HarperCollins Will Use AI to Translate Harlequin Romance Novels

Writing a book undoubtedly requires the writer to possess a human soul. As we have seen several times in the past, the use of artificial intelligence in writing a novel produces results that are undoubtedly unpleasant, clearly lacking the true and real emotion of the human touch. The same line of thinking applies, as can be deduced, to the translation of texts.

However, the US publishing house Harper Collins has recently decided to collaborate with an agency specialising in artificial intelligence which, according to the publisher, would be able to “provide translations of 2 to 3 times higher quality” than other large language models (LLMs). The collaboration will mainly involve Harlequin, the French label responsible for publishing romance novels.

The news comes from a group of professional French translators who were recently notified of their imminent replacement by AI. The group, composed of the French association of literary translators (ATFL) and En Chair et en Os (In the Flesh), French activists opposed to AI, shared their findings in December 2025.