Amazon wants to address a drawback self-published authors face — translation of their work into other languages. They will be able to release their e-books in multiple languages with Kindle Translate, an AI-driven feature that has launched in beta to a limited group of Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) authors.

For the moment, it can translate between English and Spanish and from German to English, at no extra cost to authors. The company said that fewer than five per cent of titles on Amazon are available in more than one language, meaning there’s a big opportunity for AI translations.

The technology will help authors like Roxanne St. Claire, who said: “For decades, indie authors have been unable to find a cost-effective and trustworthy solution to foreign language translation. With services like Kindle Translate, we are able to easily bring our stories to a wide international audience — a win for authors and readers!”

KDP author Kristen Painter said, “Foreign translations open doors to new readers around the world and give my titles a second life. It’s one of the smartest ways to expand both reach and revenue.”

Books that use the technology will come with a Kindle Translate label, which may serve as a warning to consumers. Translating a book goes far beyond swapping out words — there is the element of nuance and intent behind words. It remains unclear whether the technology can handle all of this. Otherwise, Haruki Murakami would have used a similar technology long ago.

Authors will be able to select the languages they want their books translated into, set individual list prices for those translations, and preview them before publication. Amazon said that “all translations are automatically evaluated for accuracy before publication”.

Kindle Translate has a number of AI-powered rival tools. There are also open-source tools. Many people have criticised the use of AI in this way, saying that human translators are better at capturing nuance.

AI tools are known to hallucinate and reading chapters written by bots may not be a foolproof solution. At the same time, AI is improving every month and similar tools will be available to a larger number of writers.

At the moment, Kindle’s translation service is being offered for free, according to Amazon’s announcement, which says that indie authors have struggled to find a “cost-effective and trustworthy solution”.