Why Human Translators Still Matter in an AI World
As a publisher building French and other language editions of our children’s books, I’ve seen firsthand where today's automated translation tools fall short.
Let's face it, AI translation tools are fast, accessible and they are increasingly sophisticated. For quick comparisons or basic checks, they can even be helpful. I use them as part of my toolbox in my workflow as a publisher, but not for the various language adaptations we have now or will be hiring people for in the future.
Why we don't use AI translations for our books
Publishing children’s books, especially books that deal with breastfeeding, bodies, and early childhood transitions, requires more than technical accuracy. It requires cultural fluency, tonal sensitivity, really it's that lived understanding and being able to share thoughts and feelings in a way that machines can't ever understand. That is where human translators remain essential to us.At the same time human translated books are not "perfect" and that's exactly how we like all of our books here at Little Goodbyes Press.
When Literal Translation Misses the Point
Bye-Bye, Boobies/Bye-Bye, les tétées
If you apply a strict back-translation test to Bye-Bye, Boobies, the limitations of automation to use for translations become clear right away.
A literal French auto response will likely produce Au revoir les seins or Bye-bye les nénés. Both are technically defensible translations of the word “boobies.” Neither works for a toddler book meant to be read in a warm, intimate setting. “Seins” carries a clinical tone. “Nénés,” depending on region and context, can feel slightly vulgar or adult.
The term widely used in many French-speaking families and by La Leche League in France for nursing is tétée. It refers to the act of breastfeeding and carries softness and familiarity. For that reason, the French edition became Bye-Bye, les tétées.
What is interesting that if you translate that back into English, it does not read as “boobies.” It reads closer to “the nursings.” As you can see it is not a literal translation but a culturally appropriate one. That distinction only happens when someone is thinking about how the book will sound in a real home, spoken by a real mother to a real child.
This is the exact reason that while AI translation has it's uses, it's not able to replace a human translator, yet, and probably in some cases, never.
A Humbling Reminder About Assumptions
The Fox and The Crow/Le Corbeau et le Renard
Embarassingly, I had Le Corbeau et le Renard listed incorrectly on my website as Le Renard et le Corbeau. The words were correct, as you can see, the order of the words in the title was not. It is a classic title, and native French speakers would immediately recognize the proper form. I did not, thankfully my translator pointed it out to me and I changed it before too many people visited that page.
How I found out that my French title was a mistake
I caught the error only when reviewing eproof files from IngramSpark and thought that maybe the translator had them flipped in their vector files, so I emailed them the copy to review and asked them what was going on with the title. Turns out I was wrong, they were correct and I need to make some changes to the title and metadata.
Fortunately, because the book had not yet been deposited with Library and Archives Canada, I was able to correct the metadata while it was still in review and update the ISBN record without wasting that ISBN.
This experience was eye-opening for me, especially in the forums where you see use X service to translate your books in no time. Reading a language, especially at my level, is not the same as publishing a book in that language. Vocabulary knowledge does not automatically include literary convention, rhythm, or instinct and it's something that I will not forget.
Our books distributed internationally and throughout Canada, catalogued in libraries, and read by families, those details matter.
Translation Is Also About Comfort and Alignment
Bye-Bye, Boobies
Finding the right translator for Bye-Bye, Boobies has not been straightforward. Extended breastfeeding is handled differently across cultures, and the illustrations are intentionally realistic and it turns out that even professionally, some translators were uncomfortable with the subject matter. I've had feedback that felt the image of a toddler standing up nursing crossed a line for their professional comfort. One ultimately chose not to have their name formally attached to the book even though they did the bulk of the translation.
That process revealed something important to me. Translation or really adaptation is not mechanical, it is relational. The translator must feel aligned with the material that you are providing them, particularly when the topic involves bodies and early childhood.
This is what is interesting to note because an automated tool does not have values, comfort levels, or professional boundaries where a human does, yet we the human is needed to capture the accuracy of the story. In children’s publishing that matters a lot.
Expanding the Search Beyond Local Contacts
Bye-bye, Canada, hello Argentina
Because of the challenges we experienced locally with the French adaptation, we expanded our search for the Spanish edition beyond our immediate network. We reached out across Canada and the United States using professional directories and translator associations. Interestingly, we connected with a lot of professionals who were breastfeeding advocates, some who had breastfed their own babies but none were comfortable with the extended breastfeeding aspect of this book.
In the end, that search led us to an award-winning translator from Argentina who understood both the linguistic nuance and the emotional tone required for this project.
It would have been faster and less expensive to rely on automated tools, but after seeing how just giving the title to AIs in English for French, we chose instead to, once again, invest in professional expertise and can't wait to share it with you later this year.
Proof of Commitment in Practice
This approach to using humans over AI for our translations is not theoretical. We currently have two French editions published, with additional translations in development.
Spanish is actively in progress for our first book and should be out this fall.
Each edition that we are translating involves direct collaboration with the translator, title review, cultural evaluation, and careful metadata verification before we hit publish and share them with the world.
While I see all the time people on publishing forums using different AIs to publish their translations into as many languages as possible weekly, we do not auto-translate and upload books and I can't see that changing anytime in the future. So while our process of sending to the translators, waiting for time in their schedules, takes longer for each book, it's worth it. No book is perfect, of course, but at least we can say ours are written, translated and edited by humans.
Children’s books are meant to be read aloud, they live in intimate spaces in the nursery, in classrooms, in libraries and shared. They shape how children hear language. A technically correct phrase that sounds unnatural or uncomfortable in a family setting is not good enough and can cause even adults to stumble when reading them aloud at bedtime.
AIs are tools not replacements
In some ways you can say AI tools are valuable "assistants" who can help filter out some of the noise of a simple Google search, or to summarize government reports on book sales from Europe for kids that's been published to see which languages might be the next option for translations. But they are tools and should be used with understanding their limitations.
AI Hallucinations
AI responses to questions are often hallucinate things so you can't fully depend on those answers even if they seem to make sense at first glance. I can say that they doesn't seem to be fabricating links as much as they used to so that's a small advancement there.
I'm sure they will continue to improve over time as they "learn" from humans and are updated, but they are not replacements for cultural nuance or human emotions. No program, even the simple grammar checkers that most people use daily and don't think about as being AI, is perfect and automated translation tools and services are no different.
As long as we are publishing stories for children, especially stories that enter emotionally significant spaces, human translators for us are not optional.
Thank You Translators!
The people who have adapted our books are essential for our success both here in Canada as well as globally and I am eternally grateful that we've found some amazing ones to work with both publicly and behind the scenes.You can explore all of our current titles on our Books Page.
If you'd like to help share our works, visit our Libraries Page for circulation details and ISBNs.
Our books are available through major retailers including Chapters, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and Waterstones.
