Translator Frank Wynn on AI: ‘The kernel of all art is the sound of human voice seeking to be heard’
Why Artificial Intelligence cannot, and should not, replace translators and other artists.
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Frank Wynne is an Irish literary translator, writer and editor. He translates from the French and Spanish into English. This is an excerpt from his speech at the 2024 French-American Foundation Translation Prize ceremony, where he was the winner for his translation from the French of The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild by Mathias Énar.
Recently, I seem to have had a call every other week asking me to opine on the subject of AI translation. My response is simple – I’m all in favour of AI translation if you simply remove the “A”, and leave the “I”.
“I” is the individual translator tasked not only with transposing the meaning of words, the denotation and the connotation, “I” – and there are many here in this room – is also responsible for weighing the heft and weight of each syllable, each line; of deciding here to favour rhythm over pedantry; there to recreate the harsh consonance of a piece of dialogue, or repaint a startling image so that it feels raw and new. “I” is cheap to run – not that you would think it when you talk to certain publishers – “I” requires only food, water, sunlight and words. Large language models (or Vast Plagiarism Models...
