Amazon on Thursday announced the launch of Kindle Translate, an AI-powered translation service designed to expand the reach of authors using Kindle Direct Publishing. The service is still operating in beta, so it will initially translate text between English and Spanish, and from German to English. More languages will be supported in the future.
The retail giant points out that less than 5% of titles on Amazon are available in multiple languages, suggesting there is a huge opportunity for AI translation.
Of course, AI isn’t perfect, so your text may contain errors. To address this, Amazon allows authors to preview their translations before publication if they wish. This ability to check AI’s work isn’t very useful if authors aren’t using the service solely to speed up the process of translating their work into another language they speak. If you want to ensure the highest accuracy, you will still need a human translator to review the AI output.
(Amazon claims that AI translations are “automatically evaluated for accuracy” before publication, but does not elaborate on what steps are involved in this part of the process.)
The company says authors can manage and access their translations through the Kindle Direct Publishing Portal, where they can select a language, set a price, and publish their translated work.
Meanwhile, readers will be able to clearly label the AI-translated work as a “Kindle Translation” title and preview a sample of the translation.
Kindle Translate competes with many other AI-powered translation services and tools on the market. Prices can vary and we offer extensive support for more languages. There are also open source tools. Some industry insiders have criticized this use of AI, saying human translators are better at capturing nuance, especially in fiction and other literary works. However, AI is making progress on this front and is likely to improve further over time.
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Amazon’s announcement said that the Kindle translation service is currently available for free, citing early testers who praised this aspect of the service and said that indie authors struggle to find “a cost-effective and reliable solution.”
Amazon says Translation can be subscribed to other programs such as KDP Select and is also included in the Kindle Unlimited subscription service.
