The Translator's Facade: A Manifesto for Authorial Fidelity

I recently stepped into the arena. I presented my life's work, BookTranslate.ai, to a group of professional literary translators. I came in good faith, as a fellow translator, to build bridges and showcase a new tool designed to help us all.

I was met with ridicule, ad hominem attacks, and a wall of sophisticated-sounding skepticism. But beneath the noise, I discovered something far more disturbing. This isn't just about a fear of new technology. This is about a deep, cultural rot at the heart of the translation profession.

This is a manifesto against that rot. It is a rallying cry for authors, publishers, and readers—for everyone who believes a creator's work deserves respect, not hijacking.

The Core of the Conflict: Fidelity vs. The Facade

The debate was ostensibly about the quality of my AI's translations. I presented a case study of H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu, where my system's output was demonstrably superior to the official, published Hungarian translation.

The critics ignored this. Instead, they nitpicked a single, debatable stylistic choice in the AI's text.

What they "forgot" to mention was that the human translation they were implicitly defending contained two fundamental, objective errors in its most iconic line:

1. A comprehension error: It mistranslated "In his house at R'lyeh" as "In R'lyeh's house."
2. A thematic violation: It added the words "for us" ("ránk"), changing Lovecraft's terrifying cosmic indifference into a generic monster-movie threat.

When I pointed this out, the response was not shame or an admission of error. The response was a stunning act of intellectual gymnastics: they argued that these errors were not errors at all, but a form of higher "artistic liberty." They claimed the translator, in his wisdom, was "improving" Lovecraft by making him more accessible.

This is the facade. This is the rot.

It is the arrogant belief that a translator has the right to become a self-appointed co-author, to "fix" an author's meaning, to dilute their themes, and to violate their creation for the sake of what they deem "naturalness" or "pathos."

They have spent ages positioning themselves as mystical artists whose process is beyond reproach. Their strongest arguments are not about textual evidence, but about "soul," "art," and the "ineffable" quality of human touch. This mysticism is a smokescreen. It is a shield to protect them from accountability. It is the facade that allows them to defend rank unfaithfulness as high art.

Who Do We Serve?

This experience radicalized me. I realized that this is a war of principles. I tried to offer them a tool, a "copilot." But they made it clear where their loyalties lie.

They are not on the side of the author, whose original intent they feel entitled to rewrite.

They are not on the side of the publisher, whose financial and logistical burdens they dismiss as irrelevant.

They are not on the side of the reader, who is deprived of countless books because the traditional, inefficient model makes them too expensive to translate, and who is left to experience an unfaithful "interpretation" of the original, instead of what the author truly intended.

They serve themselves. They serve the romance of their own process, the "fiddling with words," the self-appointed status as co-authors, and the preservation of their status as untouchable artists.

So, I have chosen my side.

BookTranslate.ai is on the side of the author, the publisher, and the reader.

• We are on the side of the Author, because our technology is built on a fanatical devotion to fidelity. Our AI does not have an ego. It will not "improve" your work. It will honor it.
• We are on the side of the Publisher, because we solve their biggest problems: the crushing cost, the months-long timelines, and the risk of receiving a flawed, unfaithful translation.
• We are on the side of the Reader, because our ultimate goal is to break down the barriers that keep the vast majority of the world's literature locked away in its original language or behind distorted adaptations.

The Crusade for Fidelity

This is not about replacing humans. This is about introducing a new standard of accountability.

For the first time, we have a baseline. We have a tool that can produce a translation of such high fidelity that it exposes the "artistic liberties" of the past for what they often are: mistakes, misunderstandings, misinterpretations, or acts of ego.

The backlash I faced was not the fear of a machine that is almost as good as a human. It was the terror of a machine that is more faithful.

This is the crusade. It is a fight for the principle that an author's work is sacred. It is a fight against the arrogant facade that places the translator's ego above the creator's voice. And it is a fight we intend to win, not by arguing with the gatekeepers, but by empowering the authors, publishers, and readers they have left behind.