A translated book may carry one author’s story, but another human being has listened closely enough to give that story a new voice.
For almost 25 years, literary translator Cécile Deniard has worked in that space between languages. She has translated around 60 books from English into French, spanning fiction, poetry, history, economics and sociology. For her, translation is part interpretation, part problem-solving, and above all, an extraordinarily close form of reading.
In this episode of Intangiblia ™, we talk about what literary translators actually do, why the law recognizes them as authors, and what may be lost when we begin to think of translation as something a machine can simply generate.
Translators are authors too
One of Cécile’s clearest messages is also one of the least understood: literary translators are authors. Their translations are protected works. Translators have economic rights connected to the exploitation of their work, as well as moral rights, including recognition of their authorship and respect for the integrity of their translation.
Recognition, however, does not always translate into sustainable working conditions. Cécile explains that remuneration remains one of the profession’s greatest challenges. Translators may receive no advance, wait months for payment, or receive no royalties when the books they helped bring to new audiences succeed.
Through organizations such as the European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations, CEATL, translators are working collectively for fairer contracts, better remuneration, greater transparency and stronger professional recognition.
Translation begins with reading
What happens when artificial intelligence produces the first draft? For Cécile, something fundamental has already been lost.
She describes the first translation draft as perhaps the deepest possible reading of a book. Translating requires noticing rhythm, cultural references, historical context, register, silences and choices that may barely be visible on the page. That first encounter with the text shapes everything that follows.
And the work does not end there. A translator researches, rereads, questions, compares, consults specialists and returns to the same passages repeatedly until the new text can live naturally in another language.
Give the translator a machine-generated first draft, Cécile argues, and you have not necessarily saved work. You may instead have given them another text whose choices must first be questioned and undone.
When a suggestion becomes an anchor
This leads to one of the most fascinating ideas in our conversation: anchoring. A machine-generated sentence may look fluent and perfectly plausible. But once a particular solution has been placed in front of us, it becomes cognitively harder to imagine a completely different one. For literary translation, that matters.
There is rarely a single perfect translation. Every serious translation contains interpretation, judgment and hundreds of choices about how another human being’s voice should resonate in a different language and culture. Starting with an apparently polished machine solution can quietly narrow those possibilities before the translator has even begun.
Who is responsible for the voice?
For Cécile, this question ultimately comes down to responsibility. A literary translator puts their name on a text. They answer for the words they deliver to the publisher. That responsibility cannot simply be transferred to a machine. Interestingly, some publishing contracts are now moving in precisely that direction, requiring translators not to feed manuscripts or translations into AI systems without authorization and reaffirming that the work must remain fundamentally the translator’s own. The debate also reaches beyond how AI is used to translate. It raises another question: should a translator’s work, style and linguistic choices be used to train AI systems in the first place?
Cécile’s position is built around three principles: authorization, remuneration and transparency.
Creators should be able to decide whether their work is used, understand what is being done with it and, where applicable, share in the economic value created from that use.
The human voice between languages
Perhaps the most powerful part of our conversation is Cécile’s description of translation as a relationship. A book does not simply travel from English into French. A translator enters the world of the original, researches it, questions it, listens to its author and then rebuilds that experience for another reader. A book comes from one human context and enters another.
Technology may assist somewhere along that journey. But the voice that interprets, chooses, questions and ultimately takes responsibility for the words remains human. To protect literary translation is not simply to protect the words between two languages, it is to protect the human voice carrying them across.
Intangiblia™ is a bilingual podcast available in English and Spanish.
Protect the Voice Behind the Work
Every creative work carries choices, judgment and a human voice behind it. Protection for the Inventive Mind is my interactive fieldbook for understanding what you have created, where its value lies and how intellectual property can help you make more informed decisions about its future. Through practical exercises and clear guidance, it helps you move from creation to a more deliberate strategy for protecting and developing your work.
The views and opinions expressed (by the host and guest(s)) in this podcast are strictly their own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the entities with which they may be affiliated. This podcast should in no way be construed as promoting or criticizing any particular government policy, institutional position, private interest or commercial entity. Any content provided is for informational and educational purposes only.
