So, to conclude, as the article implies: Do we want to live in a world of "good enough"?

And yes, accessibility is an issue. An expert human translation is a significant cost for self-published authors, and ultimately, it's their choice. I just wish every author makes that choice *knowingly*. Is a translation that may not truly reflect their work better than no translation at all?

Anyway, those are my thoughts. If an author has cared enough to write something, to want to share it with others, to make decisions about style and word choices, then does the work and its readers in another language not deserve the translation to be just as consciously and purposefully composed?

*(Not that I'm suggesting that MTPE, machine translation post-editing, is a viable method for literary texts, or any creative texts. I believe that much like instant machine translation, it has its place and its uses, but this is not one of them.)

Besides, is it just me or is this phrasing a little ... condescending? What books exactly are they implying are not literary or complex enough to warrant an expert translation? What literature is so basic that its readers don't deserve a human to so much as edit* the text being presented to them?

At $100 per book, you can be assured that there is no human whatsoever involved. Even the most basic quality check alone, carried out by a professional linguist or professional book editor, would cost more than that.

And translators aren't just saying that because we're afraid of change, or of being replaced. We're saying that because a good translator cares. About the author and the effort they put into writing their work. About readers and their experience in reading it. A statistical algorithm can't do that.