On November 7th, Amazon announced the launch of Kindle Translate, an AI-powered translation service for its Kindle e-reader platform. Designed specifically for authors using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), the service aims to help them automatically translate their works to reach a wider audience.
Currently, the service is in beta and is offered free of charge, but only supports English-Spanish and German-to-English translation. More languages will be added gradually in the future.
Amazon points out that currently less than 5% of books on its platform offer multilingual versions, indicating significant growth potential for AI translation technology in publishing. However, Amazon acknowledges that AI translation can still produce errors. Therefore, Kindle Translate allows authors to preview and review their translations before publication. However, if the author is unfamiliar with the target language, human translators are still required to proofread the translations to ensure accuracy.
Furthermore, Amazon claims that the system automatically evaluates the accuracy of the translations before publication, but has not disclosed the specific evaluation methodology. Meanwhile, readers can clearly see books labeled "Kindle Translate" when purchasing and can preview some AI-translated content to decide whether to buy them.
However, industry insiders believe that AI translation still cannot completely replace human translators in the fields of literature and fiction, especially for less commonly taught languages, where human translation is better able to accurately capture nuances of tone and culture. Of course, with the rapid advancement of AI translation technology, its future application in the publishing industry is promising.
