipline is completely undermined.
Moments of difficulty with the text, meditating on words to establish the ‘right’ meaning, this is the process that embodies the artistic value of literary translation. Relying on a medium ‘deletes’ the skill generated in practice.
Yes, AI can make life easier. On the other hand, I feel that when dealing with creative processes, it is important to live with the difficulty for as long as possible. Making things easier is the oft-stated aim of an industry that privileges products over processes, but it is in the process of struggling with difficulties, turning them over in one’s mind for days, that translators transcend the mechanical aspects of their work to become artists.
I will close this essay with a personal appraisal: what I learned while translating Nellie Bly remains with me; it forms part of the corpus of references I can make use of when translating other books, when writing my own, and in my relationships with my fellow human beings. Translation is slow, careful reading and there is nothing more transformative for a person’s discernment than the exercise of inhabiting the language of another. Handing over that practice to a machine implies wasting a transformative space that, in transcending the individual, impacts society as a whole: if we renounce the gesture of placing ourselves in the other’s words, we renounce much more than a mode of text production.
The critical skill that AI lacks? Nuance. París points out that the delicate work of translating classics for contemporary audiences involves deep creativity. Translators become cultural mediators, choosing which terms situate the intended meaning best.
To translators, surrendering the artistic process defeats the purpose of translation in the first place. Indeed, the means do not justify the ends. Delegating to algorithms sacrifices the human component of writing, and the result is evident in language that lacks character.
The final note is a truth you likely know: creativity cannot be faked. Accordingly, a world that values creativity will value the art of translation.
Artwork by Xin Lui Ng
What a series! Literary merit, as a subject or in practice, shines throughout these works of peak criticism, essay, fiction, and interview. If any of these pieces have touched you, we humbly ask you to please consider joining us as a sustaining or masthead member, or gifing a one-time donation of any amount you can afford—thank you in advance for helping us carry on our vital work seeking out the best new writing from around the world. See you on the other side of the New Year!
READ OUR MOST WIDELY READ ARTICLE OF THE YEAR
*****
Discover more on the Asymptote blog:
- Our Top Ten Articles of 2025, as Chosen by You: #2 An Interview with Anton Hur
- Our Top Ten Articles of 2025, as Chosen by You: #3 An Interview with Jen Calleja
- Our Top Ten Articles of 2025, as Chosen by You: #4 Anthropocene by Caroline Brown