Can you translate books with ChatGpt or Google Translate? Most authors and publishers know that the answer is that you technically can use AI-generated translations, but the results are deeply disappointing.

However, what happens when you think you have hired a human translator and end up publishing a book that was very poorly translated with Google Translate or ChatGpt? This is exactly what happened to an American author who hired, or thought she was hiring, a human translator on Babelcube and ended up having her regency romance “Rescued by a rake” translated as the equivalent of “He was saved by a garden tool”.

If you read the free extract (of better, if you have it read for you by an Italian) you’ll see that the rest of the translation is just as atrocious. Wrong verb tenses, misgendered pronouns, wrong terms – to a native Italian speaker everything points to a book that was badly translated using ChatGpt or Google Translate and was not revised by a human translator. And all reviews for this book are correspondingly bad, just like the sales.

Translation platforms and scammers using ChatGpt

This is a scammer who uses Google Translate or ChatGpt to scrape up whatever little money he can manage without making any actual effort to provide a decent translation. There are several like him/her on Babelcube and Tektime and other platforms, in many languages. You can’t even be sure they are who they say they are, many set up accounts with fake names and just deliver AI-generated translations. Babelcube and the other platforms never check the quality of the translation, nor the real identity of their users in most cases, that’s entirely up to the author/publisher.

We had already warned of the possibility of falling victim to a translation scammer on platforms such as Babelcube, Tektime, Fiverr, Upwork and other similar freelance portals in this article. Letting the idea of having your books translated with no upfront costs lure you comes at the risk of compromising your reputation and success in a foreign market by putting up translations that were not at least peer reviewed by professionals, whatever the language.

This is particularly important in the face of the new AI disclosure requirements that Amazon rolled out last week. Now, when you publish a new title or make edits to and re-publish an existing title through KDP, you will be asked whether your content is AI-generated or whether you’ve had AI assistance. if you publish a translation that was generated by Google Translate or ChatGpt and do not declare so, you’ll be in trouble if it is detected, not the person who scammed you.

How to protect yourselves from translation scams

We have tried to warn the authors who trusted these scammers, but the platform they used, Babelcube in this specific case, addressed their complaint by saying that per contract they cannot take down the translation for five years after the author has given their approval to the publication.

There might be a way around this scam. If, as we suspect, the translator is not who they say they are, the contract is null, and fraud is a federal crime in the USA where the platform resides. However, if you have to turn to a lawyer to have your books removed, lest such horrible AI-generated translations tarnish your reputation and negatively affect your sales in a foreign market for five long years, wasn’t it better to invest in a professional human translator from the start?

Please remember that most translation and freelance platforms do not vet their members. It will always be up to you to protect your work and your reputation. And the best way to do so is to invest in professional translators who can prove their identity and credentials. My personal credentials for example were verified by the human staff at Proz, currently the largest platform for professional translators.

Do professional translators come at a cost? Yes they do, just like any other person doing a good job, and you must have heard wise old sayings like “there is nothing like a free lunch”, or “if you pay peanuts you get monkeys”. But what is the cost of a bad translation to your international reputation and how is it going to affect your sales? Good translations are an investment. If you’re curious to know how much we charge for an Italian translation that you will be proud of, do not hesitate to contact us.