#3: highly recommended reading to help you stay sane
First off, apologies for the delay in sending this newsletter. We've been struck down by either illness or hefty workloads, and felt it was best to delay Textual Healing for a week than to rush something out for the sake of meeting a self-imposed deadline.
Work-wise we've been busier than Bobby Berk himself, but our current big, ongoing jobs won't be finished for weeks. This means we don't have a litany of shiny, finished projects to show off here.
But do not despair! We have other things to show you! Like this wonderfully tongue-in-cheek guide to identifying wildflowers from the window of a speeding car!
Anti-AI book (well, article) club
Given this month's relative paucity of polished projects to peruse, we've decided to compile a reading list. It's filled with writings that have caught and held our attention, as well as some impactful articles by friends and family.
Unsurprisingly, the main themes are basically this and "machine translation bad". However, it's heartening that even in these frightening times a well-written chunk of prose can make us feel less alone, and remind us that plenty of very smart, strong-willed people aren't going to sit by and watch the world lose its mind before crumbling into small pile of ash.
So without further ado, here are some very good things to read!
"It's embarrassing, destructive, and looks like shit: AI-generated art is the perfect aesthetic form for the far right"
This article from Gareth Watkins at New Socialist takes a deep look why the far right love AI-generated slop "art" so much. It makes some very compelling points about how this stems from the right's "hatred of working people", and how even national governments use it to "signal to their base their utter contempt for labour".
It's a long one, but definitely worthwhile.
"The platforms are the problem, because they want to trap us in a simulation of constant spectacle ... Meaningless 'content' is merely downstream of their business priorities."
I (and undoubtedly some of you) know Adam Aleksic better as the "Etymology Nerd", a fast-talking language expert whose videos cover everything from how algorithms are changing speech to the linguistics of porn searches and gorilla phrasebooks.
He also has a very good newsletter, where he recently tracked down and interviewed the creators of some abjectly racist AI slop videos that have racked up millions of views. When asked why they share their bigoted creations with the world, these accounts all gave depressing variations on "it just gets more views and engagement".
"Why would you shoot yourself in the foot by turning into a low-cost language service provider that no longer stands out from the competition, from whom potential clients and freelancers alike are now running away?"
This article, the first in our Translators Against the Machine series, examines the all-too-familiar shift away from human translation to machine translation post editing, where translators tidy up computer-generated translations instead of doing it themselves, and take a hefty pay cut into the bargain. The article's author, Laura Vuillemin, refused to accept this work and was blacklisted from her client's roster.
If you'd like to write for Translators Against the Machine, please have a look at our open call, and send a pitch or any questions to hello@guerrillamedia.coop. The initiative also has a Telegram group, where members are arranging in-person meetups.
"Every translator who has ever worked with CAT tools (most of us) knows that the data extracted from our own labour has fine-tuned this weapon of capitalism, which is now being used to render us completely obsolete"
If you want to learn more about the evils of post-editing, there are few places better than this article, by our very own Timothy, which was written as part of the Data Workers' Inquiry.
It's an informative deep dive into how predatory the translation industry has become, and how, as translators, we are forced to essentially dig our own graves by improving the software that is taking over our jobs.
"My life is made by the people I'm in relationship with, and none of them are my enemies. Even people who have stupid flags in their yard, if I run into them in the hardware store, we're not enemies, we're both just ... getting nails."
So this one isn't an article, it's a podcast, but it's a very nice, very heartening one that attempts to answer a vital question: "how do we liberate people from bad ideas?"
Adrienne maree brown's words are something of a balm, a refreshing step back from the black and white binary of the doomscroll. They invite us to remember that, despite clashing opinions, the people you involuntarily live around and among aren't really your enemies (unless you live next door to Elon Musk, in which case please unsubscribe and donate your presumably massive wealth to good causes).
"Actual AI isn’t a sci-fi future but the precaritisation of jobs, the continued privatisation of everything and the erasure of actual social relations. AI is Thatcherism in computational form."
And to cap it off, we're circling back to "AI bad". It's a sentiment expressed and shared by many, but few have managed to deliver such a blistering, scathing takedown of it as Dan McQuillan, writing here for the Scottish Left Review and pulling absolutely no punches.
He calls for a "just transition" to shield workers, in both the Global North and South, from AI's impacts, and draws parallels to the "Insorgiamo!" occupation of the GKN factory in Florence, Italy (which we actually translated an article on for the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung a few years ago).
If reading in Spanish is more you're thing, you'll be delighted to know that we've just published a Spanish translation of this article on El Salto, and it will be available on our blog a week from now.
Happy perusing!
GMC
