HarperCollins Will Use AI to Translate Harlequin Romance Novels

Book publisher HarperCollins announced plans to use AI to translate its Harlequin romance novels in France, a move that may reduce or eliminate work for human contract translators. French literary translator groups, including ATFL and En Chair et en Os, reported that HarperCollins France intends to use a third-party company, Fluent Planet, to run novels through a machine translation system, which will then be finalized by freelancers. The groups protested this shift, calling for a commitment to human-created texts under dignified conditions. HarperCollins stated the move is due to declining Harlequin sales in France and aims to keep retail prices low, explaining that Fluent Planet uses experienced translators aided by their proprietary AI tool, BrIAn, which they claim offers higher quality than standard machine translation. Translation experts note that AI struggles with the nuances, idioms, and subtleties essential to literary translation. HarperCollins is not the first publisher to explore AI translation, following Taylor & Francis's similar announcement in 2025.

(Source：404 Media)