UK-based company launches AI translation service

By Lucia Caporalini

A UK-based company announced the creation of its new AI translation service, GlobeScribe, on Tuesday.

GlobeScribe, founded by publishers Fred Freeman and Betsy Reavley, aims to be a useful service for authors and publishing houses to accelerate the translation process of their works. 

AI translations have become increasingly popular in recent years and have been harshly criticised by translators and writers.

Freeman and Reavley, however, disagree. 

“The publishing world needs smarter, faster solutions, especially for independent creators. GlobeScribe delivers exactly that,” said Freeman. 

“Our soft launch lets us perfect a service that will eliminate the traditional hurdles of high costs and long waits that come with translating books.” 

The translations are available in Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German. 

GlobeScribe is currently charging $100 per book, per language – a staggering difference to the usually higher costs required by human translation. 

‘Flat-out wrong’

Ian Giles, chair of the Society of Authors’ Translators Association, condemned GlobeScribe’s purpose: “[They] may claim to unlock global access for fiction, but their approach sidelines the very people who make literature resonate across cultures,” he said to the Guardian.

“Suggesting that AI can match or even surpass, the nuanced work of human translators on behalf of authors is flat-out wrong.”

Translation is recognised as a notoriously difficult discipline given the ‘slippery’ nature of language itself. 

This is even truer for the translation of literature, where the interpreter has to match not only the writing style of the author, but also understand and connect with the context of the text.

“A translator translates more than just words, we build bridges between cultures, taking into account the target readership every step of the way,” said translator Michele Hutchinson.

“We smuggle in subtle clues to help the reader understand particular cultural elements of traditions.”

“We convey rhythm, poetry, wordplay, metaphor. We research the precise terminology for say agricultural machinery, even in a novel.”

Nevertheless, GlobeScribe is not aiming to substitute human translators. 

“There will always be a place for expert human translation, especially for highly literary or complex texts,” Freeman and Reavley acknowledged. 

“But GlobeScribe opens the door to new opportunities, making translation a viable option for a much broader range of fiction.”

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A threat to the arts 

In 2024, a survey by the Society of Authors (SoA) highlighted that a third of translators missed out on work due to the improvement of AI tools and systems. 

Robert Casten Carlber, CEO of Nuanxed, a company specialising in the post-editing of AI translation, commented that while translators are “essential in maintaining high quality literature in translation, their methodologies will need to evolve alongside technological advancements”.

Integrating AI into the translator’s ‘toolbox’ will improve productivity “without sacrificing creativity or quality”.

After the survey, the SoA remarked that there is an ‘urgent need’ for a government ‘code of conduct’ concerning AI tools to guarantee an ‘ethical’ use of said systems. 

GlobeScribe founders said that they “recognise that parts of the industry are understandably cautious about what AI might mean for the arts.”

But that doesn’t scrape their mission.

“[We] believe these tools are here to stay and that they should be embraced thoughtfully and responsibly.”

“This is not about replacing human translators,” they stated.

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